What Kind of Country Are We?

Germany and Japan have highly unionized work forces: New Dealers made sure that unions were strong before the Allied occupation forces relinquished control. Ditto South Korea. The rationale: democracy would have a better chance to flourish, and Nazi/Fascist brutes would have less likelihood of regaining control if confronted by strong unions.

But Brazil, France, Spain, Russia, India and South Africa also have union-organized auto industries. In contrast, a large portion of the US auto industry, especially beyond the rust-belt states, is not unionized and unionization is declining rapidly. The foreign transplants, like Nissan and Honda, are unionized in virtually every other so-called 'developed country.'

Despite weakened unions, the US Chamber of Commerce's reaction to Obama's NLRB appointments, ratified in the recent filibuster deal in the US Senate, was that a major disaster had occurred. American business appears to have an aversion to unions, not just among the auto transplants in the South.

Omigod! The NLRB might actually attempt, again, to fulfill its mandate that employers not unduly interfere with union organizing elections!

As soon as FDR was gone, business rallied against unions, and in 1946 a Republican Congress passed Taft-Hartley, weakening unions and making "right-to-work" legislation viable. Since 1946, 23 states have passed such laws. Is it just coincidence that right-to-work states have fewer union workers (6.48% vs 10.8%) and lower wages?

All the southern states except Kentucky, all the plains states, almost all the Rocky Mountain states are right-to-work, and now two states from the industrial heartland (Michigan and Indiana) are, as well.

Right-to-work is a euphemism. RTL means employees in a union-organized workplace don't have to join a union, or pay union dues, but can benefit from a union contract. When workers become "free-riders" like this, unions lose money, power and eventually their contracts. Then employers don't have to face an organization representing workers.

Gerrymandering elected majorities from white, rural minorities, Tea Party state legislatures, from Wisconsin to Texas, now pass draconian abortion laws, slash services from education to Medicaid, cut taxes on the wealthy, and raise them on the poor. It's a coup that exploited the 2010 reaction to Obama and the unlimited corporate and private funds released by Citizens United. It's a coup of corporate elites, and it's frighteningly successful in the states, where it's compounded by the generations-long decline of organized labor.

The US Congress is divided between a similarly gerrymandered, reactionary House majority, and an inchoate, moderate Senate majority corrupted by corporate money. The US looks increasingly like the despotic, declining Empire of Fifth Century Rome, led by a fabulously wealthy elite dominating an increasingly impoverished majority. The coup isn't complete, but it's dangerously close. The military-industrial-security complex doesn't know it yet, but an Empire based on mass misery is like a hollowed, rotten tree: it'll go down fast in a storm, despite its sophisticated surveillance and automated weaponry.

What Don't They Understand?

'They' are Obama, Biden and other putative liberals or progressives, who have signed onto--and defend--the massive surveillance of practically everyone, world-wide, including American citizens in the US, that the intelligence complex has foisted on all of us. Obama was a constitutional law professor; he should know about all the guaranteed rights that PRISM and meta-data collection violate. Instead, he pursues Ed Snowden to the ends of the earth.

Apparently, the American public doesn't understand, either.

Of course, there are all sorts of justifications: US citizens aren't targeted--unless they are. We have to sweep up all the world's communications to protect the American people, although we do a terrible job protecting, except for ferreting out the credulous in stings: occasionally there is the miniscule chance that someone will set off a bomb. Many more are killed, routinely, because our gun laws are so lax, because we travel faster on the roads than they're designed for, because we have a healthcare system driven by profit--and a corporate system in which human lives are less important than dividends.

So, to stop the occasional mad man, we give up our rights to privacy; we bow to government and corporate power and don't think about it: it's more important to know what the celebs are doing, or whether your team is winning. It's preferable to spend hundreds of millions on stadiums than to fully fund food stamps, so that people don't go hungry.

What does that have to do with the NSA's surveillance? The Terror Industry is a diversion, of money that could be used to make people's lives better, of attention away from the escalating inequality enabled by that same inattention: if you're terrified of terrorists, you won't think about how your CEO is exploiting you, and your government is watching your every move. You certainly won't rebel against the system, even if you sense it's been shaped to rip you off. The surveillance state tells you: you can't get away with anything, especially protest against your government.

Go scream about abortion, instead; or oral sex. Your surveillers will even support you: social issues are safe; but economic ones are not: taxes must go down--in inverse relation to your income, and regulations must be dismantled, to free private enterprise--so it can exploit everyone more efficiently.

Surveillance and police control, even with tanks, will enable the government--or select corporations--to protect their privileges, against massive unrest. Yes, the US is ready if American dissidents try to bring Tahrir Square to Washington or New York. Police have already crushed Occupy--while the IRS targeted "progressive" groups about as much as the Tea Party.

Democratic hacks seek support from the corporate class, our Roman Senators: Republicans slavishly represent them.

Roman Senators--and the defense-industrial-intelligence-complex--lay the groundwork for a legal coup: NSA's General Keith Alexander for President!

