Almost two weeks ago, I received a many-times-forwarded message with the subject “Congressional Reform Act of 2011” (see Debunking 'Congressional Reform Act of 2011' on this site). On the surface, it appeared to be a typical piece of Tea Party/neocon invective that was unexceptional in any way; it started off with the obvious lie that it had originated with Warren Buffet, and then went on to call for a number of “common sense” responses to problems that don’t really exist, etc., and looked like something that had been making the rounds on Facebook a few days earlier. When I looked to see if I could tell where this message had originated, however, I was struck by a genuine surprise: It had, by all accounts, been sent out by the Chair of the Democratic Party of Comal County, Texas!
“While I personally do not fully agree with all of these suggestions, they are a good place to start,” this good lady writes at the beginning of her message. In that the contents of the message were ultimately written by the kind of people who make Democrats feel nervous about living in Texas, I would imagine that she would not agree with them. Why things she does not agree with would be “a good place to start,” however, I have no idea.
The idea that the leader of an organization representing besieged Democrats in a frighteningly Red state would be sending out rightwing literature was too much for me to accept and so I immediately sent her an email message to let her know I had received it. I expected she would probably let me know that she had been a victim of identity theft, but figured there was also a slight chance she would embarrassedly admit to accidentally disseminating something she had not bothered to verify (or even read very carefully to ensure it was in keeping with her party’s ethos).
When I had not received a reply after three days, I followed up with her again, once again emphasizing my affiliation with this site and my intention to publish an article about the hoax to which she had, one way or another, been party. That was a week ago and, as of this writing, she has still not had either the sense or the courtesy to reply to me or the readers of this site.
Seemingly coincidentally, right after I sent my first message to the Chair of my local Democratic organization I received a friendly and somewhat solicitous message from a gentleman who shared her last name. A little investigation revealed that this individual is currently running for a U.S. Senate seat, that he is also a member of the Democratic Party of Comal County, and that he is, in fact, the husband of the woman who had sent out the message being discussed here. We traded a few messages but, when I asked him about the email message that had originated with his wife, it went quiet at his end and our correspondence ceased.
And so, in the absence of any kind of a response, I am left to conclude that the most recent rightwing hoax to cross my desk originated with … a local office of the Democratic Party. This is certainly not an auspicious way for an organization of this sort to start off any year -- all the less so one in which we are about to experience what might be one of the most crucial national election cycles of our lifetimes and in which the Democrats will need to be on their game.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Debunking 'Congressional Reform Act of 2011'
Like just about everyone else in America with email, I regularly receive political messages that are, to a lesser or greater extent, hoaxes. Sometimes I respond to these messages personally by debunking the hoax for the person who sent it to me and possibly the other recipients; sometimes I respond publicly, generally with an essay on the Religion, Politics, and Sex website; and, often, I just let it go because I have got too many other more pressing things on my plate.
What usually surprises me is how quickly and easily I am able to get to the bottom of the lies behind such messages, often with the help of websites like Snopes.com. In such cases, I am generally left mystified by the number of people who simply forwarded them with apparently no attempt to verify the truth of what they were sending out to their friends and relatives and calling for action on. I am, of course, giving my correspondents the benefit of the doubt by assuming that again and again they allow themselves to be tools for whatever individuals or entities are deliberately attempting to spread false information; some of them, presumably, are not just unwitting dupes but, for reasons of their own, are knowingly party to trying to deceive the people they are emailing.
Recently, I received a many-times-forwarded message of this sort titled “Congressional Reform Act of 2011” that at first appeared to be a typical piece of Tea Party/neocon invective with one notable exception: It had originated with the Democratic Party of Comal County, Texas! (See A (Belated) Response to a (Strange) Hoax on this site.)
Following is the text of this odd message. As is usually the case, it is either obviously or verifiably false in almost every way and very poorly written, begging the question of why anyone would forward it to other people. My comments/debunks follow various points in brackets. Snopes.com does a pretty good job of addressing most of this at the post titled 28th Amendment.
Winds of Change ... Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around. [Warren Buffet is not retarded and therefore knows that most of what appears in this message is pure falsehood. Some comments he made in a recent interview were used as the basis for claiming he ultimately authored this message, but in fact he has never made such a call to action.]
1. No Tenure/No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office. [The falsehoods implied by this item, as well as #2 and #3, are easily clarified by anyone at About.com U.S. Government Info.]
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. [See About.com U.S. Government Info.]
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. [See About.com U.S. Government Info.]
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. [Yes, by God! Why should members of Congress be allowed to break the very laws they presume to impose on the rest of us. … Indeed. This really is a foolish item, in that elected officials are already accountable for following the laws of the land. If they violate them, they either get punished or they get away with it, but there are no legal provisions giving them a pass.]
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. [As far as I can tell, this item does not mean anything, and more than anything seems intended to mock the intelligence of anyone who would forward a message containing it.]
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. [Really? Not sure if this is true or not; messages like this that spread generally do so at the same rate as any other contagion, so maybe it is actually accurate.]
