nadinabbott

[nadinabbott]

[nadinabbott]

Now that I have time to paint...the pox walkers are coming along nicely.

[nadinabbott]

THE COMING DEMOCRATIC WAVE: A MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR PARTY CHANGE

There is anger in the country. The election of Doug Jones to the United States in arterial red Alabama points to this. Granted, Judge Roy Moore was likely the worst candidate fielded by Republicans since Donald J.Trump. However, unless you have been sleeping under a rock, Trump is currently President of the United States and Moore lost by a stadium’s worth of voters. Still, we are talking arterial, well oxygenated, the buckle of the Bible Belt, Alabama.

There are other indicators of this. Democrats lead in the generic Democrat poll. Meaning, Republicans are not favored in 2018. 1 then there is Virginia. Democrat Ralph Northam Won the governorship. Ed Guillespie should have done well, but he did not. This was a surprise that broke a long-standing pattern in Virginia elections when power tends to go back and forth. 2

Most importantly, the House of Delegates is tied. It will come down to chance. The last race is literally tied. 3The electoral map in both Virginia and Alabama betrays some of the stories. It was, like the 2016 election, a story of urban vs rural voters. But it was also a suburban revolt. Many of Trump voters were found in suburban areas of the interior of the country. Trump won that vote and working-class whites in places like Wisconsin. A year later a similar group of voters rejected the G.O.P. 4

So many political observers are now declaring a Democratic wave in the making. There are more reasons for that. Americans are not happy with Republican policies. They see the rejection of net neutrality, the tax cut and the repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act as those favoring the extremely well to do. Moreover, the president has such low polling that he has yet to break out of his true base. Nor does he seem to care.

How Is This a Missed Opportunity?

This should be a moment for the other party to offer a vision. They are not. They are running on a platform of we are running against Trump and Republicans. They seem to be imitating Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who famously said they were going to make Barack Obama a one-term President. This seems to be the goal for Democrats.

This lack of vision is a problem and could diminish the size of the wave. It is also the problem Republicans had in 2010. They ran against the Affordable Care Act, but once they got into power it was a mystery what they were going to do that was positive. That said, they knew they wanted to capture the tiger, and were willing to do anything to do that. However, once they got it by the tail the only thing they could do was oppose all Democrats, and chiefly Obama wanted.

That was not a positive governing philosophy, and now that they have captured both the White House and the Hill they have been pretty ineffective as a governing group. Granted, they managed to pass a tax cut that will blow up the deficit to the tune of $1.5 trillion dollars and incidentally will lead to austerity in all areas of life, including Social Security and Medicare. Republicans might be close to achieving their goal of destroying the New Deal, which they have pursued for 70 years.

In a way, paralyzed Neoliberal Democrats are the best allies in this that Republicans could have. They are running on we oppose what Republicans are doing. Fine, we get it. What are Democrats running for?

Over the last year, Democrats have spent a lot of time in the Russia intervention in American politics. We all know the Russians did it. That is not a political platform. It is a legal matter, it should be pursued, and the Special Counsel should doggedly go where the evidence takes him. However, that does not make a governing platform.

Defending the New Deal has been more something Democrats say they do and less something they actually do. This has been the case for years. Partly, there is no belief among many leading upper tier Democrats in the safety net, as weak as it is. It is part of the Democratic myth, but not truly the reality.

Workers rights are in a similar plight. Democrats in Congress might claim they want workers to organize, and to fight for a livable wage. However, actions have spoken louder than words. These range from the failure to repeal Taft Hartley, passed in 1947 by a Republican House and Senate, 5 to the failure to enact card check, never carried out. It was a campaign promise by Senator Barack Obama. As president, he became silent on the matter. 6

So what are Democrats in the modern day stand for? The issues were released partially in the DNC autopsy. The document itself is damning. 7 It speaks to a few facts that Democrats in leadership are having an issue with. This from the executive summary should offer some starting points for useful discussion:

We are emphasizing the populism section for a reason. These are:

• The Democratic Party’s claims of fighting for “working families” have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people. “Democrats will not win if they continue to bring a work knife to a populist gunfight. Nor can Democratic leaders and operatives be seen as real allies of the working class if they’re afraid to alienate big funders or to harm future job or consulting prospects.”

