PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SANDERS ON DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently gave a speech focused on defining what he means by democratic socialism and why he has identified as a socialist for his entire political career. Our mainstream corporate media can’t seem to cover him or his campaign without labeling him a socialist. The intent seems to be to identify him as outside the mainstream at best or as a dangerous radical. Often the implicit or explicit message is that a socialist is one step away from being a communist – and many Americans do not know what socialism or communism means or the difference between them.

To address this pejorative use of the term socialist, Sanders began by noting that many of the programs and policies that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) instituted in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression were called socialist: Social Security for seniors, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, the 40 hour work week, an end to child labor, collective bargaining for workers, job programs to reduce unemployment, and banking regulations. They were enacted despite the strong opposition of the economic elites and have become part of the fabric of our society and the foundation of the American middle class.

Similarly, when President Johnson provided health insurance through Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for poor children and families, these programs were called socialist and a threat to the American way of life.

Sanders stated that we need to transform our democracy and our country as FDR did in the 1930s. We are facing a political and economic crisis that requires dramatic change. He noted that the US is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world and yet we have high rates of poverty that include over one-quarter of our children. He called for a political movement to take on the ruling, economic elite class, whose greed is destroying our democracy and our economy.

Sanders cited FDR’s inaugural address in 1944 as one of the most important speeches in our nation’s history. In it, FDR proposed an economic bill of rights, noting that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security. Sanders pointed to this economic bill of rights as reflecting the core of what democratic socialism means to him. It includes:

Decent jobs at decent pay with time off and the ability to retire with dignity;
The ability to have food, clothing, a home, and health care; and
The opportunity for small businesses to operate without domination by large corporations.

Sanders noted that Martin Luther King, in 1968, echoed FDR’s call for economic rights and stated that the US provides “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.”

Sanders went on to present specific examples of what democratic socialism means to him. He stated that the principle of economic rights for all is not a radical concept and that many countries around the world have done a far better job of providing economic security for their citizens than the US has done. In particular, he noted that almost all countries provide 3 months of paid family leave for new mothers and that all major countries provide health care as a right, not a privilege. The US does neither of these. He addressed climate change, racism, and economic and social justice issues including a fairer tax system and an end to excessive incarceration. He called for a more vibrant democracy with higher voter participation and the removal of barriers to voting.

You can listen to Sanders’ speech at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slkQohGDQCI. It’s an hour and 36 minutes long. You can listen to it while you’re doing something else or, if you want to listen to the highlights, listen to minutes 4 – 9 and from minute 24 for 5 – 10 minutes.

BIG CORPORATIONS BEHAVING BADLY PART 2

In my previous post, I focused on the big Wall St. corporations’ efforts to weaken financial regulations and consumer protections. In this post, I’ll share two much less visible examples of the power of big corporations to tilt the playing field in their favor:

H-1B visas
Consumer agreements and employee contracts

First, large corporations are dominating and gaming the H-1B visa program set up to help US companies hire foreign workers with special skills needed for their businesses that they are unable to find among US citizens. Only 85,000 of these visas are issued each year and many small companies with such needs are being shut out by large corporations requesting tens of thousands of the visas. It used to be that companies could apply and get one of these visas at any point during the year when the need arose. Now, immediately after the application process starts on April 1 each year, big corporations request thousands of visas so that a week later applications have already exceeded the year’s supply. [1]

Just twenty corporations took nearly 40% of the visas last year, about 32,000 of them, with one company applying for over 14,000. Thirteen of these 20 corporations are global outsourcing operations that typically bring in their employees from India to fulfill large contracts with US corporations that are outsourcing customer contact, marketing, or other functions. Their dominance and gaming of the system mean that many of the 10,000 other companies, many of them small businesses, that want and need these visas can’t get them.

These large corporations’ claims that they can’t find US citizens to perform these jobs is somewhat suspect. It seems likely that in some cases they simply want to pay the foreign workers less than they would have to pay Americans to do these jobs. Furthermore, a number of these corporations aren’t actually US corporations; they have their headquarters in India or Ireland, for example.

On a different front, many of the agreements that consumers must sign or agree to to shop online, rent a car, put a relative in a nursing home, or to get a credit card, cell phone, or many other products and services, contain a clause that goes something like this: “the company may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration.” Increasingly, this language is also showing up in contracts individuals must sign to get a job. This means that the corporate employer or provider of the product or service can force employees and consumers to resolve any complaint, problem, or claim, including ones that may involve fraud, illegality, or serious risk to the individual, through a corporate-controlled arbitration process and as an individual (i.e., not through any group action such as a class-action lawsuit).

This prevents the individual from going to court, from suing, and from joining with others in a class-action lawsuit. Class-action lawsuits, where a group of individuals who have been similarly harmed by a corporation’s actions band together to bring a lawsuit, are often the only realistic way to fight the power and deep pockets of a large corporation. Many attempts to bring class-action lawsuits have been rejected by the courts due to such arbitration clauses, including ones against Time Warner Cable for unauthorized charges on customers’ bills, AT&T for excessive cancellation fees, a travel booking website for price fixing, and ones for predatory lending, wage theft, and multiple cases of race and sex discrimination. The evidence indicates that once a class-action suit is blocked, most individuals simply drop their claims because they aren’t worth pursuing on an individual basis given the time and effort required and the small likelihood of winning any significant compensation.