What usually surprises me is how quickly and easily I am able to get to the bottom of the lies behind such messages, often with the help of websites like Snopes.com. In such cases, I am generally left mystified by the number of people who simply forwarded them with apparently no attempt to verify the truth of what they were sending out to their friends and relatives and calling for action on. I am, of course, giving my correspondents the benefit of the doubt by assuming that again and again they allow themselves to be tools for whatever individuals or entities are deliberately attempting to spread false information; some of them, presumably, are not just unwitting dupes but, for reasons of their own, are knowingly party to trying to deceive the people they are emailing.
Recently, I received a many-times-forwarded message of this sort titled “Congressional Reform Act of 2011” that at first appeared to be a typical piece of Tea Party/neocon invective with one notable exception: It had originated with the Democratic Party of Comal County, Texas! (See A (Belated) Response to a (Strange) Hoax on this site.)
Following is the text of this odd message. As is usually the case, it is either obviously or verifiably false in almost every way and very poorly written, begging the question of why anyone would forward it to other people. My comments/debunks follow various points in brackets. Snopes.com does a pretty good job of addressing most of this at the post titled 28th Amendment.
Winds of Change ... Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around. [Warren Buffet is not retarded and therefore knows that most of what appears in this message is pure falsehood. Some comments he made in a recent interview were used as the basis for claiming he ultimately authored this message, but in fact he has never made such a call to action.]
1. No Tenure/No Pension. A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they're out of office. [The falsehoods implied by this item, as well as #2 and #3, are easily clarified by anyone at About.com U.S. Government Info.]
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. [See About.com U.S. Government Info.]
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do. [See About.com U.S. Government Info.]
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. [Yes, by God! Why should members of Congress be allowed to break the very laws they presume to impose on the rest of us. … Indeed. This really is a foolish item, in that elected officials are already accountable for following the laws of the land. If they violate them, they either get punished or they get away with it, but there are no legal provisions giving them a pass.]
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women. Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. [As far as I can tell, this item does not mean anything, and more than anything seems intended to mock the intelligence of anyone who would forward a message containing it.]
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. [Really? Not sure if this is true or not; messages like this that spread generally do so at the same rate as any other contagion, so maybe it is actually accurate.]
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Endorsing a Republican Candidate
In November, millions of Americans will cast their votes for the person they most want to see become the next president of the United States. It is already shaping up to be a heated campaign and will pit one of the most controversial administrations of modern times against whoever ends up being the Republican nominee and any number of third-party candidates.
The rump hopefuls don’t have any hope to speak of, of course, and the contest is ultimately going to come to a toe-to-toe slugfest between incumbent Barrack Obama and the as-yet-unknown Republican candidate. Who that should be — perhaps more so even that who it ultimately will be — is thus a matter of great interest for Americans in general and the editors of this site in particular.
A good first step in getting to who should be the Republican nominee is to figure out who it should not be and to many of us there are some easy answers to that.
It seems obvious that the next chief executive of our country should not be someone who is stupid. Right there that rules out Rick Perry for anyone who values intelligence, and his weird antics, rambling monologues, funny faces and gestures, and memory lapses clearly mark him as someone who is mentally defective. Unfortunately, ever since that most brilliant of Democrat presidents, Jimmy Carter, was unable to resolve the Iran Hostage Crisis in the late 1970s, Republicans have responded by trying to place simpletons in the White House (just try to follow the painful thought process behind that … ). Sarah Palin has confined her involvement in this election to inane commentary and Michelle Bachmann has dropped out, and Perry is tanking in the state caucuses, so we may actually be clearing out the lower end of the intellect pool fairly early on.
To me, it seems like a foregone conclusion that the next president of the United States should not be verifiably corrupt. That pretty much rules out Washington insider Newt Gingrich, who has by all accounts been too cagey about his personal finances and accepted an awful lot of money from Freddie Mac and Fannie May — by his own admission for doing nothing! A willingness to take taxpayer money in exchange for doing admittedly nothing — and in actuality for influence peddling — should make Gingrich completely unacceptable. (Recently, there was a message making its rounds on Facebook in which the author suggested that because Gingrich was more articulate and better able to give a good speech that we should set aside his faults and elect him on that basis alone. Have we really slipped that far? That is reminiscent to me of the students who campaigned for Bill Clinton back in the ‘90s with the line “Character is not an issue!”).
In that most Americans are not wealthy and have felt the impact of the recent recession, the next leader of the American people should definitely not be party to making them the vassals of one-percenter business interests. That, by all accounts, rules out Mitt Romney, who would have business interests directly peddle their goods and services to children via commercial advertising on Sesame Street and would prevent workers from forming labor unions. It never ceases to amaze me that people of relatively modest means would get behind people without their economic interests at heart, and yet it seems to happen increasingly.
Finally, our next president should not be a bigot. Whether anyone likes it or not, America is a nation of many peoples, and intolerance for the ones that are not like oneself divides and weakens us as a country. So, even though the “young people” are rallying behind unapologetic demonstrated racist Ron Paul, that pretty much rules him out (and most of those young people are those smug little creeps who have not yet had the chance to experience much adversity in their lives and their numbers will wane as they come to the grim realization that most of us do).