• “Since Obama’s victory in 2008, the Democratic Party has lost control of both houses of Congress and more than 1,000 state legislative seats. The GOP now controls the governorship as well as the entire legislature in 26 states, while Democrats exercise such control in only six states…. Despite this Democratic decline, bold proposals with the national party’s imprint are scarce.”

• “After a decade and a half of nonstop warfare, research data from voting patterns suggest that the Clinton campaign’s hawkish stance was a political detriment in working-class communities hard-hit by American casualties from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

• “Operating from a place of defensiveness and denial will not turn the party around. Neither will status quo methodology.”

The last point is critical. Democratic middle class, coastal elites are still in denial of what happened. They cannot believe, let alone understand, why people are not into their version of the party that much. Yes, the party has lost over 1000 legislative seats since 2008, and also lost the White House to the worst candidate ever. Yet, many in that party elite still blame the voters.

Why? This is a critical question they refuse to even ponder upon. Perhaps it is because they really do not want to admit the answer. The party of the people is no longer the party of the people. It is, like Republicans, a party that serves the same moneyed elite that they are part off.

Mind you, we are not talking of your average working class member of a city council, though that is changing as well. We are talking of the stratosphere of party leadership. We are talking of people like Robbie Mook, who ran the war room for Hillary Clinton, and all his strategy was based on mathematics and analytics. Indeed, we are also talking of Hillary Clinton herself, who used some classic examples of faux populism and identity politics during the campaign. They ranged from a southern drawl to a bottle of hot sauce in her handbag during the primaries.

The people at the highest levels of the party socialize with the same people who donate money to them, and Republicans. They go to the same schools and do not share the same exact anxieties as the people who rejected them in 2016.

Yes, the middle-class people living in the suburbs of Wisconsin were better educated than the poor coal miners in Virginia. Yet, they share something in common, why they voted for Trump. They both lost jobs. Whether this is a changing economy (a factor), or not is immaterial. People were ready for the message of a populist, and this is why Senator Bernie Sanders did well with those same voters, and why I was not surprised that Trump did well with them either. I know that I am rare when I write this, but I was all but shocked at the results of the election.

Democrats have an opportunity to remake themselves. To do that they need to leave the rarified social circles they like. They need to get down to the dinners, and Union halls they once actually believed in, and listen. They also need to go to the PTA in Racine Wisconsin and talk to mothers and fathers about college, and grandma. They also need to start believing in government again. It is not the problem, as Ronald Reagan once said, nor is the era of big government over, as Bill Clinton quipped a few years later. In order to lift millions out of poverty, we need government, good government.

Some of the things that Democrats will have to decide is how to switch back on the idea that public education matters. I mean, it is not like Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has not been attacking it in Chicago. While Democrats are big critics of school choice in the Federal Government, they are fans of it locally as well. That double view has to stop. You either defend the public system, or you do not. Pick a lane.

Democrats are starting to make noise about single payer. Never mind that this was never allowed onto the table during the debate leading to the ACA. Yes, it works. Yes, healthcare is a sixth of the American economy. But you cannot be a fan of it only when you are out of power. You have to fight for it when you are in power, and face your donors.

Higher ed is another area. It is at the heart of middle-class discontent in suburban districts. Mind you, many in the elite of both parties went to college when it was still affordable, to nearly free. However, it is out of reach for most middle-class families. Investing in college-educated youth is not just about those young people’s present. It is about the future of the country. We will not be able to maintain a leadership position in the world without an educated workforce.

Incidentally, the present tax cut is a perfect opportunity to point out many of these things. When a school teacher cannot deduct the markers she buys for her class (wait, why is a teacher doing that, our tax money should fund that) is a perfect opportunity. So is the fact that private university attendees, most from the top tier of American life, will be able to deduct their education. However, graduate students will have to pay for grants.

What Democrats continue to miss is a coherent philosophy. Party platforms are hardly that. Why? They have the force of the tissue paper they are printed on. So here are some suggestions.

Do not run from populism. Some populism is a good thing. See New Deal, War on Poverty.