“This is among the most profound shifts in our legal history. Ominously, business has a good chance of opting out of the legal system altogether and misbehaving without reproach,” according to US District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee. The effort to prevent class-action lawsuits was led by a coalition of credit card companies and retailers; it has been underway for 10 years. The Attorneys General of 16 states have written to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) warning that “unlawful business practices” could flourish with the growing inability to use class-action lawsuits to seek compensation for victims. [2]

In October, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau outlined rules to prevent financial corporations from banning class-action lawsuits in consumer agreements. Wall St. and the US Chamber of Commerce immediately mobilized to block the CFPB’s effort.

Large corporations are continuously working to gain benefits for themselves at a cost to consumers, workers, and small businesses. I urge you to contact your elected officials and tell them that big corporations don’t need or deserve a playing field that’s tipped in their favor. If anything, the field should be tipped in favor of the little guy – individuals and small companies.

[1] Preston, J., 11/11/15, “Top companies ‘game’ visa system, leaving smaller firms out of luck,” The Boston Globe from The New York Times

[2] Silver-Greenberg, J., & Gebeloff, R., 11/1/15, “Hidden in fine print, clause stacks deck against consumers,” The Boston Globe from The New York Times

BIG CORPORATIONS BEHAVING BADLY

FULL POST: One of the themes that runs through many of my blog posts is the prevalence of corporate power in our politics, policies, economy, and lives. The power of large, often multi-national, corporations is evident in:

Financial industry regulation (See my posts Protecting our economy and democracy from Wall Street and Government by the big Wall St. corporations.)
Trade treaties (See my post Stop “trade” treaties that favor big multinational corporations.)
Tax laws (See my post Corporate welfare is making us poor.)

as well as in consumer protection laws, workplace and labor law, and the topics that our corporate media cover and don’t cover.

In this post, I’ll focus on efforts to weaken financial regulations and consumer protections, including some that are likely to come up in Congress in the near future. In my next post, I’ll share some other examples of the power of big corporations to tilt the playing field in their favor.

The large Wall St. financial corporations are wielding their power in opposing regulations and oversight intended to prevent another financial sector collapse and bailout like the one in 2008. Much of the fighting is over provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it created. Wall St. has been working hard to delay, water down, and repeal regulations under the Dodd-Frank law, in spite of their success in weakening the original law.

One of their tactics is to slip provisions weakening regulations and oversight into unrelated legislation that must pass, hoping their provisions will pass with little or no attention in Congress or among the public. Last December, when a must-pass year-end budget bill was being considered, they slipped in a provision repealing the requirement that their trading of risky investments called swaps (a kind of derivative) had to be conducted by entities separate from those that held insured deposits from individuals. The budget bill passed as did the repeal of the swap regulation. This means that $10 trillion of risky trades are held by banks that have federal deposit insurance. If these risky trades turn sour and produce big losses, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and perhaps other government agencies will have to bailout the banks to make sure depositors don’t lose their insured deposits.

More recently, in October, Wall St. lobbied hard as bank regulators set the amount of money banks have to keep in reserve to cover potential losses on these risky trades. They were able to reduce the amount of these reserves, called the “margin requirement,” which increases the likelihood of a bailout at taxpayers’ expense.

With two pieces of must-pass legislation coming up Congress, the expectation is that Wall St. will again try to slip additional provisions into these bills to weaken regulation and oversight. The two bills are the year-end budget bill and the bill funding highway construction and maintenance. [1] One target appears to be the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was the target of a recent $500,000 advertising campaign that falsely accuses the CFPB of denying people loans. (The CFPB doesn’t make loans; it regulates lenders to prevent them from making predatory and fraudulent loans.)

We have a Consumer Product Safety Commission to regulate and protect us from dangerous consumer products and a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to protect us from dangerous automobiles (e.g., ones with faulty air bags or ignition switches). However, until Dodd-Frank passed, we did not have an agency to protect consumers from unsafe or predatory financial products. In Canada, where they did have such an agency, the incidence of predatory lending and mortgages was a tiny fraction of what it was in the US in the years leading up to the financial crash. This is a key reason the impact of the crash on homeowners and consumers in Canada was minor compared to the trillions of dollars of losses suffered by Americans.

I urge you to keep an eye out for efforts by our large corporations to bend policies – laws and regulations – to benefit themselves at a cost to consumers, workers, citizens, and small businesses. Contact your Members of Congress and tell them you’re tired of big corporations making out like bandits (sometimes literally) and getting away with it at your expense.

[1] Hopkins, C., & Brush, S., 11/11/15, “Lawmakers urge regulators to hold the line on risky trades,” The Boston Globe from Bloomberg News

STOPPING THE SECRET MONEY IN OUR ELECTIONS

ABSTRACT: Dark money organizations – non-profit, tax exempt groups that do not have to disclose their donors – are spending tens of millions of dollars every year in our election campaigns. This means that when voters go to vote they don’t know who paid for the dark money funded ads, mailings, and other political activity that has tried to influence their voting.

