'Tis the Season for Noblesse-Obliging

That most blessed season of heartwarming rags-to-riches Hallmark and Lifetime specials is upon us once again. The same moralizing plots are foisted upon us year after year. One favorite is the debunked conservative prosperity gospel, in which the poor mom working three jobs is rewarded for her toil with a millionaire hubby from Santa. The other is the Scrooge legend, in which the millionaire boss fires everybody, they suffer, he notices in the nick of time, and he hires them back with a one-time bonus and a one-time-only party in the mansion.

Looking at this year's line-up, I think I'll skip "A Nanny for Christmas" which appears to be lifted straight from the unctuous "The Help" script. We really need another story seen through the lens of the witchy workaholic who finally recognizes that her overqualified babysitter is not only intelligent but a human being with a heart, and thus for about ten minutes racism and classism are overcome forever and ever Amen.  

It's also the special season when the exalted New York Times deigns to notice how the other half lives. While most of the coverage of the poors is geared toward affluent paying readers who may not have a clue, and the paper has gotten some well-deserved criticism for its dearth of poverty coverage this year, there are signs of improvement. To her credit, the Gray Lady Bountiful seems to be going well beyond her traditional Neediest Cases charity series and actually featuring front-page stories about poor people and covering the recent labor actions by minimum wage retail and fast food workers. Whether this is a mere seasonal fluke, or whether this trend continues into January remains to be seen.

 Meanwhile, the unemployed and underemployed cracking the Times paywall are faced with the same old "it's the time of year to reflect on those less fortunate than oneself" bromides by what many consider to be the paper's most liberal columnist, who ends his latest effort with the usual heavy sigh of "of course, raising the minimum wage to an insulting $10 an hour is politically impossible" in this fraught climate, etc, etc.

But do not despair, Other Half. Because this is the season of CNN Heroes, advertised as a "star-studded" extravaganza even as it purports to celebrate the marginalized.  This show is in the genre of the traditional holiday Sugar Crumbs propaganda, in which the rich and famous assuage the guilt of possessing obscene wealth by showing up in their designer duds to give us the warm glowy pleasure of watching the lesser people grovel before them. It's a combination of the Cinderella legend and a beauty contest.You go to the ball, compete with other paragons of virtue for the grand cash prize, and then it's back to rags and pumpkins and selfless toil.

This show was preceded last night by another holiday standard: other people's misery, sugar-coated. In "To Heaven and Back" CNN  cashes in on the current heaven craze by showcasing near-death experiences. The moral of these stories is that we should feel better about sickness and death because going toward the light is a totally awesome experience. There was one particularly vile segment about a woman whose cancer miraculously went away when she saw the Light and she finally realized that getting sick was her own fault. I strongly urge you to avoid this show like the plague. It is guaranteed to destroy your joy and make you feel guilty for daring to complain about any personal pain you may be experiencing.

 It's the season of a deluge of celebrity emails in which "Madonna has graciously allowed us to use her name in our LGBT human rights in Russia appeal" and Beyoncé gushes "I don't usually write to you, but," and politicians from our 9% approval rating Congress demand payment based solely upon the other side being worse than they are. Don't like food stamp cuts? Incensed about the mean people trashing Obamacare? Send Senator X a donation and he'll see what he can do. And click that "Send the Republicans a message!" petition link at your own risk. Because I don't have to tell you that these people always share your name most generously within their own fund-raising cohort.

It's the very short season when those same politicians jostle for position in the PR campaign of empathizing with regular people. This year, the go-to scene is the encampment of fasting immigration reformers on the National Mall. (It always helps when protest movements tie in ever so nicely with your own legacy legislation, geared toward increased militarization of the border and attracting more international low-wage labor to our shores.)

And lest you're worried that the rich don't do enough to celebrate each other, you'll be pleased to know that based on the feat of producing twins herself and being a "parent role model supporting women giving birth to healthy babies after full-term pregnancies," Jennifer Lopez will be receiving the Grace Kelly Award from the March of Dimes at a star-studded luncheon in Beverly Hills this coming Friday.

