Podcast Episode 10: The Occupy Movement

Photo Credit: Jen Palacio 2011

On this episode of the There is No Spoon show, we discuss the Occupy movement, which has spread from Occupy Wall Street to hundreds of towns and cities across the United States and the world in the past 1.5 months. Topics include: our own experiences with Occupy, police brutality at the protests, the movement's messages, macro and micro level impacts, and discussions about the movement's next steps. Hosted by Fouad Pervez, the No Spoon team of Joe Soler, Reggie Miller, Junaid Ahmad (joining us from Lahore), and Shahid Buttar (joining us from Oakland on the night of extreme police violence) welcome guests Al Butler and Annabel Park to the episode. Al is the host of the "Al B! in the Afternoon" radio talk show on WURD in Philadelphia, and Annabel is a founder and coordinator of the Coffee Party, an alternative to the Tea Party.

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The greatest casualty of 9/11: The America we knew

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.


Reflections on the 9/11 attacks are important and moving. But most overlook the enduring legacy of the attacks, in the form of the vastly greater damage done to American principles over the past decade. Whether in the context of surveillance, torture, or the congressional cowardice that has enabled them, our leaders have sullied the legacy of an America that once inspired the world.

Earlier this summer, when facing a crucial accountability moment for an agency that continues to abuse the rights of millions of Americans, members of Congress asked no tough questions, avoided controversy, and submitted to a White House proposal to entrench the FBI leadership—at the same time as they fought to the knuckles over issues that Congress created in the first place by spending the country into a fiscal black hole and absurdly cutting taxes in the midst of multiple wars.

Most astounding in all this is Congress's apparent abandonment of its own institutional interests. Even in the face of documented lies by the FBI's leadership to congressional committees and repeated proof that Congress, the press, and the public are hearing only tiny slices of the whole truth, Congress has failed to use its many tools to seek transparency and investigate executive abuses.

This is what Democratization in the Middle East Looks Like - with Caveats

Wait a second...I though Arabs and Muslims and the Middle East region in general couldn't really handle democracy? That something about their culture explained that these people needed strong man running their states, not (real) popular electoral contests and a representative system of government. Well, I am shocked to see what is happening in the streets of Cairo right now. I am a bit surprised about what has happened in Tunisia, what is starting up in Yemen. Actually, I am a little alarmed by the level of repression used by the Mubarak regime in Egypt to try and silence the political dissent when it is clear the whole world is watching. But in terms of what is happening in the streets, this moment has been building for a long time. And no, Arabs, Muslims, and people in the Middle East are not predisposed to authoritarian rule. That's just the system that's been forced on them by force by some of their own elites and great powers abroad.

DISCLOSE Act Passes the House, Now on to the Senate

The DISCLOSE Act has passed a major hurdle tonight as the House of Representatives passed the major reforms to campaign finance law with a final vote of 219 to 206 in favor. Unfortunately, however, only two Republicans -- Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) and Joseph Cao (R-La.) -- had the gonads to cross party lines, which is likely an indication of the party line treatment the bill will get once it reaches the Senate. Of course the irony there is that the legislation was introduced by the Senate and not the House.

On April 29th of last year, democrats launched the DISCLOSE Act, a bill intended to soften the powerful effect of the Citizens United ruling, which relaxed campaign advertising rules for corporations, unions, and other companies. The ramifications of the Supreme Court ruling has been widely covered, so I will not go into detail here, but you should absolutely search the Net for information about the case if you are not familiar with it, as it stands to change everything about the way we are governed, live, work, and vote. The influence of money on politics in this country is astounding already, but the Citizens United ruling removes all boundaries, essentially making it so that there really is no limit to what money can buy.
If the DISCLOSE Act were to be passed by the Senate,

Restoring the Fourth Amendment: How We the People Can Win Over Washington

Despite promises of change, the Obama administration has proven itself either unwilling—or unable—to shift the paradigm driving increasingly invasive surveillance, or increasingly pervasive profiling according to race, religion, and national origin. Nearly halfway through the Obama administration's term, the battle to banish the Bush administration's policy legacy remains largely unfought, let alone won.

But this is no time for progressive and libertarian constitutionalists to throw in the political towel. While "change you can believe in" may have been a premature promise from our president, we at the grassroots enjoy ample opportunities to shift the landscape in DC.