Change one little rule

just an iota, and business groups start to wring their hands over the labor-friendly changes that could take place. A confirmed Secretary of Labor? A full NLRB board with a Democratic majority? They write as if disaster is going to strike.

Unions have had a hard time recently, and if these nominees are confirmed, because Reid finally threatened to do away with the filibuster on nominee confirmations, then already it will have a tremendous impact. Unions have had diminished clout, and the eviscerated NLRB and caretaker Labor Department hasn't helped. Even reporters for the Chamber of Commerce admit that a confirmed nominee has more power than an interim appointee and could push for rules making union organizing elections a lot easier. That, in turn, could stop the slide in unionization, and might even help it to recover some lost ground.

That's the disaster the Chamber is worried about: labor empowered, wages raised, profits possibly cut--ah, some redistribution of income and power. Since corporate profits and inequality of incomes are soaring, there is a lot of room for a more just distribution of the wealth produced, and the managerial elites might just have to rake in fewer millions. I don’t think that would be a bad thing.

But you see how a rule compromise in the Senate can change a lot of other things in the real world. It could even begin a reversal of the silent takeover of power and wealth engineered by this generation's Roman Senators.

Still, we should note: no formal rule was changed; there was an "agreement" between Democrats and enough Republicans to prevent a filibuster on Richard Cordray, the interim and now confirmed head of the Consumer Financial Protection Board that's already shown it has teeth in regulating out of control credit card companies. Supposedly, the agreement will also cover the NLRB nominees and others who have been waiting for confirmation for a good part of Obama's tenure.

The agreement also highlights the weakened status of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: John McCain brokered the agreement for the Republicans and McConnell was sidelined and ignored; that has significance for the Senate down the road, beyond the filibuster issue. While this was an interim agreement that left the filibuster in place, for now, it could lead to big changes in the distribution of power in the Senate, and in the "real world."

Nominations are a uniquely senatorial power, however. On any tax or spending issue, the House is supposed to lead, and on any other issue, it has at least veto power. Given its extremist wing in the Republican majority, it's unlikely that senatorial comity will lead to House functionality.

However, any movement away from increasing corporate power and toward buttressing the power of workers might undo what seems like an inevitable takeover, like the one that gave Roman Senators monopoly power--shared with the military--in the late, declining Roman Empire.

American Liberalism and the Democratic Party

American liberalism wasn't just about social issues like gay marriage and immigration. American liberalism was the closest thing Americans had to the movements in Europe and elsewhere: they promoted economic equality, fair tax systems, labor representation and economic democracy. Europeans labeled them democratic socialism, or social democracy. In the US, we rarely used such terms; they smacked of Socialism, even Communism.

European democratic socialism had its base in political parties either affiliated with, or a part of, the labor movement. Labor in the US has been closer to Democrats than Republicans, at least since FDR, but the Democrats were never a labor party. Since Clinton's "new Democrats," it has become increasingly pro-business and lukewarm to labor.

Somewhere between Carter and Clinton, Democrats pretty much jettisoned economic democracy in favor of campaign funds, and found they could successfully appeal to middle class voters with social arguments like: gay rights, civil rights and pro-choice policies. That left them free to take more pro-business and even pro-wealthy class positions that would make it easier to raise campaign funds, enabling them to win elections.

The Rooseveltian idea that Democrats should strive for economic rights, like Freedom from Want was shoved aside: rich people gave money, the middle class voted for Democrats, the poor didn't turn out to vote in any great numbers--and most of them voted for Democrats, anyway, so they would get the crumbs--and the rhetoric.

Dividing off economic democracy and equal opportunity from social issues like gay marriage, gives Democrats a progressive tilt, but they never stopped the Reagan Counter-revolution. Democrats collaborated on tax-cuts for the wealthy, and adopted corporate-friendly policies like repealing Glass-Steagall, promoting NAFTA and now the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Obama is as much involved in updating of the new Democrats as his irascible associate, Rahm Emanuel, current mayor of Chicago, presiding over the most public school closings (largely in poor neighborhoods) of any large city, a part of "austerity" politics: cutting government's social services.

It's no accident that Obama proposes to cut Social Security benefits--and other government benefits, as well--by adopting the "chained CPI" measure for adjusting payments to the cost of living. He's the first Democratic President to dare suggest such a thing. It's also no accident that he presides over an invasive surveillance program and is hawkish on drones. By being for progressive social issues, he can get a pass on his surrender to the Military-Industrial-Security-Complex and Democrats can fatten on Defense-related campaign funds. In his political campaigns, despite record numbers of small donors, Obama depended financially on big bucks given by people Democrats used to call "fat cats."

Democrats have been co-opted by the contemporary class of "Roman Senators:" Nader's epithet: "not a dime's worth of difference" from Republicans almost rings true--except for social policy.

We need a democratic revival not based on either of the current political parties. N.B. My paternal family has been Democrats at least since Franklin Pierce (1853).