Hey, it's only December 2. We've got a whole month of noblesse oblige yet to stomach. So stay tuned, and keep the antacids handy.

Meanwhile, in keeping with the theme du jour, here are some comments I posted to the Gray Lady over the long holiday weekend. First, to Charles Blow's excellent personal piece on how it really feels to be marginalized. (some readers accused him of pivoting at the end to that odious "personal responsibility" mantra so beloved of conservatives, but I didn't read it that way at all. His point is that working hard against all odds is a worthy goal in and of itself.):

You nailed it, Mr. Blow. This constant attack on the poor by the plutocrats and the right wing politicians controlled by them is finally becoming the subject of a counter-attack... in this column, in progressive blogs, in labor protests against big box gulags, in the refusal of Seattle machinists to accede to Boeing, in a group of passengers who walked off an airplane in solidarity with a blind man bumped from the flight because his service dog interfered with corporate decorum. Oh, and let's not forget Pope Francis's epic put-down of the capitalist Masters of the Universe and their sadistic crusade against the human race.

The MOTU have constructed for our climbing pleasure more of a mountain than a hill. There are hordes of zombie propagandists and deficit scolds at every pass, who'd sooner throw us off one of their many manufactured cliffs than look at us. And when we talk about reaching the promised land, let's not strive for the same tippy-top inhabited by the Forbes 400. The struggle should not be to join them, but to beat them. We must build a new society based on humanitarianism, not consumerism.

In the words of Orwell: " Until they become conscious they will never rebel. And until they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

So please keep writing columns like this one. While your words may not penetrate the alleged consciences of the Beltway elites, I think you just raised the consciousness of more than a few incipient rebels out here in the real world.

And Nick Kristof, widely admired for his niche beat coverage of third world poverty and human rights violations, proclaims himself mystified that people have turned on him for writing about abuses closer to home -- for noticing that America is a banana republic too, and how shocking it is that readers of his columns are actually castigating their fellow human beings for the "character flaw" of being poor. My response:

Six major media corporations control 90% of what is broadcast in the USA. And all we hear is that the country is going broke, that we can't afford a safety net, and we have a Nanny state culture of dependency.

Instead of hearing the truth that the 400 richest Americans have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million combined, and that the plutocrats are largely sociopaths who'd just as soon the rest of us disappear, we are assaulted with propaganda that pits the middle class against the poor, the middle class against immigrants, the younger middle class against the older middle class, and ad infinitum.

Then, around this time of year, these same billionaires ooze faux empathy and get themselves photographed at soup kitchens. Pete Peterson, who has already spent half a billion of his multibillion-dollar fortune in an effort to slash Social Security, had the nerve to go on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago to brag about his philanthropy. Walmart, whose heirs own as much wealth as 30% of the American population, but whose workers are so poorly paid that they are on food stamps and Medicaid, is spending a fortune on TV ads showcasing their happy workers.... who then have the nerve to go on strike when they're forced to work on Thanksgiving!

And so, when you write about the poor, you get pushback from people who simply can't believe that a 20% poverty rate in the richest country on earth is the direct result of sadistic policies dictated to our elected officials by the obscenely rich.

Fifty Shades of Greed

 Since so many retail behemoths are starting their traditional Black Friday sales a day early to get a leg up on the competition, what once was a shocking anomaly is now the new normal. Somebody even suggested that we do away with the whole Norman Rockwell feel-good theme, and rename Thanksgiving "Gray Thursday."

What sacrilege. It has the traditionalists seeing red while the retailers see the ever-dwindling green of the American consumer. Of course, this uniquely American holiday has long been devolving from that whole mythical over the river and through the woods scene. Because let's face it. Grandma either lives in a condo (Charlie Brown's), a nursing home owned by a lawsuit-immune consortium of Wall Street investors,  or in your basement because Wall Street wiped out her retirement account. Thanksgiving.... er, Gray Thursday, is more about the getting over on the traffic jams and through the parking lots in search of the latest piece of cheap Chinese electronics.  With underpaid workers and equally desperate consumers congregating en masse in Big Box Empire, a few purists are noticing that besides the War on Christmas so long bemoaned by Sarah Palin and the rest of the Fox gang, there's now a War on Thanksgiving too!