Whether concerned by government spying, or the guilt by association apparent in profiling Latinos, African Americans, and Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians for various so-called "signature crimes," limits on local law enforcement authorities offer the potential to galvanize solidarity among communities of color. Measures restricting domestic intelligence operations can also attract the support of libertarians—including some elements of the Tea Party—disaffected by the Washington consensus favoring expanding executive power.

Real Estate in China vs. the United States: How Two Giants Spar (Part I)

This is part 1 of a multi-part post (probably 3), in which I will discuss the very different roles real-estate has played traditionally in both China and the United States. I will later discuss the global impact of what appears to be a severely overheated real-estate market in China and how the binary stop-go control system of China’s communist leadership is largely incapable (even less so than the US government) of effectively dealing with this segment of its economy, which unlike many other segments that are directly controlled by the State, is much more difficult to manage from a central location. I posit that, as China continues to take on the semblance of a fully capitalist system, with a rapidly growing middle-class modeled after the US economy, they are inevitably going to face a conundrum: to protect their new, thriving, economy by adopting more democratic principles of government; or protect their present form of government at the very large cost of their impressive economic progress, whereby to reestablish totalitarian control over the people, they will inevitably be forced to squash the new found visceral freedoms of its burgeoning middle class. I will argue that the myopic nature of a centrally managed system of government makes it nearly impossible to gauge the ripple effects (and the echoes of those ripples) of an economy as large and widespread as China’s. More importantly to the rest of the world, I will also make the case that the lack of understanding of property rights on the part of the Chinese government threatens not only that particular economy but all others that do substantial business with them (i.e. the entire world). Most of us are familiar with the the expression: "If the U.S. economy sneezes, the the rest of the world catches a cold." Well, for better or worse, there is a new germ in town and the medicine to deal with that germ is not well-known. China does not do things like the United States, and lest we all get too eager to welcome another giant into the room to compete with the current alpha male, it might serve us well to remember that the style of government in the United States is integrally connected to a powerful set of checks and balances that simply do not exist in China. Moreover, China's publicly stated desire to build a middle-class by allowing private ownership of real-estate is not only at odds with the central tenets of communism but also, more specifically, with the enduring power of the Communist Party in China. Nonetheless, to address such an important topic with such a wide brush does the subject no justice, and so I will focus this post and those that follow on the significance of real-estate in both countries and economies and how the development of both may effect us all moving forward.

Before we delve into the intricacies of the changing real-estate landscape in China, it will serve readers well to become familiar with or review the inner workings of the real-estate in the United States. The reason for focusing first on the US real-estate market (which comprises roughly 12% of GDP in the world's largest economy) is three-fold: first, China has recently attempted to adopt (at least in principle) the real-estate-based economic model of the United States (and Japan) without implementing property taxes (which might change in the very near to intermediate future); secondly, because unlike the multi-faceted control system of the U.S. and Japan, China’s centralized, top-down, stop-go system is unsuitable for effectively reaching and slowing all parts of their country's economy with equanimity; and lastly, because, while China seems to be trying to emulate the United States in the way of growing a large middle-class through real-estate ownership, China does not seem to fully realize that the real-estate market in the United States functions (cough-cough) as well as it does largely in part because the US is run via democracy.

Although much of what I am purporting is theoretical in nature and likely will not work itself out in the real-world for many years, it is nonetheless worth considering the possible ramifications of a country adopting an economic system from another country whose political governance is not only contra-stance to its own, but is indelibly linked to a history of oppression and harsh rule and law changes. The United States, for all of its ails, was conceived through hundreds of years of subtle, evolving, organic and natural "progress" that is inextricably tied to the democratic constitution that makes all of its citizens equal in a way that is not possible in communist China. A government that is truly of the people can only be modified in a significant way by the people and through an extremely resistant process (consider, for example, Byrd Rule), whereas with a totalitarian regime, he who giveth can taketh away. For better or worse, these facts leave those who invest in real-estate in the United States and those with similar investments in China with very different levels of risk. The individuals governing China seem to want the best of both worlds for themselves without reconciling that to get the “best of both worlds” they must relinquish some of their control and establish a system that more or less runs itself. For capitalism to work, every individual that belongs to the relevant society must believe that they not only have the ability to achieve capital appreciation, but that the appreciated capital is safe from confiscation and government interference. (*Side note to readers questioning the assertions being made here regarding variant liberties of the US vs. China: this post will not even be accessible from Chinese IP addresses--indeed, a few months back when Google stopped filtering its results in mainland China, we at nospoonblog.com learned that, like most uncensored content on the web, our blog was (is now again) blocked. In fact, it was impossible not to know it was blocked since, on the day Google announced it had stopped filtering results, the traffic on our blog--specifically for FB's post on Tiananmen Square--increased by a whopping 520% in one day, and then abruptly returned to our average once Google announced that they had been forced to resume filtering and were pulling out of the country.)

