Rand Paul and Farmers Might Think the U.S. is a Capitalist Country, But Socialism Abounds

Making the rounds of Facebook lately is the following quote attributed to Rand Paul, Republican senator from Kentucky. Paul is a libertarian conservative. Here’s the quote: “Our Founders never intended for Americans to trust their government. Our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil to be restrained and minimized as much as possible.”

Interesting. On the other hand, do you think the Founders considered a future with automatic rifles and machine guns? Or a future with medications that could prevent the dissemination of life-threatening contagious diseases? Or the instant communication of radio, television, cable and the Internet with their potential to undermine freedom? Or the ability to mass produce food and the need to safeguard its production and consumption? Or trains, planes and automobiles and the necessity to regulate their use? Or the depletion and pollution of clean water and air? 

Perhaps the Founders didn’t always get things right. They did, after all, sanction slavery. Rand Paul and his originalist brethren need to realize the Constitution and its amendments are templates for a governing philosophy that requires modifications based on the evolution of mankind’s technical and scientific abilities to do good and evil. 

The Constitution and amendments need to be interpreted in light of changes in reality. As the Bible is. Western society has gone beyond the literal “eye for an eye” doctrine of penalties for actions intended or not. 

So, too, must our unassailable reliance on a late 18th century document. 

A recent New Yorker article on Wisconsin farmers and their loyalty to Donald Trump contained the following from a dairy farmer: “I’m not in favor of any kind of socialism,” he said. “We’re a capitalist farm.”

As much as that farmer professed a disdain for socialism I wonder if he realizes just how much “socialism” he and his fellow sodbusters receive. Based on U.S. Dept. of Agriculture data, the Environmental Working Group computes that from 1995 through April 2019, farmers received $390.9 billion of federal subsidies. Wisconsin farmers pocketed $9.113 billion, ranking the state 16th among those accepting federal support. 

As a nation we don’t have a problem with creeping socialism in this country. Rather, we have a problem with people failing to understand how socialism—how the “means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”—is embedded in our everyday lives. 

Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. Food stamps. Public schools. Free and subsidized school food programs. Energy subsidies. Subsidies that pay farmers to limit what crops to plant and how much their acreage should yield. Yada, yada, yada.

We are awash in government giveaways. Some may quibble about individual handout programs. Overall, we are better for them. 

Rand Paul might think government is “a necessary evil,” but he would be wrong. His state of Kentucky, according to WalletHub, is the third most dependent on money from Washington (https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/). A year ago, WalletHub estimated that for every dollar Kentucky sends to Washington, it receives $2.61. Just imagine how poorly Kentucky would fare if it didn’t receive its share of our “socialist” government.

Move If You Want to Save the Republic

Volunteers needed: Who wants to move to Pennsylvania?

Or Michigan? Or Wisconsin? Maybe you would prefer a sunnier clime? Okay. How about Florida or Arizona? 

It is all for a good cause. It doesn’t have to be permanent, but it does require a residential move relatively soon that would appear to be forever but has to last through November 2020. 

If you haven’t figured out my idea yet, then you haven’t read Nate Cohn’s recent analysis in The New York Times that swing states Donald Trump barely won in 2016 may be sliding further into his Electoral College victory column despite an expected national surge in popular votes for the Democratic nominee no matter who she or he may be (https://nyti.ms/2Y7SdX9).

Since Trump won the Electoral College votes of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by a combined 77,744 votes it is simply a matter of realigning residencies for some, okay, many, anti Trump voters from sure-win Democratic states to battleground states to turn them from red to blue. 

So, are you with me? Who enjoys cheese? Who can visualize themselves in the fall wearing a tricornered cheesehead hat cheering on the Green Bay Packers? Forget how cold and snowy Wisconsin can be come December. Your patriotic duty to defend our country should warm the cockles of your heart, even as your fingertips and toes tingle with early stage frostbite (of course, you can buy those glove and sock warmers for the one season you’ll be  exposed to a Wisconsin chill).  

Or maybe you’re a Revolutionary War or Civil War buff and would like to live closer to where the action was, say in Valley Forge or Philadelphia or Gettysburg. See, it’s not as if you have to move away from East Coast civilization to save our democratic republic. You could be happy in Pennsylvania. 

