No one ever mentions him, he’s not on talk shows or book tours. He just keeps writing the truth:
The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.
Remember: When a Republican says, “We have no other choice,” what he means is “Because I would never in a million years tax the rich instead.”
I wish I could understand why people are so willing to cooperate in the stripping away of workers rights, instead of insisting that they have them, too. That kind of thinking is a sorry part of human nature — “If we can’t have a good job, nobody should!” Oh well:
Gov. John Kasich and Republican lawmakers made it clear this week that big changes are coming to the public employees collective bargaining law as the state looks to close an $8 billion budget gap. “All of this is an effort to reduce the cost of government to reduce the tax burden on families and job creators,” said Rob Nichols, spokesman for Kasich.
Kasich said Thursday if lawmakers don’t dismantle public employees collective bargaining then he will. “All this is rooted in job creation.”
It’s a fight shaping up with unions in states across the country, particularly those with Republican-dominated governments that are in fiscal trouble. Indiana, Idaho and Tennessee all have legislation in the works that would scale back or eliminate collective bargaining.
A study by the Buckeye Institute, a conservative think tank*, found Ohio’s public workers made more than private sector counterparts. Liberal counterpart, Policy Matters Ohio, released a report Thursday that found Ohio’s public employees are paid less than those in the private sector. More than 300,000 public employees in Ohio belong to unions, including teachers, police, firefighters, municipal employees and state workers.
* “Conservative think tank” — as always, a contradiction in terms.
Obama budget to attack the poorest and most vulnerable. Bipartisan solutions!
When you have one family in charge, soaking everyone in Egypt for the right to do business, why, people might get a little angry about that:
Mubarak — who stepped down on Friday in the wake of massive protests that have gripped Cairo and Alexandria for weeks — and his family have a net worth of at least $5 billion, analysts tell The Huffington Post. Recent media reports pegging the family fortune at between $40 and $70 billion are considered to be exaggerated.
Much of their fortune has reportedly been invested in offshore bank accounts in Europe and in upscale real estate. On Friday, Switzerland froze accounts possibly belonging to Mubarak and his family, a spokesman told Reuters, under new laws governing ill-gotten gains. Last month, the Swiss froze the accounts of Mubarak’s ally, ousted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose overthrow inspired the first protests in Cairo.
The Mubarak family reportedly owns properties around the world, from London and Paris to New York and Beverly Hills. In addition to homes in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh and the upscale Cairo district of Heliopolis, they also have a six-story mansion in the Knightsbridge section of London, a house near the Bois de Bologne in Paris and two yachts.
Largely through Mubarak’s two sons, Gamal and Alaa, the family controls a network of companies that earn money through concessions wrangled from foreign companies that do business in Egypt, according to prominent businessmen and “Corruption In Egypt: The Black Cloud Is Not Disappearing,” an investigative report compiled in 2006 by a coalition of opposition groups. (The report, which names the companies allegedly owned by the Mubarak brothers and details multiple instance of corruption by government officials, has been cited by numerous international good government groups, such as Transparency International, but it was taken offline and is no longer available on the Internet. The Huffington Post obtained a copy, replete with rhetorical flourishes and thinly-sourced allegations, which is available here.)
“Egypt’s state under Mubarak’s regime is an embodiment of corruption,” concludes the report, with descriptions of numerous allegations of corruption involving bribery, undue influence and nepotism.
In the 1980s, Mubarak seemed sincere in his desire to crack down on corruption in an effort to distinguish himself from Sadat, says an Egyptian-American businessman who often does business in the country. “But as time went on, the cronies around him started taking advantage of the system,” he says. “And the other factor was his children got into business, taking commissions out of each and every company that comes to Egypt. The way they have amassed that money is not by stealing but by ensuring that businesses that want to operate in Egypt pay from 5 percent to 20 percent commission to a company formed by Gamal Mubarak. I know businessmen who have been squeezed this way.”
Some of the family’s wealth is also believed to be through partnerships with foreign companies — under Egyptian law, foreign businesses are required to give a local partners a 51-percent stake in their Egyptian operations. “According to this law, any multinational company needs to have a local sponsor, and this local sponsor usually goes through members of the family or powerful people in the ruling party,” says Aladdin Elaasar, the author of “Last Pharaoh: Mubarak and the Uncertain Future.”
It’s awesome to see people rise against their oppressors, more awesome to see them succeed, as Egyptians have done today. Though since this is far from over, I expect to continue to hear a lot of talk about what Americans’ role, or the role of our government, should be.
Other than being aware of what the people there are doing and cheering them on, I think the best thing any American, or American politician, or group of Americans who aren’t of Egyptian descent could do for people in Egypt and the cause of freedom generally is this:
Mind our own damn business.