Those exclusions don’t leave too many candidates on the Republican slate! There is one that remains, however, someone who cannot just be excluded by the above criteria and who beyond that is in palatable in his own right, and that is John Huntsman. He is educated and articulate. As the former U.S. ambassador to China he is experienced in foreign affairs — something that xenophobic amongst us, as well as those that think wars are a substitute for diplomacy, don’t get at all, but which is absolutely critical in the globalized real world. And, as a Republican who has served in a Democrat administration, he has demonstrated that he can work with leaders on both sides of the aisle and is not inclined to be a polarizing influence.
In light of the above, the editors of Religion, Politics, and Sex, have decided to endorse Huntsman as the Republican candidate for president. His attitudes, frankly, are so undeniably more progressive and intelligent than those of any of his other GOP colleagues — and his portfolio and experience so clearly superior — that it is somewhat inexplicable and dispiriting that, far from being a frontrunner, he is trailing behind all of the other surviving candidates mentioned above. If there is one characteristic many of this election’s extreme and weird slate of Republican candidates have shown, however, it is a tendency to self-destruct. As there is nothing to suggest that Huntsman has this particular trait, we can hope that he might be the last man standing while his opponents implode and drop out amidst shame and scandal. And, if that happens, Americans who feel the need to vote a GOP party line or want an alternative to the current administration may actually be able to make a viable choice.
The rump hopefuls don’t have any hope to speak of, of course, and the contest is ultimately going to come to a toe-to-toe slugfest between incumbent Barrack Obama and the as-yet-unknown Republican candidate. Who that should be — perhaps more so even that who it ultimately will be — is thus a matter of great interest for Americans in general and the editors of this site in particular.
A good first step in getting to who should be the Republican nominee is to figure out who it should not be and to many of us there are some easy answers to that.
It seems obvious that the next chief executive of our country should not be someone who is stupid. Right there that rules out Rick Perry for anyone who values intelligence, and his weird antics, rambling monologues, funny faces and gestures, and memory lapses clearly mark him as someone who is mentally defective. Unfortunately, ever since that most brilliant of Democrat presidents, Jimmy Carter, was unable to resolve the Iran Hostage Crisis in the late 1970s, Republicans have responded by trying to place simpletons in the White House (just try to follow the painful thought process behind that … ). Sarah Palin has confined her involvement in this election to inane commentary and Michelle Bachmann has dropped out, and Perry is tanking in the state caucuses, so we may actually be clearing out the lower end of the intellect pool fairly early on.
To me, it seems like a foregone conclusion that the next president of the United States should not be verifiably corrupt. That pretty much rules out Washington insider Newt Gingrich, who has by all accounts been too cagey about his personal finances and accepted an awful lot of money from Freddie Mac and Fannie May — by his own admission for doing nothing! A willingness to take taxpayer money in exchange for doing admittedly nothing — and in actuality for influence peddling — should make Gingrich completely unacceptable. (Recently, there was a message making its rounds on Facebook in which the author suggested that because Gingrich was more articulate and better able to give a good speech that we should set aside his faults and elect him on that basis alone. Have we really slipped that far? That is reminiscent to me of the students who campaigned for Bill Clinton back in the ‘90s with the line “Character is not an issue!”).
In that most Americans are not wealthy and have felt the impact of the recent recession, the next leader of the American people should definitely not be party to making them the vassals of one-percenter business interests. That, by all accounts, rules out Mitt Romney, who would have business interests directly peddle their goods and services to children via commercial advertising on Sesame Street and would prevent workers from forming labor unions. It never ceases to amaze me that people of relatively modest means would get behind people without their economic interests at heart, and yet it seems to happen increasingly.
Finally, our next president should not be a bigot. Whether anyone likes it or not, America is a nation of many peoples, and intolerance for the ones that are not like oneself divides and weakens us as a country. So, even though the “young people” are rallying behind unapologetic demonstrated racist Ron Paul, that pretty much rules him out (and most of those young people are those smug little creeps who have not yet had the chance to experience much adversity in their lives and their numbers will wane as they come to the grim realization that most of us do).
In light of the above, the editors of Religion, Politics, and Sex, have decided to endorse Huntsman as the Republican candidate for president. His attitudes, frankly, are so undeniably more progressive and intelligent than those of any of his other GOP colleagues — and his portfolio and experience so clearly superior — that it is somewhat inexplicable and dispiriting that, far from being a frontrunner, he is trailing behind all of the other surviving candidates mentioned above. If there is one characteristic many of this election’s extreme and weird slate of Republican candidates have shown, however, it is a tendency to self-destruct. As there is nothing to suggest that Huntsman has this particular trait, we can hope that he might be the last man standing while his opponents implode and drop out amidst shame and scandal. And, if that happens, Americans who feel the need to vote a GOP party line or want an alternative to the current administration may actually be able to make a viable choice.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Follow Us on Facebook!
Religion, Sex, and Politics recently started a Facebook page to help promote what we are doing on this site and just met the criteria for an improved URL! You can now find us on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/Religion.Politics.Sex
Please be sure to click "Like" on that page to get updates on everything we are doing with this project.