We can’t take anything for granted in 2020. No doubt, Republicans will get wind of this plan and try to pass laws that require at least two years of residency before a newly arrived citizen may vote. Let’s be thankful Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have Democratic governors who would veto any such legislation because we all know which way the Supreme Court would rule if a court challenge ever reached its once hallowed hall of justice. 

Saving a democracy requires commitment. It won’t be enough to spend a few days in a battleground state canvassing districts or driving seniors to the polls. You have to be like the pig in the old joke about breakfast and the roles played by a chicken and a hog. For a bacon and egg breakfast a chicken must make a contribution. A pig must make a commitment. 

Keep in mind you can return to your posh liberal quarters after November 2020. In the meantime, you could Airbnb or VRBO your home. Saving our republic can be concurrently profitable and patriotic.

It's May Day, Time to Celebrate Unions

The closest person I had to a grandmother was a widowed Russian immigrant who, when her husband was alive, took my father in as a boarder shortly after he arrived in New York in early 1939. My father’s parents perished in Poland during World War II. My maternal grandfather passed away when I was around two years old. The only lasting memory I have of my maternal grandmother is visiting her in the hospital. She was resting inside an oxygen tent. She must have died shortly thereafter. I was about five.

Bessie Trachtenberg filled the void. She looked like a Jewish grandmother. She had grey hair pulled back in a bun. She was heavy set, with an equally heavy accent. She was a good cook. Like many mothers-in-law, even a pseudo mother-in-law, she waged culinary combat for the title of better cook. The battle with my mother raged over breaded veal chops. The victor—I, along with my brother and sister. We loved breaded veal chops.

My mother and Bessie would argue about all manner of food preparation, particularly when it involved Eastern European Jewish cuisine. The most vocal arguments, however, transpired between Bessie and my father. You see, Bessie was a card-carrying member of the ILGWU, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (you know, the group that sang “Look for the union label”). She was a staunch union advocate, an organizer. My father, on the other hand, was an entrepreneur, an apparel factory owner who employed dozens of Blacks and Hispanics. To my knowledge, he treated them fairly, thus avoiding any unionization drives.

When Bessie would visit they invariably bickered about the treatment of workers in general. Bessie would justify the need for unions. Dad would call her a Trotskyite. Bessie’s blood would start to boil. She would threaten never to visit again. All the while I could sense my father was merely teasing her.

I am reminded of these mock fights by the celebration today of May Day, the international workers’ day, and the recent bill passed and signed in Wisconsin by the Republican-controlled legislature and the GOP governor and would-be president Scott Walker. Wisconsin, once a bastion of the labor movement, has become a Right to Work state under the new law. Union power will be diminished.

I know some unions and their leadership have stifled corporate growth. Some have abused their powers. Others have been corrupt. Whatever the crime you can probably find a union or a union officer who has perpetrated it.

But the true and honest bottom line is that without unions the lives of most workers and their families would be sorrier, with fewer benefits and lower wages. Moreover, as union member income rose, so did the wealth of non-union workers and exempt employees. Unions helped build the middle class. It can appropriately be argued that the comforts of middle class life, and the number of households that can claim middle income status, have eroded since union power and membership have declined over the last 30-plus years. 

When I worked at The New Haven Register I earned $200 a week in 1974. I was one of six bureau chiefs, one of the better paid on a staff of 100. We voted in a union, the Newspaper Guild. The Register immediately froze our salaries. It took more than two years to negotiate a contract. I left The Register before an agreement was reached. Had I stayed, my salary would have jumped to more than $350 a week. Without the aid of a union The Register would have had to bump my salary 10% a year for six years to reach the Guild-achieved level. Doubtful that would have happened.

Unlike my father’s playful goading of Bessie, the decades-long attack by Republicans to weaken and eliminate unions has profoundly impacted the vitality of the U.S. economy to the point where even some members of the Grand Old Party are recognizing the perils of the resulting income inequality and may be willing to do something about it. 

It might well be too late for unions to be resurrected as a driving force of financial growth for the family unit and the national economy. But let’s not forget to acknowledge the contributions unions have made in our lives, from safer working conditions, to retirement benefits, to limits on child labor and the number of hours individuals may work without receiving overtime, to the election of progressive, mostly Democratic, politicians who have enacted legislation that has expanded the opportunities, freedoms and rights of all, union and non-union members.