Do not run from a role of government in American life. We need to return, not run away, from 20h century mid-century liberalism.

The market is not the answer to all problems, this is part of the Neoliberal creed, reflected in Bill Clinton’s dictum that the era of big government is over.

We need to confront income inequality head on. Some policies that will help are indeed investments in education from pre-K to Post Docs. Others include strengthening the rights of labor to organize, card check will be a good start. Repeating Taft-Hartley should finally be done.

Single Payer is the solution to many of the problems in American medicine. So is regulating the cost of medicines. Both will be opposed by powerful special interests with the siren call of money spent on campaigns.

Don’t talk infrastructure. Invest in infrastructure.

Banking needs to be further regulated, not deregulated as Republicans want to do. Own to the mistake of getting rid of Glass-Steegal under Bill Clinton’s presidency as well.

Yes, we expect a Democratic Wave. The conditions are ripe for it. But that will not last as long as Democrats do not rethink much of their philosophy. The country is in the midst of a political realignment. This means that both right-wing parties will have to change. One will be pulled left. Which one is still a good question.

Wave elections cannot become permanent majorities for either party until things that the people want are done. None of the things I espoused above are unpopular. That is unless you are in the top one percent that benefits from the current order.

Incidentally, due to the tax cut, I expect to see what we have seen every time after trickle down is passed. We will see a slow down in the economy. We may also see a recession, how deep time will tell. That is also another opportunity to embrace some measured populism. This recession will also lead to an open attack on the New Deal. Time will tell if history forces the kind of political realignment that 1929 brought, and at what price.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2018_generic_congressional_vote-6185.html ↩︎

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/08/what-the-hell-just-happened-in-virginia-215805 ↩︎

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/virginia-general-elections ↩︎

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/us/politics/suburbs-revolt-trump-republicans-congress.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share ↩︎

https://www.nlrb.gov/who-we-are/our-history/1947-taft-hartley-substantive-provisions ↩︎

https://www.politico.com/story/2009/01/obama-silent-on-card-check-bill-018231 ↩︎

https://democraticautopsy.org/executive-summary/ ↩︎

[nadinabbott]

The Left: What are the Attacks About

One of the markers of modern political discussion in the United States is a constant drumbeat about the left. This political force is the quisling, all powerful entity, ready to destroy Capitalism while being completely ineffectual at the same time. It wants nothing more than the end of the American empire, but cannot organize itself beyond the effectiveness of a wet paper bag. It is behind mass protests, that rarely affect everyday life. It is made up of young, ignorant dreamers, yet it is full of old people. This fundamental contradiction does not bother any of those who happily chirp the left s dangerous . It is not just far right Republicans doing this. Center-right conservative Democrats are playing this linguistic game as well. In-fact, Conservative Democrats are louder than Republicans these days.

What is this about? It comes to one word: Fear.

It is not fear of the left as a real entity mind you. I will state the obvious: There is no organized political left in the United States. Sure. There are some people who hold ideas that in another country could be considered left, or even...gasp, I know, socialist. But it is not because we have an actual, organized, polling well, with solid ideology and strategic thinking, left. That has not existed in the United States for decades. It died with the New Left, and was firmly buried in identity politics. Yet, the left is a constant boogeyman for both major parties.

Why?

It provides a safety valve. Both national parties are very much into keeping the status quo in place. This system hurts most Americans and has shut out working class Americans from having any influence in the corridors of power. The middle class is mostly shut out. Those who benefit from the system are those who have bought politicians on both sides of the theoretical aisle. They are the rich and the very rich. The last they need is for pitchforks to come out.

The left is a convenient safety valve that can be blamed every time something goes wrong. It is the equivalent of “the dog made me do it.” It is right up there with turning the word liberal into an insult. One that has been discarded and replaced with progressive by those with slightly different values. It betrays a weakness in the political system, and reveals what should be called controlled opposition.

When you have two mainly conservative parties that favor the powerful and well connected you need something to point to. Preferably something people have been trained to fear over generations.

But the parties are different...