Please also be sure to click "Follow" in the upper left corner of this site to keep track of everything that is happening on it.
And thanks to the all the readers who have shown their support already by Liking and Following these pages!
http://www.facebook.com/Religion.Politics.Sex
Please be sure to click "Like" on that page to get updates on everything we are doing with this project.
Please also be sure to click "Follow" in the upper left corner of this site to keep track of everything that is happening on it.
And thanks to the all the readers who have shown their support already by Liking and Following these pages!
Saturday, December 10, 2011
A Novel Lapse in Posting
One might well ask why there has been a lapse in posting to the Religion, Politics, and Sex site over the past two months, especially when one considers how much happened during that period. Among other things, former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's sex scandal broke, ballooned, and then disappeared -- along with his chances of being a contender for the White House in 2012. And yet, there has not been a word about it or anything else here, so it seemed appropriate to offer an explanation.
The short answer is "National Novel Writing Month," an annual creative writing project that challenges participants to write a 50,000 word story between November 1 and November 30 that I decided to participate in this year. So, hard on the heels of the book tour for my latest title, Texas Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in the Lone Star State, I spent a month striving to complete a readable fantasy novel -- and am pleased to report that I succeeded in doing so. Between weekly signing events around Texas in October and November and completing that novel, a lot slipped through the cracks in November, and staying on top of my obligations to this site was one of them.
Although I am the author or co-author of 10 non-fiction books, I have never really been keen on events like this one for a variety of reasons, but a number of things prompted me to accept the challenge of this most recent NaNoWriMo. A major incentive for me was that one of the eleven New Year's resolutions I made for 2011 was to finish a novel by the end of the year and, not being on track to do that, I figured that if I was not going to get one done by the end of November that I sure as hell was not going to get one done in December.
Swords of Kos: Necropolis is a swords-and-sorcery novel and, in that it does not cross over much into the issues covered on this site, I will not say any more about it other than it is on track for publication and that the first 10,000-or-so words of it appear on my NaNoWriMo page, for anyone who might be interested in reading it.
But, now that our projects are done and out of the way, the Religion, Politics, and Sex staff are back! And just in time for the upcoming national election ...
The short answer is "National Novel Writing Month," an annual creative writing project that challenges participants to write a 50,000 word story between November 1 and November 30 that I decided to participate in this year. So, hard on the heels of the book tour for my latest title, Texas Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in the Lone Star State, I spent a month striving to complete a readable fantasy novel -- and am pleased to report that I succeeded in doing so. Between weekly signing events around Texas in October and November and completing that novel, a lot slipped through the cracks in November, and staying on top of my obligations to this site was one of them.
Although I am the author or co-author of 10 non-fiction books, I have never really been keen on events like this one for a variety of reasons, but a number of things prompted me to accept the challenge of this most recent NaNoWriMo. A major incentive for me was that one of the eleven New Year's resolutions I made for 2011 was to finish a novel by the end of the year and, not being on track to do that, I figured that if I was not going to get one done by the end of November that I sure as hell was not going to get one done in December.
Swords of Kos: Necropolis is a swords-and-sorcery novel and, in that it does not cross over much into the issues covered on this site, I will not say any more about it other than it is on track for publication and that the first 10,000-or-so words of it appear on my NaNoWriMo page, for anyone who might be interested in reading it.
But, now that our projects are done and out of the way, the Religion, Politics, and Sex staff are back! And just in time for the upcoming national election ...
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Ben Stein Missing the Point of Occupy
Ho, ho, ho! Ben Stein is so funny! It is hard to understand how someone would not be forced to wipe away tears of mirth when they hear the deadpan comedian suggest, in his monotone nasal voice, that “Occupy” movement protesters should just take baths and get jobs (echoing the recent quips of fellow Washington, D.C., insider Newt Gingrich).
For reasons that are probably somewhat obscure to average television viewers, Stein has made attacking the Occupy movement his latest cause and, for reasons equally obscure, CNN has given him a regular platform for doing so. Both of them, however, have reasons that I think are fairly prima fascia: Stein wants to sell copies of his latest book, What Would Ben Stein Do? and CNN wants to be able to appeal to its more conservative viewers by allowing the Occupy movement to be criticized without actually having one of its regular talking heads take the hit for it.
But Stein’s dismissive comments about Occupy reveal him to be someone who is missing the point — whether deliberately because he is closing ranks with the Republican right or inadvertently because he has just gotten old and is out of touch. His main contention in recent comments has been about the methodology of the protestors and that they are not accomplishing anything with it.
“Banging on drums ain’t working,“ Stein said recently on CNN, a complaint he made at least a dozen times during a previous appearance on the news network (whether because he really dislikes drums or, like many geriatrics who repeat the same thing again and again, because he believes people will think it is cute).
Whether or not the protestors are accomplishing anything, however, is separate from and secondary to the main point, which is that tens of thousands of people nationwide have turned out to protest corporate greed and the general state of malaise that has descended upon America over the past decade in particular — and done so even though they are probably not going to achieve anything concrete. The fact that Occupy is happening at all is significant and worth paying attention to. (See the related coverage of the Occupy Houston activities on this site.)