Remember that religious campaign to "Put Christ Back in Christmas" and stop the heresy of calling it Xmas? Well, we need to put the "Thanks" back in Giving, too. Because tragically, Thanksgiving has turned into Yanksgrabbing.  Oh come all ye faithful descendants of the Mayflower and let us restore the true meaning of the holiday! 

 

And it's not only noxious retail that is ruining Thanksgiving. The Obama administration wants you to become an unpaid salesperson for the predatory health insurance industry and talk your friends and relatives into buying health care "product" as they attempt to enjoy their food. They even supply you with a disgusting sales brochure to bring to the table. It's enough to make you hurl your pumpkin pie and go shopping at Walmart.

It goes without saying that we should boycott Walmart in solidarity with the striking workers, who seem to be finally getting under the skin of the loathsome Walton billionaires. Because they just got rid of their $11,000-an-hour CEO, and the National Labor Relations Board is bringing them to court for illegally retaliating against last year's Yanksgrabbing walkout. And have you seen their recent spate of greed-washing TV commercials, using associates to tell you how much they love working in Walmartisan? Apparently, you can get $40-a-month health insurance to supplement your Medicaid. I would hazard a guess that this junk insurance is good only for discounts on Walmart pharmacy purchases, or to partially pay for eye exams and glasses in Walmart's in-house optometry booth, or for flu shots and blood pressure checks from a moonlighting paramedic in one of those SuperCenter walk-in clinics. This is just a cynical guess on my part, mind you. Tell me if I'm wrong, and I will personally apologize to Sam Walton's ghost.


Meanwhile, the ThinkProgress War Room has put together a handy War on Thanksgiving guide for your hating and boycotting pleasure. I am not hopeful, though, that the American masses will Just Say No to Gray Thursday, Black Friday, Shoddy Saturday or even Cyber Monday. We can look forward to injuries or even death by Doorbuster. There will be at least one pepper-spraying incident over the last half-price Xbox. The scenes of desperate shoppers will be indistinguishable from scenes of desperate refugees in far-flung lands.

 

 

 

 Winston Smith, hero of George Orwell's 1984, mused that "if there is hope, it lies in the proles."

 

But in a scene that presages the Yanksgrabbing holiday extravaganza, he is quickly disabused of the notion that scarcity and poverty translate into social activism.  If only the oppressed masses "would rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies," the Party might be defeated from without.

 

Instead, one day when Smith is walking around the neighborhood and he hears a group of people wailing, it turns out to be a mob of hundreds, in despair not because of want and repression, but because there are only one or two cheap saucepans left in a bargain bin. Their faces are "as tragic as if they had been doomed passengers on a sinking ship."

 

What would happen, he asks, if all that raw human power translated into fighting over something that really mattered? "Until they become conscious they will never rebel," Smith writes in his journal. " And until they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." 

 

Fast forward to 2013, and the crowds are still fighting for the wrong things. And it's even more Orwellian than Orwell, because  those coveted "smart TVs" will be spying on the lucky consumers who out-stampeded their fellow shoppers to own one just in time for Xmas. (h/t Fred Drumlevitch.)  As Yves Smith over at Naked Capitalism puts it in her regular Links feature, Big Brother Is Watching You Watch. Even if you turn off the TV's digital collection mechanism, it will continue transmitting information and data on your viewing habits. So watch what you watch. (Or do what I do with Netflix, which does share your viewing habits. Tune in to stuff you hate, mute the sound, and go to sleep while Big Brother confusedly calculates all your hopes and dreams. In my case, it's a marathon of Deadly Women  interspersed with a binge of Extreme Couponing and a few old episodes of My Little Pony.)

 

On that cheery note.... Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! And joyful Hanukkah too.

 

Democracy Hypocrisy

The easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our laws. And what I’m proposing is the harder path, which is to use our democratic processes to achieve the same goal that you want to achieve — but it won’t be as easy as just shouting. It requires us lobbying and getting it done. -- Barack Obama, 11/25/2013, explaining to a heckler why his immigration dragnet and record number of deportations will continue unabated under his watch.