We hear that refrain often. This comes in particular from center right Democrats who rail as much against the left as Republicans do. Yes, there are some differences between the two parties. Democrats are not as brash, and believe in giving some goodies to the middle class, not the working class mind you. They know though that their donors expect a return on investment, and in some cases, it is the same exact donors that fund political campaigns. While they are not as brash as the though protest too much Senator Bob Corker, who will make out like a bandit over the tax bill, they still have donors to protect. While they will vote no, and take to the airwaves, very few Democrats who are in power right now mean to fight for real change that would benefit most of the country.

The left will be the safety valve used in 2018 though. As the primaries progress, those in power will paint those even slightly more populist than them as dangerous leftists who must be avoided at all costs....the reds are coming.

As the deficit explodes, and the happy warriors in the far right destroy the safety net, the center right will fight (a losing) battle to save Social Security and Medicare. The left, or rather the specter of the left, will be raised. It will be used to push people into bidding their time, and keeping their powder dry, and voting against the far right. Elect us, we will fix it. Like we have yet to repeal Taft-Harley, passed in 1948...but we will get to it to keep the mythic left at bay, someday. In the meantime, let’s us blame the left for whatever is going wrong. The dog indeed ate my homework.

This, at its heart, is controlled opposition. The specter of the left is essential to it.

What Happeed to the left...

At one point the United States had an actual organized and effective left. We had vibrant communists and socialist organizations. The Second Bill of Rights and the New Deal were quintessential Social Democracy at work. Business opposed this with a passion. Just read the Powell memo to get a taste of it. But the government itself feared these forces, and a possible actual revolution.

The first seventy years of the 20th century were spent capturing and controlling those forces. These ranged from organized labor, to civil rights, to student movements. At times this work violated every principle in the United States Constitution.

The Palmer Raids were the first organized assault of the left. They came soon after the Russian Revolution of 1917. The raids established a pattern that would repeat in the coming decades. People were arrested for their writings and thinking. Many foreign born anarchists and communists were deported. It was the first red scare. It chilled speech and targeted many labor leaders, many were deported for simply having a foreign accent

The raids were meant to go against what was described as a fifth column. These people were also described as enemies of the state and portrayed as enemies of capitalism It was the first time these themes were used in the United States. They have not stopped and a hundred years on you will hear the left described as both anti-capitalist and Un-American.

The Second Red Scare was far more effective. It involved Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Senate Committee on un-American Activities. Those hearings essentially dragged people who were forced to resign their allegiance to communism in public. Loyalty oaths were common as well. The socialist party had been an important force during the 1930s and 40s and was the third largest party in the United States. In 1932 it polled well for a third party. Many openly communist people in the 1930s were also important labor and intellectual leaders.

While McCarthy went too far and went home in disgrace, it was mission accomplished. What was a vibrant organized left went into a death spiral. These days the left is a ghost. It is a convenient something to scare children in the night. But in reality it is as mythical as big foot.

What has replaced the left?

While there were efforts too bring some form of critique to be, what replaced the left was identity politics. This has created a fractured front to the center right. Incidentally, that right includes both parties. Granted, the center right Democrats are less bad than the racist-fascist Republicans. But just because you are the lesser of two evils does not mean you are necessarily good, or on the left for that matter.

Identity politics places my group, and my interests above those of the we, and us. This is dangerous thinking. It has also made any effective political education, or resistance, impossible. But what about the Resist movement? I get it. They are against Donald Trump and trumpism. That is marvelous. What are they for? This is not an idle question. Because the movement so far is truly an airing of grievances from multiple groups. There is no coherent critique, or ideology. This is a problem.

Now, let me make this extremely clear. While there is a global rejection of the status quo,, the collapse of the left is not just limited to the United States. The fall of the Soviet Union is part of that global pattern. However, pinning for socialism or communism is not precisely the way forward. There are complex reasons for that as well. But if we are to effectively fight what ails us we need to stop falling for the same traps. The first trap is to think that there is an actual organized left.

[nadinabbott]

The Coming Economic Crisis

The tax bill is all but ready for the final vote and Presidential signature. This will happen before Christmas of 2017, as the President and Congressional Republicans want a gift to Americans. It is truly a lump of fools gold.