Stein has also expressed a fundamental lack of knowledge about the economic conditions prevalent in the United States today, most strikingly in contentions meant to criticize the Occupy protest, which claims to represent the 99 percent of least affluent Americans.
“The 99 percent are working,” Stein claimed. The fact that the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent last month, however — the lowest it has been in two-and-a-half years, after exceeding 10 percent in late 2009 — disproves his contention. And those numbers only include people without jobs who are actively searching for fulltime work, and could probably be more than doubled by the inclusion of people who are underemployed or have given up on hopes of gainful employment in the foreseeable future (not to mention the people who are employed in jobs below their levels or outside their areas of expertise). Like many of his ilk, however, the rightwing pundit would prefer to claim that people are out of work simply because they are lazy.
“There is dignity in labor and I wish people would realize that,” Stein said recently on CNN, suggesting that the unemployed seek work at fast food restaurants and in the retail industry. Unfortunately, that is all just a theory to Stein, who has never done anything approaching actual “labor.”
So just what has Stein done and who the hell is he anyway? His most well-known claim to fame is certainly as playing a high school teacher in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and more recently as a game show host and flack on Clear Eyes eye drops commercials.
What is less well known is that Stein was a speechwriter for Richard M. Nixon during that president’s ill-fated administration — in short, he is a product of the most quantifiably corrupt presidential administration of the modern era and his opinions should be considered in that context. Along with his boss and colleagues, Stein had to watch those damn dirty hippies be a nuisance by protesting the Vietnam War. Those protesters, of course, were only motivated by moral outrage against an immoral war and most of them could have just sold out and gone mainstream if they wanted to — as compared to the sheer desperation and fear of the many Occupy protestors who wish they were working normal jobs and that they could have the things average people once took for granted in America.
Interestingly, Stein has also managed to get digs in against the Tea Party during his rants against the Occupy protestors, which would suggest that he uniformly dislikes any sort of non-traditional political movements. This is certainly a rare stance these days among both rightwing pundits and Republican presidential candidates, most of whom try to dance around the most rabid TP sentiments in an effort to pander simultaneously to them and more mainstream voters. This would suggest that Stein is at least sincere in his points of view and not just taking a party line, as so many conservative talking heads seem inclined to do.
Stein’s sincerity, of course, does not make him right about the significance of the Occupy movement—it just makes him seem mean spirited and confused.
But Stein’s dismissive comments about Occupy reveal him to be someone who is missing the point — whether deliberately because he is closing ranks with the Republican right or inadvertently because he has just gotten old and is out of touch. His main contention in recent comments has been about the methodology of the protestors and that they are not accomplishing anything with it.
Whether or not the protestors are accomplishing anything, however, is separate from and secondary to the main point, which is that tens of thousands of people nationwide have turned out to protest corporate greed and the general state of malaise that has descended upon America over the past decade in particular — and done so even though they are probably not going to achieve anything concrete. The fact that Occupy is happening at all is significant and worth paying attention to. (See the related coverage of the Occupy Houston activities on this site.)
Stein has also expressed a fundamental lack of knowledge about the economic conditions prevalent in the United States today, most strikingly in contentions meant to criticize the Occupy protest, which claims to represent the 99 percent of least affluent Americans.
“The 99 percent are working,” Stein claimed. The fact that the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent last month, however — the lowest it has been in two-and-a-half years, after exceeding 10 percent in late 2009 — disproves his contention. And those numbers only include people without jobs who are actively searching for fulltime work, and could probably be more than doubled by the inclusion of people who are underemployed or have given up on hopes of gainful employment in the foreseeable future (not to mention the people who are employed in jobs below their levels or outside their areas of expertise). Like many of his ilk, however, the rightwing pundit would prefer to claim that people are out of work simply because they are lazy.
“There is dignity in labor and I wish people would realize that,” Stein said recently on CNN, suggesting that the unemployed seek work at fast food restaurants and in the retail industry. Unfortunately, that is all just a theory to Stein, who has never done anything approaching actual “labor.”
So just what has Stein done and who the hell is he anyway? His most well-known claim to fame is certainly as playing a high school teacher in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and more recently as a game show host and flack on Clear Eyes eye drops commercials.
What is less well known is that Stein was a speechwriter for Richard M. Nixon during that president’s ill-fated administration — in short, he is a product of the most quantifiably corrupt presidential administration of the modern era and his opinions should be considered in that context. Along with his boss and colleagues, Stein had to watch those damn dirty hippies be a nuisance by protesting the Vietnam War. Those protesters, of course, were only motivated by moral outrage against an immoral war and most of them could have just sold out and gone mainstream if they wanted to — as compared to the sheer desperation and fear of the many Occupy protestors who wish they were working normal jobs and that they could have the things average people once took for granted in America.
Interestingly, Stein has also managed to get digs in against the Tea Party during his rants against the Occupy protestors, which would suggest that he uniformly dislikes any sort of non-traditional political movements. This is certainly a rare stance these days among both rightwing pundits and Republican presidential candidates, most of whom try to dance around the most rabid TP sentiments in an effort to pander simultaneously to them and more mainstream voters. This would suggest that Stein is at least sincere in his points of view and not just taking a party line, as so many conservative talking heads seem inclined to do.