Okey dokey. So, Barack, either you weren't paying attention when Richard Nixon announced that "when the president does it, it's not illegal" or you're just making excuses again, scapegoating Congress when gridlock serves your purposes all too well. And please explain how your weasel-worded sanctimony on the rule of law squares with what your henchman Eric Holder told the nation last year about you and your extra-legal Kill List. (parentheses mine):

Let me be clear: an operation (the president says is) using lethal force in a foreign country, targeted against (anybody) a U.S. citizen who (we say) is a senior operational leader of al Qaeda or associated forces, and who (Obama proclaims) is actively engaged in planning to kill Americans, would be lawful at least in the following circumstances: First, (a politician and his minions) the U.S. government has determined, after a ( boys' club Terror Tuesday meeting) thorough and careful review, that the (fuzzy images seen from computer screens afar, of people we don't know) individual poses an (opportunity to use our military might and hardware) imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; second, capture is not (as easy as the path of droning) feasible; and third, the operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with (whatever we say at any given moment) applicable law of war principles. (our Orwellian definitions.)

And about that rule of law --  the shadow government known as the National Security Agency has dispensed entirely with the verbal gymnastics and stopped pretending that the law even applies to them. That whole Constitution thing? Whether it gets in Obama's way, or whether it gets their way, there is just no stopping them. From the recently-leaked Surveillance State Manifesto:

For SIGENT (the State) to be optimally effective, legal process and policy authorities must be as adaptive and dynamic as the technological and operational advances we seek to exploit. Nevertheless, the culture of compliance, which has allowed the American people  to entrust NSA with extraordinary authorities, will not be compromised in the face of so many demands, even as we aggressively pursue legal authorities.

They want your info and your data. They want everything from everybody. Anywhere, any time, anyhow. They want it all. And they want it now. And the Department of Cultural Compliance assures that they're getting it.

 

When Barack Obama mentioned his "pursuit of the harder path" at his immigration speech, he was once again confirming that the rule of law applies only when its purpose is to suppress and control ordinary people. Obama always uses the "hard" word when it comes to inflicting pain on regular people, have you noticed? When he wants to cut Social Security and proceed with austerity for the masses, for example, he's making those "hard choices" on our behalf.

And if the law won't do the trick, the law will be ignored. He admitted that money ("lobbying") trumps the voice of the people ("yelling out") Extraordinary people --  plutocrats, and the politicians and bureaucrats operating in their interests -- get extraordinary treatment. When generals lie, it's not perjury. When Wall Street financiers rob the country blind, they pay their paltry fines with more bailout money robbed from the same people they already victimized. And when presidents do whatever the hell they want, it's never illegal. Because their extraordinary successors will always give them cover.

Rush Limbaugh, Liberal Trailblazer

An economist from UMass-Amherst (that storied home of austerity debunking) posits that the latest right wing conspiracy theory may be having the serendipitous effect of giving Single Payer health care a much-needed shot of adrenaline.

Writes Nancy Folbre in today's New York Times Economix blog:

Rush Limbaugh’s take on the disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act could, ironically, warm the hearts of those at the other end of the political spectrum. He contends that President Obama knew all along that the Affordable Care Act would crash and burn, but pushed it through so that the conflagration would clear the way for single-payer health insurance.

I sincerely doubt that any mythical Obamian eleven-dimensional chess tactics played into the backroom deals he forged with Big Pharma and Big Insurance, sweeping the public option right off the table. But if the latest right wing paranoia is having a positive effect, who am I to deny the prez his undeserved credit should the ACA prove to be naught but a noxious designer gateway drug to true Single Payer nirvana?

In his column today, Paul Krugman points to the relative success of the Obamacare rollout in California, home of Governor Moonbeam and a solid Democratic legislature. Krugman contends that this bodes well for the eventual success of the kludge nationally. But my response is more along the lines of Dr. Folbre's thinking:

If the botched rollout of the ACA proves anything, it's that public-private partnerships are deals made in free-market hell. Corporations whose motives are profits over people have shown that they can't be trusted with either our wallets or our well-being. Let the problems with a law that is essentially a mass giveaway to predatory private insurance be the death knell of neoliberalism.