Countdown to Sunday

The countdown has begun. One week until Ellie’s wedding. I’ve lost about a pound and a half in the last week, though I must admit I didn’t follow the diet I said I would. I ate pasta and other carbs, but no bread. I got my pre-wedding haircut, my suit’s all cleaned and pressed, haven’t decided on the shoes yet, and Ellie still has to hand me her pre-selected tie. I’m not sure who will be more relieved when this is all over, me or the UPS man who seems to be making daily deliveries to our porch. 

Last time one of our children married, wedding attire was more casual. Six years ago, Dan and Allison left it to everyone’s sensibilities how to dress. I seem to recall one of Dan’s friends came in shorts (in his defense, it was 90+ degrees and 90+% humidity). Most people, including yours truly, wore a shirt and slacks. No tie. Anyway, I bring this up because of an article in today’s NY Times Styles section about men wearing shorts, not just to bum around in but also in more formal situations, such as work (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/fashion/mens-shorts-regain-fashion-status.html?ref=style). 

I love wearing shorts, usually cargo shorts with a 7” inseam. But let me state unequivocally, short of being on Bermuda where knee high socks are part of the outfit, there is no way wearing shorts to the office, or a formal wedding, is acceptable, no matter how many designers include them in their runway shows. I have legs people would die for, that is, if you’re a woman. Few men have legs skinnier than mine. They may be acceptably revealed on the ball field, or some other casual venue, but not anywhere formal. 

On the subject of acceptable public displays, another Styles section article commented on celebrity and non-celebrity moms working off their baby fat (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/fashion/in-celebrity-climate-from-bump-to-paunch-pudgy-moms-cant-get-a-break.html?ref=style). 

Way back when Dan was born almost 34 years ago, we had a friend whose doctor advised her she would get pregnant only if she added five pounds to her zero-size frame. Reluctantly, she followed his prescription. She delivered a boy, decided to keep the weight on to conceive again, and after the second delivery crunched her way back to size zero within weeks. She proudly told Gilda she was doing 100 sit-ups within a week of the second baby’s arrival. 

We lost track of that family over the years, though I did run into them in Manhattan several years ago. Though now middle age, she was still sporting that zero figure.

Lest you think all I do is read The Times, here’s an interesting piece from The Washington Post on Janesville, Wis., home to the would-be vice president, Rep. Paul Ryan. Would he be good for his home town? Read and see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/could-paul-ryans-ideas-help-his-struggling-home-town/2012/08/17/5a857dea-e729-11e1-a3d2-2a05679928ef_story.html/?wprss=rss_MobileOpinionsSectionFront&wpmk=MK0000200.

Here’s another Washington Post article on the controversy surrounding President Obama’s comments on who is responsible for building a business: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-i-built--with-government-help/2012/08/17/ecc86b24-e885-11e1-936a-b801f1abab19_story.html.

Sound of Silence, Broken

Six days. Betcha didn’t think I’d be able to stay silent six days without a word about politics. I could’ve lasted longer, but the pursuit of the Latino vote by Mitt Romney and Barack Obama left me with little resolve to remain mum. 

I’m not surprised Mitt wouldn’t give specifics about his immigration reform policy should he become president. Though his tone might have been softer than what he conveyed during the primaries, Romney cannot promise relief to illegal immigrants and the Latino community for a simple reason—the right wing of his party would not stand for it. Not that they’d vote for Obama, but they could become less supportive if he espoused a softer line. If elected, Romney will have no more success mustering Tea Party members behind a more progressive immigration policy than House Speaker John Boehner has had trying to herd these cats into compromise budget positions. 

The lesson to be learned: voting for Mitt will be like buying a pig in a poke. You won’t know what you are getting despite his lofty rhetoric.

Here’s what passes for political reporting these days. Last week WCBS 880 news radio aired a clip of Romney saying he would win Wisconsin and Michigan on his way to the White House. What a surprise! Real news would have been Romney conceding he wouldn’t carry a state, but then that would mean getting Mitt to say something honest.

Over the weekend Romney hosted hundreds of fat cat supporters at a retreat in Utah. The monied set got to mingle with the candidate and his advisors, giving them a piece of what’s on their minds. I wonder, how many advocated for improving the lot of workers? How many lobbied for more aid to families under financial stress? How many suggested that providing affordable health care for all citizens should be a priority? How many sought more food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, aid for dependent children? How many volunteered that perhaps their success living the American Dream brought them to the realization that the super-rich could afford to pay more taxes to help those less fortunate? D’ya think any of them pressed for greater scrutiny of the financial sector? Of pharmaceuticals? Of food and product safety? How many of them figured out that cuts in police, fire, teachers and other municipal workers put everyone’s quality of life and safety at risk?