I suspect we will see a lot of discontinuity in policymaking over the next few years, especially in the Western World, amid lots of panicking and last ditch efforts to save the world from financial Armageddon II. Meanwhile, during the same time-period, Beijing has grown increasingly worried--and rightfully so--about signs of overheating, and after trying unsuccessfully to pare growth carefully, it has given up the scalpel and brought out the sledgehammer.
This is very significant, because private property in China is a very new concept and it is growing into a very significant portion of China's economy. To underestimate the significant unknowns involved in a country/culture that is thousands of years in the making, is a grave mistake. Indeed, the history of financial cycles itself has changed dramatically during the past 200 years. During this relatively short time period economists have begun to think of the ups and subsequent downs as part of the same process (as opposed to viewing them as emergent consequences of external shocks, such as war or famine). For those interested in learning more about modern thinking on the subject, the Luwig Von Mises Insitute has an excellent article on the business cycle in general and how the subordinate cycle of credit expansion and contraction effects it. This is super relevant to the subject of this post because the birth and growth of the United States, and of its private real estate sector, largely coincides with the inflection point that marks the changing views of the financial cycle. One of the first published acknowledgements of credit cycles in relation to their impact on the greater economy was the 1838 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana where under Credit it states: “The history of every industrious and commercial community, under a stable government, will present successive alternate periods of credit and distrust, following each other with a good deal of regularity.” Clearly this is true in the United States, but we are witnessing more and more evidence that a similar ebb and flow is beginning to make its way east with China experiencing its own periods of credit lust followed by distrust. The two key differences being 1) the fluid complexity of the U.S. political and economic system incorporates self-governing checks and balances that do not exist in China, which allows the US economy to be a living, organic creature that is not so much controlled, but rather guided; 2) due to the self-governing aspects of the US system it is very difficult (though not impossible) to successfully blame a single governing body, institution, or other entity for the ails that may result from the credit contractions that inevitably occur.

I fear that the financial high that many involved in China's economy are experiencing will soon reach a level of intoxication too powerful for those same individuals to feel the ground beneath their feet. Indeed, the credit boom that has been building in China during the past decade is looking more like a tsunami than anything we've seen in the U.S. Some might ask, "who cares? What does that have to do with us?" It has everything to do with all of us. Long gone are the days when nations effect only their own economy and perhaps their most proximate neighbors. Globalism is no longer a buzzword: It is real, it is powerful, and it is here to stay. We need only look at the domino-effect that the small country of Greece (with a GDP of $356 Billion) is having on Europe and the rest of the world to begin to see the potentially catastrophic ramifications of the world's third largest economy (China with a GDP of $4.3 Trillion) slowing or expanding "too rapidly," a phrase whose meaning in relation to China we do not really have the tools to measure. We are in unchartered waters regarding the intricate interconnectedness of global economies. Meanwhile, the rules, laws, and politics of these countries do not have the equivalent international reach as do their economies, which in turn creates an intriguing albeit awkward intimacy. Thus far, such a relationship, with both countries' inextricably connected mutual interests, seem to be inspiring diplomacy and stability. Still, it is important to note that although some economic ties have been strained during the past several years due to the global financial mess through which we currently find ourselves muddling, we have not witnessed (and hopefully never will!) a situation where a political leader of either country has attempted to dictate or mandate policies or laws of the other directly.

... that concludes Part 1. Part II of this post will focus almost entirely on the very particular nature of property rights in the United States. For those who cannot wait, I urge you to pick up a copy of James W. Ely, Jr.'s thoughtful book on the topic The Guardian of Every other Right: a Constitutional History of Property Rights.