Stein’s sincerity, of course, does not make him right about the significance of the Occupy movement—it just makes him seem mean spirited and confused.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
A Union by Any Other Name, Part 2
Picking up from where I left off, this installment looks at the development of what became the modern organizations we recognize as unions and corporations. The most recent political struggles of the past thirty years are not covered here because of the length of this entry and the complexity of the issues that have been conflated with the debate of the role each plays in the economic structure of modern society.
Trade Unions
While there is no direct links to guilds due to laws that banned labor organizations for upwards of 500 years in some places, as in England. That said, enough similarities exist to suggest that the modern unions are rooted in the guilds of old. How so, you may ask? Like trade unions, guilds served to protect their members and the knowledge of their craft. In part, this last point was in lieu of legal protections that find modern analogues in various laws for patents, trade secrets, product identity, and so forth.
By controlling what amounts to instructional capital (now mainly held in the hands of private schools and their public institute counterparts), the guilds not only held job security, but also the insurance manifest in the power bound in their protected crafts and the need of access by those not privy to such services offered by their respective guilds. Guilds were as much a vocational school as they were organizations designed to protect their members’ interests. Maintaining secrecy meant that guilds could limit or prevent a client’s exploitation of its members. In effect, it let the guild shield its members from the aristocracy’s power.
So, what happened to them? In part, technology helped in their undoing. Mostly, they were legislated out of existence for being too much of an obstacle either to someone else’s power, or their own bureaucratic system that made them financial burdens, depending on who you ask. They didn’t completely disappear, however. The word “guild” comes from the German “Guilde,” which applied only to merchant organizations. “Gilden,” the plural form of the word, dealt in money. “Gilden” was the Saxon word “to pay” and helps explain phrases like “the gilded hand.”
Despite laws which eventually broke the guilds, not all of them disappeared outright. Some of them changed forms. Merchants had their own guilds, after all. The breaking of the guilds decoupled labor from its performers. It not only sent the knowledge to the universities (predominantly in the hands of the church at the time), but also the means of production into the hands of those who owned the devices and commodities of production. Thus the standardization of production meant the technology and location fell to those with the capacity to acquire the resources necessary to control and supply goods.
Modern unions arose with the Industrial Revolution. By this time, laborers had no claim to their work. The work done was paid with wages, but the value of the service performed was greater than the compensation. In part this was due to the fact that, despite schooling, laborers were unskilled. The improve work conditions, wages, and job security (including protection from an employer’s whims), workers began to unionize in the nineteenth century. No longer the one-stop shop of the guild system, a modern union works to control the conditions of labor and access to it to prevent exploitation. Unions work to protect jobs, but this can also result in negative views of the unions.
The early strikes of modern unions resulted in a great deal of violence that has colored the perception of these groups. The tactic was, and still is, used to prevent exploitation via unfair labor extraction of union members. Beyond ensuring a workers is considered skilled enough to be a journeyman (meaning such individuals can move from one work site to another and is treated as a skilled practitioner), the ability to strike or call for one as a bargaining chip to force factory owners to the negotiation table. As such, the modern union has some of the tools of the guilds, but not their clout. One doesn’t need to look at the recent developments in Wisconsin with Scott Walker’s union stripping bill. The clashes with the Pinkertons and factory workers marked the struggle to unionize and set the tone for American unions.
The “us vs. them” mentality has been a part of the American psyche since the nation’s inception. Americans have always been xenophobic because of the invasive policies of the British Crown. While some will gladly point out that the Revolution was over a 3% tax, this is a red herring. It’s what that fee (and other taxes) represented; or rather, what they didn’t grant in terms of representation. Like modern unions, the colonists were looking for a place at the table to prevent any exploitation via the Crown’s wealth extraction of the colonies. Being denied that, both sides ramped up the pressure and antagonism until only violence would lead to any changes. As a result, a system of antagonistic forces was inculcated in the fabric of American culture along with a deep-seated xenophobia. It carried over to the struggles between factory owners and laborers, which led to the violence during the factory strikes of early unionization.
Corporations
The earliest recorded company charter in Europe dates back to the fourteenth century, not coincidentally around the same time that guilds were being outlawed; discounting those of the Roman Empire that is. The purpose of a company is to minimize the risk to any one person. Perhaps not so curious is the fact that merchants did this in their own line of work. Look at the array of goods available to a consumer in any one given store. That example of so many different products in one location serves to show how companies work. If one product fails, the store doesn’t suffer. The varied inventory makes up for the loss of any one line.
As corporations are all about providing services at a cost, the image of the merchant serves well here; so further examination is warranted. As merchants operate stores, a bit needs to be done to understand what that means. Depending on how far back one goes, say mid-thirteenth century, the word refers to goods kept on a premises, such as food, fuel, clothing and so forth. It is in this context Americans use the word for a merchant’s place of business. The building and the goods/services offered are the merchant’s stores. What a merchant does, then, is provide the service of compiling goods in one location. This has fundamentally remained unchanged for the profession throughout its many iterations.