I’m not holding my breath that any of them asked for anything more than lower income taxes, lower capital gains taxes, lower estate taxes and the elimination of regulations that protect the public. I’m also confident Romney was all ears. He was, after all, rubbing elbows with his type of people. 

Look for the Union Label

I never really knew any of my grandparents. My father’s parents perished in the Holocaust in Poland. I was barely two when my maternal grandfather died in New York. The only memory I have of my mother’s mother was a visit to a hospital room a couple of years later to see an old woman lying in a bed encased in a clear plastic oxygen tent. She died shortly thereafter.

The closest person I had to a grandmother was Bessie Trachtenberg. When my father came to America in 1939, he roomed with her family in Brooklyn for a while. She remained in his life, and ours, for more than three decades. We’d see Bessie every few weeks or so, usually for a Friday night or Sunday dinner. Though the meals were invariably at our home, Bessie would don an apron. She was a good cook. She made the best breaded veal chops. 

Bessie worked in a clothing factory. She was an active member of the ILGWU, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. And that, dear reader, led to more loud discussions at the dinner table than any other topic. You see, my father owned and operated a non-unionized clothing factory. By all accounts he was a benevolent boss, his workers never once even organizing for a union vote. Bessie, on the other hand, helped the ILGWU establish union locals. She had a much more jaundiced view of management. So they would argue over and over about the value of unions.

Which brings me to this week’s news from Wisconsin that Governor Scott Walker had beaten back efforts to recall him because of his anti-union stands. Let’s also not discount the votes in San Diego and San Jose on Tuesday to scale back benefits for unionized municipal workers, including police and firemen. It’s not an easy time advocating for organized labor. There’s no doubt some unions have acted in less than savory means. Some union executives have become as domineering and untrustworthy as corporate executives. But it is also true that without unions uniform and equitable working conditions, for all employees, would not be as safe and progressive as they are today. 

It’s become acceptable to blame teachers, emergency services personnel and other municipal workers for the skyrocketing public debt of many government entities. In the past, union workers made concessions on wage hikes to secure more golden retirement pension and health care benefits. The politicians who approved those contracts were only too glad to pass the expense on to later generations. 

Clearly something must be done to solve the solvency problem of government outlays. But let’s keep in mind that the workers we are subjecting to Draconian cutbacks many times are the foundation of our present and future. I’d argue teachers are no less important than parents in molding a child’s character and behavior, let alone the quest for knowledge. Are you ready to step outside each day to protect our safety from man, beast, the elements and other unknowns? How’s about riding on the back of a truck collecting garbage in the heat of summer, the frigid blasts of winter? 

We’ve become content with paying these essential workers, along with military personnel who guarantee our freedom and security at the risk of their lives, wages and now benefits that are not commensurate with the value they provide our society. A nurse in a unionized city hospital distributes more tangible, societal value than a hedge fund manager. A fireman contributes more human value than a stock trader. Even a janitor who keeps a school building clean has a job with more positive impact on society than someone crunching derivatives just to make money for money’s sake. 

Being a union member did not confer on them that pedigree. But it didn’t hurt, either.

I was a manager for more than 30 years in a non-union publishing company. I think I treated my editorial and sales staffs fairly, giving them above average salaries, incentives and bonuses to supplement and reward their efforts. I was under no obligation to do so. Indeed, many a year I had to fight upper management for the right to reward my editorial staffers with extra remuneration. 

When I began as a reporter at The New Haven Register in 1972, I earned $150 a week (that’s $7,800 a year for those mathematically challenged) plus a Christmas bonus of a 15-pound turkey, which priced out to about $7.50. After we voted in the Newspaper Guild two years later, my salary was frozen at its $200 a week level ($10,400 a year) during the negotiation period, which lasted more than two years. I left the Register before a settlement was reached. Under the terms won by the union, I would have earned $19,760 a year. Yes, some of that increase would have gone to pay union dues. But no one can convince me it was not the collective efforts of the Guild, representing union and non union workers, that brought financial dignity to the newsroom. 

Look for My Union Label

Let’s get my bias out in the open at the very beginning—30 years as a manager, yet I still identify with my two years as a union member back at the New Haven Register in 1975-76.