I am ready to make a bold prediction, which is hardly bold when you understand history. This bill will be one of the triggers for a recession, and a very high deficit, with a dash of disaster capitalism to go with it.

How can I be that confident? The tax cuts under President George W Bush did not trigger the greatest expansion in living memory. In fact, what we saw was a recession. Companies did not bring back manufacturing either. They used the proceeds to buy back stock, reward investors and hoard more money. In economic terms, the tax cuts triggered negative rent-seeking behavior.

In the meantime, jobs did not grow at a healthy rate. Politifact wrote back. In 2011:

Employment under Bush grew by 4.5 percent using CES and 7 percent using CPS, whereas employment grew by double digits under presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, and also under the combined eight-year administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, who finished Nixon's term after he resigned, and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Only under Eisenhower was job growth more sluggish than it was under George W. Bush, and even then, it was only the case using one of the two BLS statistics. (Burtless did not compare job growth during the administrations of George H.W. Bush or Jimmy Carter because they served only one term each.)

We all know what happened in 2008, and that led to the greatest economic contraction since the Great Depression.

Ronald Reagan did preside over an expansion,  but the picture gets truly muddy since the tax cut that Conservatives love to point to was followed by  several tax increases:

Additionally, Reagan receives a lot of praise for lowering taxes, but his tax increases are often overlooked. Even before the 1981 tax cut took full effect, under pressure from Congress, Reagan boosted taxes several times: in 1982 with the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, again in 1983 with the Social Security Amendments, and in 1984 with the Deficit Reduction Act. Many of these tax increases aimed to increase federal tax revenue, after it declined following initial cuts.

As the Washington Post also reminds us, interest rates were very high in early 1980s. At 19 percent that is tight monetary policy. Cutting the interest to 9 percent also has a stimulative effect. The Fed has almost nowhere to cut at present.

But to only remember the cuts, without understanding that Reagan had to rise taxes or watch the deficit explode is to be dishonest about it. Incidentally,, this bill will explode the deficit, so expect an attack on the already paltry safety net.

This brings us to the Great Depression. A high deficit, low taxes, and an austerity program deepened that crisis. I am willing to call it. We are going to go into at least a recession. It might be as deep as 2008. This madness though will not teach Republicans the folly of ideology.

However, perhaps Democrats will rediscover social democracy and abandon neoliberalism. For the moment, Democrats have refused to suspend pay as you go rules, which will trigger austerity spending almost immediately. Politically that is smart. Republicans should own the disaster they are about to cause.

Democratic Whip Stenny Hoyer  sent this to Speaker Paul Ryan:

“This letter sends a clear message,” Whip Hoyer said, “that Democrats will not simply give our votes away to help Republicans subject this country to their dangerous tax fiasco.  If Republicans wish to waive PAYGO - which was enacted while Democrats were in the Majority in 2010 and was created to ensure fiscal discipline in our budgeting – they will need to take steps to work with us toward stabilizing health care markets and mitigating the damage their bill would do to our economy and to the American people.”

we as a nation have a hell of a time with history. Perhaps we will need another lesson for it to sink in. Trickle down does not work. The problem is the unnecessary pain this is about to cause. A deep recession is not out of the question. Depending on how our political leaders behave, we might see a Depression.

[nadinabbott]

President Trump Confirms Climate Change Threat

On December 12, 2017 President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act. Tucked in the legislation was this language, according to Eccowatch.

Climate change is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and is impacting stability in areas of the world both where the United States Armed Forces are operating today, and where strategic implications for future conflict exist.

We have to wonder. Does Mr. Trump even realize the language was nearly tucked in there? Does he care? Does he understand he confirmed what both the Pentagoon and the scientific community have been saying?

One has to wonder...

However, the people at the climate denial community are sure to notice. This falls on the little reported, but important policy news.

[nadinabbott]

World Bank to End Financing of Fossil Fuels by 2019

On Tuesday, December 12th the World Bank announced that they would stop the financing fossil fuel projects by 2019. This declaration was made at the One Planet Summit, which was convened by the French president, Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

The Guardian reports:

In a statement that delighted campaigners opposed to fossil fuels, the Bank used a conference in Paris to announce that it “will no longer finance upstream oil and gas” after 2019.