When a company is formed, the partners have to invest it with capital from their personal reserves, or stores, if one wants to extend the metaphor. The more partners, the less risk (and reward) to those involved in the venture. But companies cannot merely spring up out of nowhere. So the corporate charter from the 1300s is pretty important. Not only does it establish the legal precedent that marks business formation, but it also recognizes and regulates the proposed corporation. Short of a monarchy owning stock in the company’s business, the charter is designed to preserve the power of the crown while allowing those forming the company to have an exclusive grant to use the company to their mutual advantage. The question is where the funds come from to start the enterprise.
Now, any student of history can confirm that money in the fourteenth century was predominantly concentrated in the hands of the aristocracy and/or nobility of any given country. Laborers and the like from the lowest social strata surely couldn’t afford to establish a business. When the guilds were dissolved, this left the merchant class and nobles with the means to form a company that extended beyond selling their labor as services. Corporations are understandably modeled on merchants as the purpose of a corporation is to provide a service to their clients and shareholders. The people who provide the labor make it possible for corporations to do this at a profit, which will be discussed later.
What one should take away from the above point is that the merchants didn’t just disappear when their guild did. It is a good bet they didn’t lose their accumulated wealth, either. Some began to channel it into newer ventures. With their acumen in diversification, merchants knew how to minimize risk. Anyone who doubts as much should read the works of Adam Smith and Daniel Defoe. While not the oldest treatises for the transition and development of what would become the corporate model, these writers show the mentality that informs capitalist and corporate theory. Granted, some of this has fallen out of favor, but that does not negate the importance such work has in how corporations have developed and continue to affect modern economic theories and practices. Comparisons to the South Sea Bubble and the recent economic crises are a good indicator to the accuracy for this argument.
Where do factories fit into this system? For one, all those unskilled laborers had to go somewhere. With the collapse of cottage industry with its piecemeal work in favor of standardization and automation that improved output at the cost of skilled labor. As the primary site of production, the factory owners were applying technology to an old economic model: feudalism. Replacing farming and other duties of the serfs tied to the land system that was the site of labor extraction with the factory changed the relationship to finished goods the peasants formerly enjoyed. Like corporations, the factories lacked the means to provide the services they promised without employing others to perform the services on the company’s behalf.
Merchants had the money and knowledge to set up new ways to give clients services previously more cost intensive than what clients wanted to spend time doing themselves. This extended to activities people were unaware of that they needed someone else to help them accomplish. Advertising helps get the word out in regards to this last point. By having groups of people who not only can do the work needed to provide the service, the corporation divides the labor any one person performs. Like any other merchant, the corporation doesn’t make the good or service, it provides the conduit for customers to purchase a physical object or access to the commodity. Readers are free to speculate where this places venture capitalists and investment firms, but it should suggest itself.
In the next installment, how these seemingly divergent paths aren’t so different after all.
Trade Unions
While there is no direct links to guilds due to laws that banned labor organizations for upwards of 500 years in some places, as in England. That said, enough similarities exist to suggest that the modern unions are rooted in the guilds of old. How so, you may ask? Like trade unions, guilds served to protect their members and the knowledge of their craft. In part, this last point was in lieu of legal protections that find modern analogues in various laws for patents, trade secrets, product identity, and so forth.
By controlling what amounts to instructional capital (now mainly held in the hands of private schools and their public institute counterparts), the guilds not only held job security, but also the insurance manifest in the power bound in their protected crafts and the need of access by those not privy to such services offered by their respective guilds. Guilds were as much a vocational school as they were organizations designed to protect their members’ interests. Maintaining secrecy meant that guilds could limit or prevent a client’s exploitation of its members. In effect, it let the guild shield its members from the aristocracy’s power.
So, what happened to them? In part, technology helped in their undoing. Mostly, they were legislated out of existence for being too much of an obstacle either to someone else’s power, or their own bureaucratic system that made them financial burdens, depending on who you ask. They didn’t completely disappear, however. The word “guild” comes from the German “Guilde,” which applied only to merchant organizations. “Gilden,” the plural form of the word, dealt in money. “Gilden” was the Saxon word “to pay” and helps explain phrases like “the gilded hand.”
Despite laws which eventually broke the guilds, not all of them disappeared outright. Some of them changed forms. Merchants had their own guilds, after all. The breaking of the guilds decoupled labor from its performers. It not only sent the knowledge to the universities (predominantly in the hands of the church at the time), but also the means of production into the hands of those who owned the devices and commodities of production. Thus the standardization of production meant the technology and location fell to those with the capacity to acquire the resources necessary to control and supply goods.
Modern unions arose with the Industrial Revolution. By this time, laborers had no claim to their work. The work done was paid with wages, but the value of the service performed was greater than the compensation. In part this was due to the fact that, despite schooling, laborers were unskilled. The improve work conditions, wages, and job security (including protection from an employer’s whims), workers began to unionize in the nineteenth century. No longer the one-stop shop of the guild system, a modern union works to control the conditions of labor and access to it to prevent exploitation. Unions work to protect jobs, but this can also result in negative views of the unions.