Seventy-five percent of the public, including equal shares of Republicans and Democrats, believe that contributors should be disclosed. There are multiple ways to address the problem of large amounts of anonymous, dark money being spent in our election campaigns:

Pass a federal Constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United and related Supreme Court decisions that allow unlimited spending in our election campaigns
Require clear and timely disclosure of donors to dark money organizations
Implement a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule requiring corporations to disclose their political spending
Strengthen IRS regulation of non-profit, tax-exempt organizations that engage in political activity
Strengthen Federal Election Commission requirements for disclosure of political spending

FULL POST: In my last post, I discussed the increasing significance dark money organizations – non-profit, tax exempt groups that do not have to disclose their donors – are playing in our election campaigns and politics at the federal, state, and even local levels. They are spending tens of millions of dollars every year, which will probably grow to over $100 million in the 2016 presidential campaign.

This means that when voters go to vote they don’t know who paid for the dark money funded ads, mailings, and other political activity that has tried to influence their voting. Therefore, they aren’t able to make an informed judgment about the interests or purposes behind these political messages.

Seventy-five percent of the public, including equal shares of Republicans and Democrats, believe that contributors should be disclosed. Even Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, in the majority opinion in the Citizens United case [1] that allows unlimited corporate spending in our elections, wrote that “disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech [i.e., spending] of corporate entities in a proper way.”

There are multiple ways to address the problem of large amounts of anonymous, dark money being spent in our election campaigns. [2] Ultimately, I believe we need a federal Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and related Supreme Court decisions. Such amendment would state that 1) The rights protected by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution are the rights of human beings only and not of corporations or other organizations, and 2) Congress and the states may place limits on political contributions and spending to ensure that our elections are fair and that all citizens can participate and have their voices heard in a reasonably equitable manner.

Given that a Constitutional amendment will not happen quickly, there are a number of steps that could and should be taken in the short-term:

Require clear and timely disclosure of donors to dark money organizations through federal and state laws and executive action by the President.
Implement a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule requiring corporations to disclose their political spending.
Strengthen Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulation of non-profit, tax-exempt organizations that engage in political activity.
Strengthen Federal Election Commission requirements for disclosure of political spending.

Shortly after the Citizens United ruling in 2010, Congress considered the DISCLOSE Act that would have mandated disclosure and reporting of all spending in federal election campaigns. The bill passed the House but failed by one vote to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate. [3] Congress should consider this legislation again in light of the tremendous growth of dark money spending and it should pass the bill this time. States should pass similar legislation to cover state and local elections.

In the meantime, President Obama should sign an Executive Order requiring all federal contractors to disclose their political spending. In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should act expeditiously to implement a proposed disclosure rule. It would require publicly traded corporations to disclose their political spending. Given the SEC’s mission of protecting shareholders through corporate accountability and transparency, such a rule would be very appropriate. [4]

Along the same lines, in 2013, after years of development, the IRS proposed a rule for non-profit, tax exempt organizations that defined political activity and required timely reporting of donors. The goal was to increase transparency so voters in the 2016 elections would know who was paying for political ads and other campaign activity before entering the voting booth. There was lots of pushback over the proposed rule. Conservative advocacy groups and their supporters in Congress went so far as to manufacture a crisis surrounding the IRS’s oversight of such organizations to pressure the IRS into delaying the transparency rule and to discredit the IRS’s efforts to regulate dark money. [5]

Finally, the other entity that could and should require disclosure of the sources of campaign spending, the Federal Election Commission (FEC), is effectively paralyzed. Its members are required to be split equally between Democrats and Republicans and must be confirmed by the Senate. With a politicized confirmation process in the Senate and the current hyper-partisanship in Congress filtering down to FEC members, the FEC is gridlocked and basically unable to function.

In a democracy, voters have a right and a need to know who is trying to influence their votes and who is supporting or opposing candidates for office. Therefore, clear and timely disclosure of the sources of funds for political activity is essential. I urge you to let your elected officials and candidates for office at all levels know that you support disclosure of the sources of political spending so you can be an informed voter.

[1] In Citizens United and related decisions the Supreme Court ruled that individuals and organizations can spend unlimited amounts of money in our election campaigns. Therefore, these dark money organizations can accept unlimited donations and spend unlimited sums. Specifically, the Court ruled that corporations and other organizations are people and have the same first amendment rights of free speech as actual human beings under the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. The rulings also said that spending money in elections (and elsewhere) is speech and is protected by freedom of speech rights.

[2] People for the American Way and coalition partners, July 2015, “Fighting big money, empowering people: A 21^st century democracy agenda,” (http://www.pfaw.org/sites/default/files/PresidentialPolicy831.pdf)

[3] Kuns, K., 7/1/15, “The dark politics of dark money,” The Washington Spectator

[4] U.S. PIRG, 10/12/15, “Members of Senate Banking Committee, former SEC Commissioner urge SEC nominees to support political disclosure rule,” Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/10/21/members-senate-banking-committee-former-sec-commissioner-urge-sec-nominees)

[5] Kuns, K., 7/1/15, see above