But let us also rejoice that John Boehner is now the proud owner of an ACA policy himself. Kinda puts the kibosh on their whole government-is-the-problem canard, doesn't it? Even a few GOP governors appear to be tiring of their roles as Scrooges for refusing to cover their most vulnerable citizens under expanded Medicaid. The political reality is that even sadists have their limits when their own jobs are at stake.

And speaking of success stories -- what about Vermont? Having just announced plans to cover 100% of its citizens under true single payer by 2017, this is the real state to emulate. People will be green with envy when they look at the Green Mountain State and notice the plummeting medical costs and great service and democracy in action.

A website is the least of it. Because even had it worked perfectly from Day One, some 30 million people were still going to be left out of any coverage at all. And that is unacceptable.

 Medicare for All would save $592 billion in the first year alone, as well as millions of lives. So what are we waiting for? Single payer, here we come!

And, to clarify once again, the "Medicare for All" bill now mouldering in the House is not the same thing as Medicare As Usual without the age discrimination. It does away entirely with the whole for-profit wasteful way in which American health care is currently delivered. Unlike current Medicare, there are no co-pays and no premiums. Everything except elective cosmetic surgery will be covered.

Vermont, meanwhile, is leading the way in un-Americanism with the notion that health care is a right and not a privilege. Already, 91% of the state's population has health insurance, and none of its hospitals operates for profit. A true sense of community, and the idea that government's task is doing the greatest good for the greatest number.... multiply it by 50, and we might get ourselves a functioning democracy if we're not real careful.

November 22, 1963

It's not a cliché to say that if you were above the age of reason 50 years ago on this day, you remember with a preternatural clarity where you were and what you were doing the moment you got the news that John F. Kennedy was dead.

I was in my seventh grade art class at Assumption School in Westport, CT making a collage out of construction paper when Sister Superior of the Order of Notre Dame announced over the loudspeaker in her inimitable Boston accent that the president had been shot and killed.  

Here are some links:

Art Buchwald's memorial poem.

Michael Winerip of the New York Times on a reunion of Kennedy's honor guard and body bearers.

A sampler of Kennedy's speeches.

Kennedy and Obama and the March of Folly by Alexander Cockburn.

Nukie Kabuki

Kaboom!

The United States Senate just went all radical and decided to experiment with majority rule, toying with the concept of democracy for a change. Awesome.

Mind you, the filibuster reform only pertains to Obama's judicial (non-Supreme) and executive appointments. Super-majorities will still be required for such goodies as extending unemployment insurance, background checks for gun purchases, restoring food stamp cuts and other stuff benefiting ordinary people. Don't get me wrong -- the federal judiciary was getting top heavy with ultra-right wingers willing to yank the last rotting incisor out of the toothless Dodd-Frank act, so it is of utmost importance for some pro-business centrists to get their chance as well.

Today's action will also, for example, allow the nomination of  Mel Watt to head Fannie and Freddie to go forward. Watt represents Charlotte, NC, home of Wall Street of the South.  Bank of America, foreclosure fraudster extraordinaire, was one of Watt's top campaign contributors in 2012. When Obama nominated Watt to be housing watchdog this year, the contributions suddenly dried up. Optics, you think? Watt's former chief of staff now lobbies for Goldman Sachs. And when  disgraced JC Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon showed up to defend himself on the Whale Fail scandal before his financial services committee, Watts conveniently found something better to do that day, and never asked Dimon a single question.

When the magical pixie dust settles after Harry Reid's ballyhooed nuclear explosion, I have a feeling that the Senate landscape will have survived relatively unscathed.

Update: The dust is settling as the giddiness subsides. See this. Gridlock in the financial interests of the plutocracy shall continue unabated.

And as if to make that point, the president made a statement in the aftermath of the vote, making it plain that the filibuster reform would be narrowly limited to his Constitutionally-mandated appointments, and not be used to pass things people actually want -- like single payer health care.