The Bank ceased lending for coal-fired power stations in 2010 but has been under pressure from lobby groups also to halt the $1bn (£750m) a year it has been lending for oil and gas in developing countries.

The Bank said it saw the need to change the way it was operating in a “rapidly changing world”, adding that it was on course to have 28% of its lending going to climate action by 2020. At present, 1-2% of the Bank’s $280bn portfolio is accounted for by oil and gas projects.

The fact that they are now going to stop with oil and gas projects sends a powerful message to those involved in the fossil fuel industry that the next energy era is upon us. This will not include carbon-based energy.

Why this matters? This is a critical policy shift; climate change is now taken seriously as a threat to human survival. It also will make oil and gas projects more expensive to develop, and finance.

Who is the World Bank? This is one of the two critical finance institutions that emerged out of the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944. The other main body is the International Monetary Fund. The bank was originally created to fund the reconstruction of Europe after the end of the Second World War, but since has financed multiple projects across the world, and in particular poor nations, what at times is called the global south.

The bank is aware that climate change threatens populations and their food supply. This is especially the case for subsaharan Africa, and South East Asia, according to a 2016 report.

So perhaps the change in lending practices should surprise no one. However, this is a critical policy statement from the bank. One that may mark the beginning of the end for the fossil fuel industry. Their statement reads in part:

In line with countries submitting updated and potentially more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the World Bank Group will present a stock-take of its Climate Change Action Plan and announce new commitments and targets beyond 2020 at COP24 in Poland in 2018.

They also intend to report on greenhouse emissions as well as pricing carbon emissions into the projects they finance. More importantly, all regional banks will also follow suit. Meaning that for example, the Inter American Development Bank, which finances to a lot of projects in Latin America, will join the world bank. 

However, that does not mean we are completely out of the woods. Public financing has helped maintain the Tar Sands in Canada. That highly controversial project needs higher oil prices to be commercially viable. Meaning, public money is being put at risk to favor some special interests. In the meantime, Mexico continues with the opening and exploration of the Gulf of Mexico in a public-private partnership, that may lead to deep wells such as Deep Water Horizon, and there is deep opposition to fracking in the state of Nuevo León as well. They have the same issues that people in American states have, including increased seismic activity and pollution.This is according to the Price of Oil report. 

These are just two examples of projects that will continue, even as the world starts the process of an energy transfer from carbon to renewables.

At the policy level, whether the United States remains committed to the Paris Agreement or not, the world is now moving away from carbon and fossil fuels. This is, to quote Vice President Joe Biden at one point, a big fucking deal.

[nadinabbott]

Why Do We Have The Media System We Have

*On hometown streets, the local anchor is a movie star. Crowds move out of the way for the cameras. And profits don’t get eaten by the airfare. Moreover, ‘bodybag journalism,’ as veteran New York television newsman Gabe Pressman calls it, apparently pays the bills. Plenty of people watch, and audience ratings are high*

Eleanor Randolph, Washington Post Writers Group. in the Chicago Tribune, 1989

Many people complain all the time. We have corporate media, that only tells us what corporate interest wants us to read. This media is biased. Chiefly, this media does not cover the issues that matter (to me). Some examples of these matters are labor issues, poverty, gentrification, homelessness, the cost of housing and the end of the middle class.

However, it is time for some introspection. Media consumers have a lot to do with this state of affairs. I will explain this in my first blog post, as well as the intersection of economic behavior with a lack of a variety of voices in the media.

This lack of voices is not necessarily a lack of minority voices. These days many of the top reporters do come from communities of color. Many are women as well. Perhaps not enough. But the fact is that major media outlets are no longer just white old men with access to the microphone. This lack of voices is far more pervasive as a class matter, which is another issue not well covered. The United States has clear social stratification, even if the national myth tells us that we are not a class-based society.

This is especially obvious in the top tier of American media, where compensation is very high. We are talking seven-figure salaries. The attitudes and views of the world trickle down to whatever remains of local newsrooms that in some cases, work for the same national outfits. Many of those top-tier reporters and anchors come from the same exact social class as the leaders of both national parties, and some of the owners of the outlets. A few of the owners, such as Jeff Bezos, come from the stratosphere of American wealth. He is literally among the three wealthiest men in the nation. Yes, they are men. The other two are Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. (Between the three of them they have more wealth than the bottom half of the nation.)