Perhaps that’s one reason I sympathize with public service employees in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere who are threatened with the loss of collective bargaining rights by newly emboldened Republican governors and state houses. Don’t focus on the demand to require civil servants to pay more for health care coverage and to contribute more toward their pensions. That’s an appropriate take back. Budget deficits are real and deep, with benefit liabilities a major factor. Belt tightening should be across the board and include government workers.

But the right to collective bargaining is a mainstay of union activity. Any action to strip that collective bargaining right is a first step in doing away with unions, both in the public and private sectors. For sure, not every union is pristine. Likewise, not every management team or politician is abusive or regressive. But history has shown time and again that unions have led to greater employee benefits for all (for non union workers and managers, as well), and that without union protection individual workers are vulnerable even if they are first-rate workers. A teacher I know in California, for example, received exemplary ratings from both her principal and independent test scores last year, but for some unknown reason this academic year has lost the confidence of this same administrator to the point that without a union to protect her she might well have lost her job or she would have had to resort to a costly, personal civil law suit.

The bogeyman du jour, probably des annes, is the labor union. Strip away public and private sector unions, the theory seems to go, and our economic woes will be on the road to solvency, our government deficits made less deep and our exceptionalism restored. If we eliminate unions, maybe we’ll be able to reduce, or even do away with, the minimum wage and worker benefits, especially that darned social security that we keep hearing is going to be bankrupt by the time baby boomers all retire. Who needs it anyway, since the economy is in such bad shape no one will be able to retire except the very rich, and since when do they need government help? If we could only do away with all those government entitlements and regulations perhaps then we’d be able to compete on the global labor market, compete with countries like Bangladesh, China, India, even Mexico. Without those costly wage levels and benefit programs plus OSHA and EPA rules to follow, we’d easily resolve our illegal immigration crisis. No self-respecting Latino would want to jump border fences or wade across the Rio Grande to enter a country that doesn’t provide any better earnings prospects and worker conditions than their native land. Without inflated union workers costs, no more manufacturing plants would be shut down in the United States, their jobs shipped overseas to lower labor markets. We’d go back to the way it was mid-last century, when all we did was close down northern plants and move the jobs to cheap-labor southern states. But at least we’d be keeping those “good” jobs in the good ol’ US of A, thus bringing more power to states that are the true core of our country’s creed, states that still believe the Civil War was a conflict based on states’ rights, not the exploitation of labor and human rights better known as slavery.

See, it all begins with getting rid of those damned unions. And the place to start is with public sector unions because we all know government workers, especially teachers, are slaggards, what with their two months off in the summer and all those winter and spring school breaks. Those damn teachers work just 180 days a year, while most others have a 261-day work year, before vacation and holidays. Those teachers have it cushy, considering we keep hearing education test scores keep dropping. They keep complaining parents aren’t helping out with good follow-up at home, but that’s merely a cover-up for no accountability. And, did you ever see state workers working hard at the motor vehicle department? And why is it my street never gets snowplowed until late afternoon? And building inspectors, why can’t they ever show up on time? Don’t they know they’re delaying my project, and when they do show up they are capricious, with no consistency from inspector to inspector? But that’s the type of service you get when jobs are guaranteed and you’re afraid to criticize because someone might go “postal” on you.

Those people in the badger state sure know which way the wind’s blowing. Let me tell you, that Gov. Walker, he’s a rising national star. He’s a man of principle. He’ll make those trains run on time in Wisconsin, or else.

The tragedy of it all is that too many workers—even some private sector union members, according to a NY Times article today— don’t realize they benefit directly and indirectly from the working conditions unions collectively attain for their members. They see an imbalance in civil servant contributions to health care and retirement benefits and selfishly turn their backs on their working class brethren. Ever since Richard Nixon and then Ronald Reagan convinced working class voters to vote with their hearts and not their minds, or pocketbooks, the American worker has had his and her earnings power reduced. It might be patriotic to support U.S. war efforts, but it is downright unpatriotic to vote into office legislators who sanction corporate rip-offs, be they unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, tax dodging schemes and plant closures that have transformed our economy from a manufacturing to a service-centric base. We no longer produce goods. All we do is create services to service the wealthiest segment of our population without taxing them appropriately.

Don’t worry about the rich. They have a union to protect them. It’s called the Republican Party, Tea Party members included.