He has yet to find a cure for his chronic obfuscation. There was this piece of nonsense:

Now, I want to be clear the Senate has actually done some good bipartisan work this year. Bipartisan majorities have passed common- sense legislation to fix our broken immigration system and upgrade our courts -- our ports. It's passed a farm bill that helps rural communities and vulnerable Americans. It passed legislation that would protect Americans from being fired based on their sexual orientation.

The Democrat-led Senate actually passed a farm bill that cut an unconscionable $4 billion from the food stamp program over the next decade, on top of the expiration of $5 billion in stimulus funds allocated to the program in the wake of the financial collapse. So for Obama to glibly fib that vulnerable Americans are being helped by losing an average of a week's worth of meals is a testament both to his own sociopathy and to the complicity of the corporate-owned mass media.

The only story they and the "progressive" veal pen are spinning is that Give Em Hell Harry Reid finally grew a pair, and so now the Republicans are out in force with their castration gear.

Hard Times in Walmartistan

The only thing more amazing than Walmart holding a Thanksgiving food drive for its indigent employees is the fact that they're even allowing one to be held at all.  Because according to one Walmart propaganda flack,"we provide good jobs and unparalleled opportunities for our associates!"

These matchless opportunities include an average hourly wage of $8.80, even after many years of toiling away at the giant retailer. Other opportunities include the ability to get food stamp assistance and Medicaid on the taxpayer dime, while the Walton family continues to amass its own unparalleled wealth. You've heard all the disgusting stats by now: the six Walton billionaires possess as much wealth as the bottom 42% of all Americans combined. They're so rich that they craft their own legislation at both the state and federal levels in order to avoid paying taxes on any of it. Their tax liability is actually in the minus category, given all the corporate welfare they rake in.

So naturally, the Thanksgiving season is an unparalleled opportunity for poor workers to experience the joy of spreading the penury. The Waltons themselves are not believed to be participating.

The Thanksgiving food drive is necessary because the average food stamp recipient is now losing a week's worth of meals due to recent cutbacks in the SNAP program. This means the average Walmart employee is probably feeling hunger pangs right this very minute, having just spent her entire month's SNAP allotment. Store execs are probably worried they'll be fainting at the registers, the thumps of falling human bodies muting the merry ka-chings in the checkout lines. And if pickings are slim this week, they'll be nonexistent next week, when Norman Rockwell legend has it that every family in America will gather together at their bountiful tables.

And for those less fortunate, not to worry: rich people and celebrities will jump into the fray for photo-ops of themselves "giving back" to poor people at Thanksgiving soup kitchens. Assuming they're not working the Turkey Day Walmart shift.

You'll never see a Walton even pretending to love the poor. They've made their careers on cheapness and hatred for working people. The clan's patriarch, Sam Walton, made paying less than minimum wage his business model when he first started the chain.

Last spring, when Walmart experienced less-than-stellar sales because even their own employees can't afford to buy their crap any more, their execs came up with a novel idea. Why not enlist volunteer shoppers to deliver packages to their internet  customers? No pay, of course -- just a voucher for discounts at some later date. The idea never got off the ground. Apparently there were liability issues, since volunteers were expected to use their own cars.

And speaking of cars and liability.... when heiress Alice Walton struck and killed a farmer's wife many years ago with her Porsche, she never offered the survivors any compensation beyond what her insurance paid, plus $2,500 for funeral expenses. She was also never charged, despite being allegedly drunk. You can read Alice's whole sordid history here.

Meanwhile, the National Labor Relations Board is reportedly planning to sue Walmart for retaliating against workers who spoke out or walked out for being forced  to work last Thanksgiving. Negotiations for a settlement are ongoing.

There's been quite an uproar in the media recently over Walmart's plans to start its Black Friday sales even earlier this year, on Thanksgiving Eve itself. But as CJR's Ryan Chittum points out, what they're missing is that Walmart has always been open on Thanksgiving, tearing workers away from their family dinners. The only day they close is Christmas. For the time being anyway.

Always the purveyor of worker oppression and cheap imports. Always.
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