This must be said though. Neither of these three men started life in the stratosphere of American wealth. However, they had a few advantages others lack. For starters, they had access to education, which is going to go away for many middle-class families, especially at the graduate level these days under the new tax bill. They are also white and male. These three things are ones rarely discussed in our current media system. And when they are, it tends to be from the point of view of a dominant class in what is referred to as elite publications.

The elite has their papers. From the beginning of the country, certain publications have reflected the views of those who have political power. Even some of the pre-revolutionary broadsheets did. The Federalist Papers were a series of discussions between the men who led the revolution as to the political makeup of the country.

The newspapers of the 1800s were also used to discuss the issues of the day. Most people, early in the history of the country, were not literate either. So reading was truly an elite pursuit, so was writing. The common folk did not vote either. At least not until Andrew Jackson, if you were white and male.

Immigration and New Media

Papers have been a tool of the very wealthy. Famously   William Randolph Hearst pushed for the war with Spain in 1898. Manifest destiny was the rage, and many of the wealthiest men in this country expected to enrich themselves. “Remember the Maine” became the reason for the war. The American people were subjected to some serious propaganda. If this sounds like the second Iraq war, it is because it was exactly like the ghostly weapons of mass destruction that were not found in the desert. Yes, some people have become immensely wealthy from the profits of war. We know now that what happened to the USS Maine was a tragic accident, but that did not stop the war in 1898, or in 2003.

However, something else was happening in the United States. This is something that should have been replicated in modern times with the internet. There was an amazing growth in immigrant and labor based papers. These were printed in a slew of languages, from Yiddish, to German or Italian. Some were printed in English. It was somewhat of a golden age for the press, while also being full of contradictions. Yellow journalism, and extremely slanted stories were the order of the day. It was also the era that saw the beginnings of what would become investigative journalism.

Chiefly though, people paid for to their newspapers.Whether it was because they were interested in community news, or they read a paper that supported their view of the world. It was a time when newspapers thrived. There was precious little free news. People knew that those who covered city hall had to be paid, even if not much. It was also a time when papers at times were very narrow in who read them, and the slant they took. None pretended to be balanced.

Newspaper reporters did not do this to get rich. Moreover, most came from the same social strata as the papers they wrote for. Some were of some means, but most reporters were working class people, maybe lower middle class, which gave them a different view of the world than the wealthy they sometimes went after. Covering issues affecting labor and the plight of unions was not alien to these men, and it was mostly white men.  

This new media was part of a social condition that also led to the organizing of the people against the robber barons. Like today, wealth concentration was very high. People were not happy, and political parties, both Democrats, and Republicans, worked for the interests of the top tier of society. There was a strong third party, the Grangers, who put real pressure on the system. The wildcat strikes were an almost daily affair. In time this led to reforms and the progressive era. That panoply of publications in multiple languages continued for two more generations.

Those papers were in many cases responsible for bringing down city hall in more than a few cities. They were also responsible for raising a conscience about the working conditions in many an industry and bringing afoot the first age of regulations.

The pen was mightier than the sword.

The Modern Age

Granted, I am skipping a lot of American history part of the reason is that our modern day has a lot in common with the Gilded Age. We have the highest income inequality since 1929. Likely it is also equal or higher than the Gilded Age. We can estimate, but the government did not keep statistics in the 1880s.

We have a real need for independent voices, and independent publications from those run by the very wealthy. The reasons for that are similar to the Gilded Age. People know this. We heard this many times during Occupy marches and conversations. People know that what they call the mainstream media will either ignore them, or cover their story with what the people on the street perceive as corporate bias.

Remember, who pays for the media determines a lot of its values. There is a reason why top-tier anchors, at national desks, are paid seven-figure salaries. However, many of the people who complain to no end about this, have not made the next connection. We could build a media system serving the middle and working classes.  But just saying “we are the media” is not enough.

