I shared a quick lunch last week with Journal Editor Carrie Peyton Dahlberg. Carrie’s been on the job now for about five months and we are all still getting to know each other. The question that so many people are asking these days came up: Just what are the protestors, the Occupy Everywhere people, trying to say?
The darkest answer to that question, of course, is that our system of government is broken. We just can’t seem to fix things that are so obviously wrong. Is that because we now have an oligarchy, not a democracy? After all, government does a pretty good job of protecting the interests of big businesses and the wealthy, just not the rest of us.
I’m trying not to be so cynical, but I have an article in front of me I cut out of this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle. Here’s a problem: School lunches often have poor nutritional content, a significant factor in the raging, national obesity epidemic. One solution: Limit the servings of french fries in federal school lunch programs, restrict sodium and increase whole grains — all modest proposals made by the Agriculture Department earlier this year. However, the final version of a spending bill released Monday by Congress blocks or delays all those efforts. “Food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested those changes and lobbied Congress,” the Chronicle reported. Two of the biggest problems in school lunches — bad pizza and french fries — remain untouched. Oh, and pizza sauce is now a vegetable. (Remember Reagan and ketchup?)
I’ve been in journalism now for more than 30 years. Old school-trained, I am supposed to be an observer. I was not active in a political party, did not contribute to any campaign, and never allowed so much as a lawn sign on our front yard. All that impartiality went out the window three years ago because I was so frustrated by inaction on things like health care. I really believed we had a chance to change things with this new President. (Didn’t he say health care should be a right?) So I took a five-week unpaid leave of absence from this newspaper, drove to Colorado, a critical swing state, and volunteered for Obama. I worked hard seven days a week knocking on doors and training others to knock on doors – something I’d never done in my life.
So how do I feel now about my president? Disappointed. Not because he turned out to be something other than a liberal/progressive. He was never liberal and I am OK with that. I’m disappointed because he squandered the opportunity he had the first two years when he had majorities in both houses.
You know the difference between Republicans and Democrats? When Republicans win, as they did last year, they say, “We have a mandate, not you. People elected us this time.” And they are not shy about using their power.
That day at lunch, Carrie and I found ourselves talking not about the last three years, but about the last three or four decades. Where is the positive change in our lifetimes? Women’s rights, although we’re not there yet. The air is cleaner in the neighborhood of my childhood of east Los Angeles. Four dams are coming down some day on the Klamath River. But in the big picture, our children, our grandchildren will not have a better life than we have had for one reason: economic injustice continues to grow.
In the 1950s and 1960s, we had rapid economic growth that narrowed differences in income and our middle class grew strong. That began to reverse in the late 1970s and the concentration of wealth at the top continues to this day unabated. These statistics and this chart were published by Time magazine Oct. 10:
“America was once the great middle-class society. Now we are divided between rich and poor with the greatest degree of inequality among high-income democracies. The top 1% of households take almost a quarter of all household income — a share not seen since 1929.”
And what happened to our commitment to free education? I paid $50 a semester to attend a California State University in the 1960s. Today our children are getting out of college buried in debt. Two-thirds of new college graduates last year had student loans to repay. The average amount: $25,520.
A few weeks ago another colleague of mine said he thought this Occupy Movement was going to fade quickly once the rain starts. I don’t think so. I think it has legs.
This article appears in Occupy.
To find answers to your questions, read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman.” You’ll understand the historical reasons for our present situation:
During the 50s & 60s, we were able to maintain our economic superiority by employing: 1) Teams of economic Hitmen to subvert weaker country’s economies and control their resources and infrastructures; 2) Jackals or agents provocateurs to overthrow, undermine, or assassinate opponents of our foreign policy; 3) military might as a last resort when neither of the first two methods succeeded.
So, while we enjoyed life on the golf course and cheap educations, it was at the expense of others. Our global economic domination artificially sustained our inexpensive way of life. As we profited, others endured a way of life in economic penury as artificially expensive for them as ours was inexpensive for us.
John Perkins’ books detail this very clearly, and how, over time, other countries, and other historical movements, started to realize what was going on. We, here at home, blithely ignored, or failed to inquire about, the mechanisms behind our economic superiority, assuming, it seems, that we were God’s chosen and our way of life was owed to us and would always exist. We still believe this, rejecting all the resentment focused on us as jealousy or lack of appreciation for all we’ve done for the world. We are in denial.
We don’t understand that our foreign policy was really a “domestic” policy, a way of inflating our economy and it has fostered a great deal of resentment in the world at large.
It all came to a head on 9/11. Since then, our economy has been in a tailspin, not because we are less productive, less hard-working or less creative, but because the playing field has leveled. We are competing in every sector of every industry throughout the world, and we have floundered because we are in denial. We still see ourselves as we were in 1945 — one continuous long victory parade down Fifth Avenue.
Sad, because national boundaries are almost irrelevant now. Multinational companies don’t respect them. Why should they? They don’t fit into their business models, which is to price every aspect of design, manufacture, and assembly, every component, every subcontractor on a worldwide basis. It’s the only way they can survive.
Part2:
I was struck by Republican candidate, Jon Huntsman’s statement in the last debate, “So I have to say that our biggest problem is right here at home. And you can see it on every street corner. It’s called joblessness. It’s called lack of opportunity. It’s called debt, that has become a national security problem in this country. And it’s also called a trust deficit, a Congress that nobody believes in anymore, an executive branch that has no leadership, institutions of power that we no longer believe in. How can we have any effect on foreign policy abroad when we are so weak at home? We have no choice. We’ve got to get on our feet here domestically.”
A realization that it’s all collapsing around us was a pretty bold admission for a Republican.
So how do we do fix this? First, we stop pining for cheaper greens fees, reasonably priced NFL tickets, and free education. It ain’t going to happen. Second, we fall back on our strengths: Creativity and the ability to improvise. We educate our people and prepare them for a place in the global competition. We recalibrate our image of ourselves in relation to the rest of the world.
It seems to me that the Occupy movement is the most socio-politically aware and the least “In denial” group extant today. They are ready to and are pushing for a total recalibration — economically, militarily, politically, socially, spiritually.
Thank you, Ms. Hodgson, both for your commentary and for your five-weeks of work on behalf of Barack Obama’s campaign.
There are more direct ways you can do your part, though they might not qualify as “old school.”
First, stop accepting money to advertise Coast Central until they change their pay policies. As you know, what Coast Central has done is fool people, using your newspaper, into getting worse deals than they would get from other credit unions. It’s worth it to Coast Central to pay for advertising in your paper and others, because they get more business from unsuspecting consumers as a result. It’s well understood psychology, and your advertising contracts make you a participant in this legal theft.
Then, if you have not already, please show your disapproval of venues that invite singers who advocate the murder of gay people. If you have not already, stop publishing advertisements for such venues in exchange for their money.
Although I am not religious, I am well aware of the deeper meaning of choosing God or Mammon. Your five weeks was a considerable devotion to “God,” or what I call decency. But your newspaper’s advertising shows a devotion to Mammon. It will cost you money to give that up, more money than five weeks of unpaid leave. I wish you every success, and I understand how difficult it is to make such choices in the society we’ve jointly created.
“…stop accepting money to advertise Coast Central until they change their pay policies.”?!
It’s a weekly paper, Mitch, not a cudgel.