Because the business of the American people has long been neglected. Sure, we can pull together a great candlelight vigil for other people, in other countries, or march on their embassies. We can weep for forests and environments destroyed on continents we will probably never visit. All good. All fine steps towards broadening our empathy and expanding our compassion. But mostly, we’re leaving our power on the table when our first concerns are the problems of other countries.
We, US citizens, vote here. We pay taxes here. We live here. There is no country on the planet over whose policies we can have more influence as private citizens than ours. There is also no other country on the planet more broadly influential or more generally impervious to outside pressure.
Want to advance the cause of freedom? Advance it here, for our fellow citizens. Set an example.
In 2009, the 74 top income earners in America made as much as the 19 million lowest paid workers. That is our business.
The US’ poorest residents, and its most historically disadvantaged residents, are forced to live next to our worst polluters and bear the largest share of health and early mortality costs from our fuel and chemical habits. Which is our business.
The mortgage and investment banking industries destroyed our economy by committing epic fraud. Instead of being sent to jail, they were appointed to run the *ing Treasury department and the Federal *ing Reserve. This is our business.
The US government trained Mubarak’s torturers, and torturers for vile regimes all over the world. The US government used that network of torturers, in acts of extraordinary rendition, to brutalize people who were never charged with any crime. The US government tortured people in Iraq, and still in Guantanamo, and still in our domestic prisons, and with high voltage Tasers in broad daylight on our own *ing streets, sometimes to the point of death. That, goddamnit, is Our. Motherf*cking. Business.
Among other things.
You may recall that the Egyptian rallies were inspired in part by the Tunisian rallies. The Egyptians aren’t holding solidarity rallies for the Tunisians. The British aren’t holding solidarity rallies for either of them, they’re demanding that their own corporate crooks pay up.
If we, Americans, would rattle the bars of our own cages, if we would insist that our freeloading billionaires start paying for the fine business climate, security protections, roads and educated workers they enjoy here, I think that would help the people of Egypt. If we, Americans, would stand to protect each other’s interests so that the wealthy couldn’t pay us enough to turn us against each other, I think that would help the people of Egypt. If we, Americans, would sharply limit our country’s exports of both pollution and Mephistophelean misanthropes high as kites on their own unspeakable power, I think that would help the people of Egypt.
That would put fear in the heart of every dictator and plutocrat in the world. That would tell people everywhere who long to be free that, yes, we are with you, we get it. We’re in this sh*t together and sweet Jeebus, we want out, too.
Anyway, if there’s anything we can do to help, I think that would be it. Because sure as anything, no one wants us to ride to their rescue on a desert camo armored personnel carrier wrapped in a fugue of righteous helpfulness.
I don’t mean to offend people who like David Brooks, but if you like David Brooks, you’re probably going to be offended when I point out that he’s basically a pundit for people who don’t like to actually do their homework.
He’s not the only one, of course, but he’s a pleasant, genial conservative who’s a little liberal on some issues and that’s how he became a sort of bipartisan fetish toy. And while’s he not an intellectual, he does play one on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, so close enough.
Anyway, it’s always fun when Brooks gets put in his place — like this, when economist Dean Baker takes about Brooks’ new crusade: cutting Social Security and Medicare:
Brooks better hope that the masses march before they think, because if the sequence goes in the other direction, the march will never happen. As everyone knows, there is no story of programs with out of control costs.
The whole story is of out of control health care costs. This is a problem of a broken private sector health care system. This becomes a budget problem because we pay for more than half of our health care through public sector programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If per person health care costs in the United States were the same as in any of the countries with longer life expectancies, we would be looking at huge budget surpluses, not deficits.
The evidence would suggest that Brooks’ mass movement should be directed at reforming our health care cesspool. We pay 10 times what we should for prescription drugs because of our absurd method of financing research through government granted patent monopolies. This government intervention gives an enormous incentive for drug companies to lie about the effectiveness and safety of their drugs, something which they do with considerable frequency. There is a similar story with medical devices.
Our doctors also get paid far more than doctors in other wealthy countries. This is not true for our retail clerks and our steelworkers. The reason is that our doctors enjoy much greater protection from international competition than less politically powerful workers. If Brooks, who fashions himself as a free trader, really wanted to get our deficit under control, he would be revving people up to reduce the barriersthat sustain the high salaries for doctors in the United States.
Brooks could also be trying to motivate people to support a Medicare buy in that could save hundreds of billions in administrative costs over the next decade. Or, in keeping with his “freedom” theme, how about just giving Medicare beneficiaries the option to buy into other countries’ health care systems with the beneficiary and the government splitting the savings. This one is all about freedom — let our beneficiaries go!
So, the basic question is whether we confront the powerful interest groups who profit from our broken and corrupt health care system or whether we beat up the retired and disabled workers who depend on Social Security and Medicare. David Brooks told us where he stands.
Except when the money’s owed to working people, and not banks!
Israeli soldiers say they were told to cleanse Gaza. “Every house gets a shell.”