The early strikes of modern unions resulted in a great deal of violence that has colored the perception of these groups. The tactic was, and still is, used to prevent exploitation via unfair labor extraction of union members. Beyond ensuring a workers is considered skilled enough to be a journeyman (meaning such individuals can move from one work site to another and is treated as a skilled practitioner), the ability to strike or call for one as a bargaining chip to force factory owners to the negotiation table. As such, the modern union has some of the tools of the guilds, but not their clout. One doesn’t need to look at the recent developments in Wisconsin with Scott Walker’s union stripping bill. The clashes with the Pinkertons and factory workers marked the struggle to unionize and set the tone for American unions.
The “us vs. them” mentality has been a part of the American psyche since the nation’s inception. Americans have always been xenophobic because of the invasive policies of the British Crown. While some will gladly point out that the Revolution was over a 3% tax, this is a red herring. It’s what that fee (and other taxes) represented; or rather, what they didn’t grant in terms of representation. Like modern unions, the colonists were looking for a place at the table to prevent any exploitation via the Crown’s wealth extraction of the colonies. Being denied that, both sides ramped up the pressure and antagonism until only violence would lead to any changes. As a result, a system of antagonistic forces was inculcated in the fabric of American culture along with a deep-seated xenophobia. It carried over to the struggles between factory owners and laborers, which led to the violence during the factory strikes of early unionization.
Corporations
The earliest recorded company charter in Europe dates back to the fourteenth century, not coincidentally around the same time that guilds were being outlawed; discounting those of the Roman Empire that is. The purpose of a company is to minimize the risk to any one person. Perhaps not so curious is the fact that merchants did this in their own line of work. Look at the array of goods available to a consumer in any one given store. That example of so many different products in one location serves to show how companies work. If one product fails, the store doesn’t suffer. The varied inventory makes up for the loss of any one line.
As corporations are all about providing services at a cost, the image of the merchant serves well here; so further examination is warranted. As merchants operate stores, a bit needs to be done to understand what that means. Depending on how far back one goes, say mid-thirteenth century, the word refers to goods kept on a premises, such as food, fuel, clothing and so forth. It is in this context Americans use the word for a merchant’s place of business. The building and the goods/services offered are the merchant’s stores. What a merchant does, then, is provide the service of compiling goods in one location. This has fundamentally remained unchanged for the profession throughout its many iterations.
When a company is formed, the partners have to invest it with capital from their personal reserves, or stores, if one wants to extend the metaphor. The more partners, the less risk (and reward) to those involved in the venture. But companies cannot merely spring up out of nowhere. So the corporate charter from the 1300s is pretty important. Not only does it establish the legal precedent that marks business formation, but it also recognizes and regulates the proposed corporation. Short of a monarchy owning stock in the company’s business, the charter is designed to preserve the power of the crown while allowing those forming the company to have an exclusive grant to use the company to their mutual advantage. The question is where the funds come from to start the enterprise.
Now, any student of history can confirm that money in the fourteenth century was predominantly concentrated in the hands of the aristocracy and/or nobility of any given country. Laborers and the like from the lowest social strata surely couldn’t afford to establish a business. When the guilds were dissolved, this left the merchant class and nobles with the means to form a company that extended beyond selling their labor as services. Corporations are understandably modeled on merchants as the purpose of a corporation is to provide a service to their clients and shareholders. The people who provide the labor make it possible for corporations to do this at a profit, which will be discussed later.
What one should take away from the above point is that the merchants didn’t just disappear when their guild did. It is a good bet they didn’t lose their accumulated wealth, either. Some began to channel it into newer ventures. With their acumen in diversification, merchants knew how to minimize risk. Anyone who doubts as much should read the works of Adam Smith and Daniel Defoe. While not the oldest treatises for the transition and development of what would become the corporate model, these writers show the mentality that informs capitalist and corporate theory. Granted, some of this has fallen out of favor, but that does not negate the importance such work has in how corporations have developed and continue to affect modern economic theories and practices. Comparisons to the South Sea Bubble and the recent economic crises are a good indicator to the accuracy for this argument.
Where do factories fit into this system? For one, all those unskilled laborers had to go somewhere. With the collapse of cottage industry with its piecemeal work in favor of standardization and automation that improved output at the cost of skilled labor. As the primary site of production, the factory owners were applying technology to an old economic model: feudalism. Replacing farming and other duties of the serfs tied to the land system that was the site of labor extraction with the factory changed the relationship to finished goods the peasants formerly enjoyed. Like corporations, the factories lacked the means to provide the services they promised without employing others to perform the services on the company’s behalf.
Merchants had the money and knowledge to set up new ways to give clients services previously more cost intensive than what clients wanted to spend time doing themselves. This extended to activities people were unaware of that they needed someone else to help them accomplish. Advertising helps get the word out in regards to this last point. By having groups of people who not only can do the work needed to provide the service, the corporation divides the labor any one person performs. Like any other merchant, the corporation doesn’t make the good or service, it provides the conduit for customers to purchase a physical object or access to the commodity. Readers are free to speculate where this places venture capitalists and investment firms, but it should suggest itself.
In the next installment, how these seemingly divergent paths aren’t so different after all.
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