Plutocracy, Complacency, and Taxes

I am growing ever more fearful of the plutocracy that is ravaging the spirit of my country and the pride of my people. Much like a cancer that has quietly metastasized undetected for so long that even chemotherapy is an unfeasible option (perhaps a lack of health insurance prevented preventative check-ups—God forbid they pay out of pocket in time to learn they cannot afford to pay for treatment!), I believe the governing system of America is so inflicted and full, not so much of corruption (although that is also true), as much as incoherent and therefore unenforceable rules and regulations, that it will inevitably implode and take the country--if not the world--with it. (Please note, as someone who has experienced the horror of watching a loved one succumb to cancer that went undetected until it reached stage-4, I am aware of the implications of this analogy.)

The intensity of economic inequality that has swept America and enslaved the ethos of its people is such that I no longer believe that a gradual structural revamping of the system is possible; the only way out of this mess is to hit the reset button or wait for nature to do it for us. What, exactly, it means to “hit the reset button” is surely a question worthy of significant attention and discussion, but suffice it for the purposes of this blog entry to say that some kind of major and immediate structural change—regulatory or not—resulting in a major redistribution of a significant portion of the wealth of the top 5% of Americans to the remaining 95% is necessary or we are doomed to suffer a civil war, another third world war, or both.

Before I enter into an endless filibuster with those who think they represent (or some day will)—and therefore feel the need to defend—the top 5%, permit me a few more moments of your time. First off, by the laws of probability, you most likely do not and never will represent the top 5%. Truly, one of the greatest illusions propagated by American plutocracy during the past 50 years, is the Reaganomatic three-class system. Apart from the fact that “upper class” sounds oh so much better than “rich” and “lower class” better than poor (albeit still a denigrating term), the fact of the matter is that socially, economically, and thus residentially, American society is divided and subdivided so completely and thoroughly that one can hardly maintain candid awareness of their place within it. I believe many individuals actually prefer it this way; as it is more palatable to trade away our consciousness than to accept that within the context of the actual, far more variegated, stratosphere in which we exist, the majority of us are really pretty damn far from the top, not “2nd best”, as our acceptance of “middle class” status would have us believe or even “upper-middle class.” There is plenty written on this subject so I defer to the Ackerman’s of the world for those that want to isolate discussion to Reaganomics. As for me, I am passed that as I think it is more pertinent to note that the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 23 years in the year 2000 and has been maintained at such a level for 9 years. The group's share of the tax burden has risen, but only because its share of income has risen faster. This painful fact is only possible because over the past hundred years this group has had their taxes gradually lowered from 70% in the 1920’s to the current rate of 35% (I’m ignoring of course the Eisenhower time period in which they had a 90% tax rate because of the need to fund the war). [More on this topic can be found at: www.heritage.org as well as the IRS's income-statistics website.] The compounding impact of the increased wealth of the top 1% (you can use 5% if you prefer) creates an increasingly unfair playing field as these extremely wealthy individuals are provided with much lower risk opportunities to multiply their free and available money that unlike the “middle class” is not being tied up by liabilities connected to basic necessities. Yet, our regulators have not only accommodated the wealthy (forget for a moment that many of them belong to this privileged group), they have actually made it exponentially easier to compound their wealth.

It is important to note here that the word “wealth” is often confused with “income.” As noted in Wikipedia: “These two terms describe different but related things. Wealth consists of those items of economic value that an individual owns, while income is an inflow of items of economic value. The relation between wealth, income, and expenses is:

change of wealth = income − expenses

A common mistake made by people embarking on a research project to determine the distribution of wealth is to use statistical data of income to describe the distribution of wealth. The distribution of income is substantially different from the distribution of wealth. According to the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, "the world distribution of wealth is much more unequal than that of income.

Two important points need to be extracted and highlighted here: first, the wealthy do not grow wealth-y by spending their money, they do so by hording it or by having such a disproportionately large income compared to that of the rest of the individuals in society that they cannot spend it all without gratuitous effort; second, the more wealth an individual has sitting in appreciating assets, especially those that pay dividends, the more powerful the compounding effect of such wealth becomes, allowing such an individual to take from the economy without producing an equivalent worth of production.