You need a platform to publish. You need to do due diligence and get actual press credentials, and pay to host a news site. In other words, there are real costs to this. Sure, you can stream on YouTube, or Facebook, or a series of other streaming services. That could end tomorrow since you do not own that. You need to be careful about what you do in the field. Hearsay is not good journalism. Nor is just retelling stories you heard without any follow up. You need to chase leads. You need to confirm a story. And in some cases, you must be ready to defend yourself in a court of law.

You can run a media outlet on a shoestring budget. We did. But you still need to find people to subscribe and help you defray these costs. This last critical step is one that most activists are missing. If you are not willing to pay for the media you both rely on and consume, don’t expect that media to be around for long.

The people who bought those papers in a panoply of languages in the Gilded Age understood this. These papers may have cost a penny, but you could buy bread with a penny as well back then. I admit this is partly generational. We know because the people who supported us were older. Younger people and the breakdown seems to happen around 45 years of age, believe that if it is on the web, it is free.

We started seeing this trend a couple decades ago, when we were part of an entirely different industry. But when the web started to take shape, people started to distribute copies of both music and fiction. The younger generation was the one most involved in this.

We might be on the cusp of a new economic system. Or just a bizarre moment in time when younger people have developed a lack of awareness of costs. If it is the former, we might be moving to a post-money world. If it is the latter, this attitude will help those in power to consolidate even more power. After all, they do not have to lift a finger to remove competition. Basic modern economics will do that for them.

If it Bleeds..it Leads...

There are other reasons why we have the media system we have. We saw it ourselves. If you ask, many people will not admit that they like to watch vehicle pursuits, or read about fires and accidents. The police blotter, as it once was called, used to be in the back pages of a paper. It used not to lead the local news either. Rarely it made it to the top of the news, and anybody looking at sales noticed the same thing we did. Blood and gore sell.

Then came the 1980s and body bag journalism. It is not as if reporters were airheads. As the Chicago Tribune published in that period:

What is surprising about all this is that very intelligent people work on these programs. I know several of them, and they are not airheads held together with hair spritz. On journalism panels and in private conversation, these attractive reporters display a command of complicated subjects and world affairs.

Such intelligence is sometimes allowed on local news shows. But when I asked a friend in local news why there seemed to be less of it, she said, ``It is not smart to seem too smart`` on Action-Live-at-Five-Eyewitness News. Somehow, the television image-makers have decided that if you sound a little too well-informed on television, people resent it. They think you`re uppity.

Some local newscasters have tried to break away from the blood-and-guts model that they say is predominant in places where the crime rate is overwhelming-the big cities such as New York, Washington, Chicago and Miami.

While some stations have heroically tried to break away from the model, the police chase was now the future. It is what kept eyes on the screen.

Media outlets rarely speak of your city budget. Corruption stories that used to bring down administrations are mostly a thing of the past.

This is driven by the choices made by viewers and readers. We saw it when we tried to run a local paper, that dealt with real issues. And that idea about being uppity if you know the issues, ii have experienced that in the flesh. More than once I have been called uppity, or other names, for actually knowing the issues. Normal societies expect reporters to know the issues, but a reporter that knows the issues is somehow threatening to both readers and policymakers.

In short, we have the media we are willing to pay for, it is the police blotter we watch. As for me. I like those uppity subjects. We are in the place we are because Americans love to watch OJ getting pursued by the police, and not CSPAN, or your local city council. OJ’s arrest and the trial was a dramatic moment that cemented that news pattern. Now go ask who knows about the repeal of Glass Steagall, or how many troops are currently in Syria?

I will post policy, and reactions to items that indicate cultural changes. My days of running a daily are in my past. I was part of that media that many are so critical of. I did try to give a voice to communities that have no voice. However, we saw no commercial success or support from the same people who complain the media does not care about real issues. It is not that they don’t care. Quite honestly, it does not pay the bills.

Those are critical issues, ranging from why political parties behave the way they do. This includes economics, automatization and climate change, and the intersection with the political system and neoliberalism. And from time to time, a dive into American history. I believe it matters. All these issues are related. However, this will hardly be a daily affair. I have things to do, and projects I have put on the back burner because of running a daily. Now that is done for, and the next stage in my life is afoot.