Thus, without voluntarily giving back, or being compelled to give back (via taxes for instance) an amount of that money proportional to the amount of energy that created it, the said wealthy person is essentially sucking net value and currency flow from the economy, thus defeating the two purposes of using a currency system in lieu of a bartering system, which was intended to facilitate the transfer of value (and individuals net production to society) over space and time. Does that mean that we should get rid of interest rates and capitalism? Absolutely not! I have a retirement account and I completely agree that those who have the prudence and gumption to endure short-term pain for long-term gain (my definition of “investing”) should be rewarded. What that individual is giving up (and it is not merely the unit value of the money, but the comforts that such money could have provided) allows for multiplied production. At some point, however, an individual’s wealth is so great that he endures no pain whatsoever, and hence could not possibly buy any further reasonable comforts, yet he is rewarded as if he has given up an incredible amount for the good of society.

Apart from forcing the wealthy individual to give back, what else can be done to return balance to the economy? We could cut expenses. Certainly excessive and unnecessary public spending should be avoided as it ultimately causes the same concern as the previously described super wealthy individual, the money controlled by the government is granted to them under the pretense that if combined it will be able to provide a quality of life enhancement that in general is greater than the pain caused by taking it from the individuals for whom it belonged.

I can already hear someone in the back of the room yelling, that’s exactly why the wealthiest 5% should not have to pay their money into the pot since they do not utilize public resources. Such a skewed perspective is how we got to this point to begin with. Lloyd Blankfein may never need to use the Metrorail system, but 95% of the persons that are somehow connected to the success of the company he runs do (think pension funds) and will continue to depend on public investment. Out of sight out of mind, I guess.

We live in a society in which everyone is convinced of two seemingly connected but really very separate things: one can achieve anything in this world if one wants it badly enough; and the wealth that one has is the result of one's hard work--hence, you’ve earned it. One does not magically result in the other, especially when one thinks of, say, Paris Hilton. Such ideologies allow the wealthy to feel like they are entitled to the disproportionately easy living they have and the un-wealthy believe that the energy they are transferring to the wealthy is just part of the due-diligence process at the end of which they will some day enjoy the benefits of a role reversal. The misdirection lies in the fact that very, very, seldom, if ever, will roles actually be reversed. Sure, it is quite likely that our un-wealthy worker will one day meet another hardworking individual with even less wealth than he, but that does not mean that roles have been reversed. The flow of real wealth, the flow of real power and of economic value in America is for the most part unidirectional and exponential. Furthermore, since it is customary to inherit one’s family wealth, it is not at all obligatory for an individual to produce their wealth’s worth of production.

Continued denial of the state of disequilibrium in our country will only bring us to an ever more painful inevitability. What happens when the masses stop believing? Worse, what happens when those who stop believing begin to mobilize? A friend of mine recently told me that he does not believe in recessions, that they are merely the result of people resting on their laurels after a period of time in which things came to easy. He went on to say how he was at Target and was waiting in line for so long (because there weren't enough employees) that he just put his stuff down and left. He said, on the way out he saw a "we're hiring sign" on the door and continued with a smugness that made me question if he was the same person I played t-ball with as a kid 25 years ago. All I could think to say to him was "the other possibility is that the cost of living has increased so quickly relative to wages that in the end it's not worth working at all." He was disgusted with my response, and as someone who has held multiple simultaneous jobs for most of my life, I wasn't sure I believed the words coming out of my own mouth. Then my 23-year old brother called me to tell me he had quit his job because after subtracting the cost of commute (two hours a day), taxes, and other basic job-related expenses he was working for $4.90 an hour. How can anyone believe in the "American Dream" when they work their ass off for $4.90/hr during one of the worst recessions in history while the front page of the newspaper reads: Goldman Sachs’ profit and remuneration soars?

This is What "Democracy" Looks Like

So, like many of you, I said lots of words when I heard about Joe (fun fact - Stalin was also a Joe - coincidence??? I kid, I kid) Lieberman playing the role of Vito Corleone in this health care reform saga. I used phrases comedians would find offensive. I think I even made up a few new profanities. What can I say, I have many talents. Anyway, point being, the Obama administration pushed generally-spineless Harry Reid to kowtow (Obama kowtows like it's going out of style) to Lieberman and scrap the Medicare buy-in from the bill, which was already a substitute for the public option, which was a self-imposed compromise from Obama (love that hope, baby) away from a broader push for universal coverage or at least some regional-based private system that could maximize economies of scale and competition to get us the best coverage for the most people at the lowest cost. None of this is exactly shocking. Joe Lieberman is, well, a lot of words I won't write here. But none of them are good. And Obama is doing what I thought he would all along, except people seem to be more content with letting him do so than I had hoped. But this is bigger than health care. What the Lieberman affair speaks to is, very simply, the heart of democracy in America today.

What do I mean by that? Simple. Lieberman was always going to push hard against any progressive health care reform. Not just because he's an ass - he is. Not just because he despises the left and wants to stick it to them - he does. Not because his soul is composed of arsenic and sulfuric acid - it is. (Okay...you got me...it isn't. Or I should say, I don't know that it isn't. Prove me wrong!) Take all of that away. You could argue against any of those points with some success. There's still one that is far more important than the others - unless Lieberman is, of course, the earthly version of El Diablo, which might be slightly worse. (Again, I kid. But seriously...can you prove he's not? Provide me the proof!) Joe Lieberman runs for office. In order to run for office, Joe Lieberman needs to get loot. Lots of it. It cost almost $6 million to win a Senate seat in 2008. The amount of TV ads, and the rising price of said ads, is part of the reason spending has increased. You know, the 7 ads you see over the course of one episode of Lost in October/November telling you candidate John Smith is actually a terrorist, kills babies himself, or will drop nuclear weapons on every country whose leaders so much as looks at him the wrong way. Ah, nostalgia.

So, Joe Lieberman needs to raise a lot of money in Connecticut. He probably doesn't have to raise that much most of the time, though. There is lots of research looking at entrenchment...so, once you get elected, you're much more likely to stay in office. Not only that, but Lieberman hasn't really faced too many serious challengers. Ned Lamont was, of course, an exception, and forced Lieberman to run as an independent/de-facto Republican to win his current term. But, he wants to have the money on hand because it's always good to have money on hand in politics. He wants to obliterate whoever his competition is with TV ads. He wants to outspend his rivals by a lot just to make sure he stays in office. So, he wants lots of money, both hard (from individuals) and soft (from PACs, etc.). Thus, he, like many of his colleagues in Congress, spend a hell of a lot of time fundraising, as opposed to, I don't know, governance. You can't raise millions of dollars that quickly, especially because their are limits on how much donors can give. Thus, it takes time to build up your treasure chest.

Now, who does Joe Lieberman get money from? A lot of sources. But he gets a lot from the health care industry. This includes pharmaceutical companies, the American Medical Association, etc. In other words, organizations that stand to lose a lot if any large-scale health care reform gets through. Lieberman gets a decent amount of money from them. Over his career, he ranks 10th among sitting senators in terms of industry contributions. This amounts to over $1 million - he ranked second in the Senate in contributions from the health insurance industry during his re-election campaign in 2006. Connecticut also happens to be home to a lot of big health insurance companies. Over 22,000 jobs in the state are directly in the health insurance industry. This is obviously problematic. This doesn't account for the loopholes, either. One way Congressional leaders get around campaign finance rules is by having the industry pay their spouses a lot of money through jobs and speaking gigs. Now, if they are highly qualified people for these positions, I get it. If they're not, you're basically filtering money to the candidate through a huge loophole. Lieberman has been getting slammed about this lately, as his wife pockets quite a lot of money from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries...several hundred thousand/year for, essentially, photo-ops. And that's after they actually got cleaner about it. So, yeah, lots of money. And the results seem to follow eerily well. Lieberman's flip flop on the Medicare buy-in came after the insurance industry slammed it.

Some argue that Lieberman's about-face has more to do with ideology - Lieberman did this to oppose the progressive left, something his comments do suggest. Maybe. But what's he going to say? The guys who bankroll me decided it wasn't good, so I did their bidding? At least the anti-liberal argument wins him some points among conservative democrats and Republicans. The admission of following the money could piss everyone off.

So, yeah, let's put the pitchforks down for a second and stop frothing about Lieberman. I hate his guts more than most of you. But his killing the already-compromised Medicare buy-in was almost a given. It's the last fact that's really got me boiling. It was almost a given. The industry owns him. He directly benefits from their avoiding any real competition (since, as I've noted before, health insurance companies resemble oligopolies in America) through universal coverage, regional plans, a public option, or even a Medicare buy-in. Good business for them is good business for him. He's not alone. This industry spends a lot of money in lobbying Congressional leaders, both legally, and through the loopholes. It doesn't matter that most Americans want real reform - too many of their leaders get their marching orders from the health insurance companies. This is the real story in the Lieberman affair.

It extends well beyond health care, obviously. Look at any major industry in the United States and the amount of money they spend lobbying Congressional leaders. It is disgusting. Now, they like to give money to everyone (as it would be politically stupid to only give to one party), so they sometimes do donate to leaders who won't vote their cause. However, a lot do. The revolving door makes it even worse, as people move regularly from the industry, to regulating the industry, to the industry. Something just stinks here. And, of course, these companies have huge swaths of money, which make it hard for people to challenge them in the competition for Congress.

This isn't a left/right issue. It isn't even an anti-corporation issue. It's a democracy issue. If we want to have a strong democracy, the fact that Washington is owned by, and serves, corporations and industries, is a real problem. Look, it's in these companies' interests to lobby. It only makes sense for them to do so. The issue is, we don't check them on it. What we get are policies that are often bad for the majority of Americans, bad for the country in the long-run, but good for industries. We know they're problematic before they even get implemented, but they happen, anyway. Health care is a good example. We badly need to slow down the growth of health care spending, for the sake of our economy in the long-run. However, to do so, we need to implement some major overhauls of the system. Are we doing that? No. In fact, some of the best ways to lower costs in the long-run, like the public option, have already been dropped from the bill.

We can debate the specifics about many of these issues all day and night. And, so long as its on the actual facts, that's a good thing. But when the debate gets hijacked by companies, we have a serious problem, for both liberals and conservatives, and those of us who refuse to be categorized as either of those. When our government no longer works for us, but rather for companies who do not necessarily share our long-term interests, we need to bum rush the show. I don't even blame the industries themselves - it's in their interests to do this. The problem is when we let this kind of thing happen.

Democracy is a very precious thing. It came with a lot of blood, a lot of struggle, and a lot of pain. It is not something we can ever take for granted. The age of Obama is, I think, a scary time, though not because he's a Kenyan Muslim baby-killing gay-loving socialist-capitalist terrorist. It's about issues like democracy itself. I fear that people are becoming complacent, just because he's in power (at least on the left). Contrary to what he says, he is just a politician. His game is to stay in power, just like Joe Lieberman and others. Just because he's in power and there are Democratic majorities in Congress does not mean things are going to go well.

If you haven't seen it, there was a fantastic documentary on this past weekend, The People Speak, which should remind everyone that the things we value the most are the things we must fight for the most, at all times. That means, even with this supposedly liberal administration, that doesn't mean things will change. We have to hold our leaders accountable at all times. The way health care reform has unraveled over the past few months is a prime example. It has become one concession after another. Many say, trust Obama, he's looking out for us on this, it'll be fine. I say, do you know anything about American history? Yes, there will obviously be differences between an Obama administration and a Bush administration (though fewer than you'd think), but this one problem, illustrated by the Lieberman affair, that Washington serves industry over the populace, will remain with us unless we are willing to confront it. It's bad news for all of us, too, from the left and the right. That sacred pledge made hundreds of years ago, to have a government for the people, by the people, is at stake. Obama isn't looking out for us, people. We are looking out for us. We cannot go silent about this, we cannot wait to see how things play out. We need to act in whatever ways we can. In Voices of a People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove give use examples of the power of both the big and little guy/gal who stood up for democracy, freedom, and justice, throughout American history. What has happened in health care reform is indicative of what has happened in a number of other issues, and shows just how fragile our democracy is. Today, democracy, it don't look so good in America. We mustn't wait for our leadership to turn the tide and bring us back to some utopian state. We must put pressure on them ourselves. The great advances in American history only came after great pressure and struggle from Americans who saw wrong and gave everything to right it. We must follow the footsteps of those who came before us, and fight for that democracy. Let's start with health care reform.

p.s. - this has little to do with partisanship. People on the right should be angry about this trend as much as those on the left. While I think Democrats are definitely better than today's brand of Republican, they take a lot of money and allow their corporate interests to override the interests of their constituents and their country a lot, too. A website which has provided a lot of information about who's paying who (although it gets harder when we get to the loopholes, like jobs for wives discussed above) is opensecrets, which is run by the Center for Responsive Politics. Check it out!