https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0udVgN90oo
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Friday, August 28, 2020
Most Politicians Don’t Care About Workers. But Unions Can Make Them.
New research finds that strong unions are pretty effective at making politicians pay attention to the interests of ordinary people. In order to pursue a real pro-worker agenda in government, we need an emboldened labor movement.
August 26, 2020 Meagan Day JACOBIN
https://portside.org/2020-08-26/most-politicians-dont-care-about-workers-unions-can-make-them
Last week, the rideshare company Lyft announced it would be suspending all operations in California in retaliation against a court order mandating that it classify drivers as employees. Uber hinted it would do the same. Although the company’s threats are now on hold as the courts review the case, we should be clear about what those moves were telegraphing: a capital strike. It’s unknown whether it’ll work to compel the state of California to reverse course in this instance, but generally speaking, the capital strike is the most powerful weapon at capitalists’ disposal. By withdrawing investment, corporations can hurt the economy and punish governments for contravening their interests, causing trouble until they get their way.
Workers can strike, too, of course, and when they do, they can also force the hand of their bosses and of the state. But it’s a lot harder for workers to pull it off, especially on a scale large enough to make an impact. Capital strikes can be decided upon and arranged by a few shrewd and profit-minded executives in a boardroom, whereas labor strikes have to be painstakingly organized in the face of a whole host of obstacles, some thrown up deliberately by employers, and others simply facts of life under capitalism.
The difference in the ease of orchestrating a high-impact capital strike versus a high-impact labor strike shows the unequal capacities of workers and bosses to act on the state. The ability of the wealthy to donate vastly greater sums of money to candidates is another, perhaps more obvious, illustration of the same principle. But while capitalism generally prevents workers and bosses from standing on truly equal footing before the state, some intermediary measures can be taken to even things out and give workers the leverage they’re sorely missing.
Chief among these measures is unionization itself. A new article by political scientists Michael Becher and Daniel Stegmueller, “Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress,” published in the journal Perspectives on Politics, takes up the question of whether and by how much unions actually help low-income people (by focusing on income, they take a gradational, not relational, approach) exert influence on the state. In short, they find that unions really do snap low-income people’s needs into focus for politicians.
Beginning with a review of other research establishing politicians’ bias toward the wealthy, the study’s authors hypothesized that high union membership would mitigate this bias. To test their hypothesis, Becher and Stegmueller compared three things: congressional roll-call votes, income-specific policy preferences by district, and union membership by district.
Becher and Stegmueller then used this data to analyze the relationship between strong unions and politicians’ responsiveness to low-income constituents’ preferences. In the process, they sought to account for the obvious problem that if they found a strong correlation, it wouldn’t necessarily imply causation — that is, maybe unions are strong in one place because the state has historically been responsive to low-income constituents and has therefore implemented pro-union policies, and not the other way around.
After controlling for this problem with several measures — for example, factoring in which states had right-to-work laws and for how long — Becher and Stegmueller’s findings still suggest that strong unions can make politicians, who are otherwise, as a group, inclined to prioritize the interests of the wealthy, pay extra attention to the interests and preferences of people without much money. In sum, they write, “Our results imply that unions enhance political equality in Congress.”
Becher and Stegmueller speculate that there are two mechanisms by which unions exert this influence. First, through contributions and endorsements, unions are often successful in helping get Democrats elected, and Democrats are generally more attentive to the interests of low-income people than Republicans. Second, serving politicians frequently want to be reelected, a task for which union member votes and donations are regarded as useful. This acts as a somewhat disciplining force, albeit one that must naturally compete with the countervailing discipline of capital.
In a society where high economic inequality translates to political inequality, unions are already rare and important vehicles for empowering the working-class majority. But there is another, even more robust mechanism by which unions can exert influence over the state. That it doesn’t appear in Becher and Stegmueller’s article is no knock on the authors, because it doesn’t happen all that often in the contemporary United States. That mechanism is the strike.
Unions can and do influence legislative behavior on behalf of workers through the softer, nonconfrontational means Becher and Stegmueller identify. But if they really want to be in the same league as wealthy employers, they’ll need to start organizing in preparation for strikes and, when possible, pairing decisive strike action (or a credible threat of it) with demands on the state. This is something public-sector unions are uniquely poised to do, but private-sector unions can do it, too.
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), for example, showed how it was done when they demanded affordable housing for all Chicagoans during their 2019 strike. Chicago teachers didn’t win that lofty demand, which fell outside the purview of bargaining, but they sent a clear signal to the municipal administration: ignoring low-income constituents’ interests and needs will cause more trouble than it’s worth. For another example, also from 2019, consider when the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) threatened to go on strike if the government didn’t end the shutdown. In that case, the shutdown ended within hours.
If the spate of threatened Lyft and Uber capital strikes in California this year is an instance of the capitalist class striking to send a political message — with the expectation that it will force the state to prioritize its interests, and get its way either now or in the future — then the actions of CTU and AFA-CWA last year offered a glimpse of what the working-class equivalent might look like.
Politicians aren’t inclined to listen to people without money — but strong, fighting unions can make them.
Letter from Bernie on the 'Danger of Socialism'
But he sees already existing socialism for the rich as the problem.
August 26, 2020 Bernie Sanders PORTSIDE
https://portside.org/2020-08-26/letter-bernie-danger-socialism
If you have watched the first two nights of the Republican National Convention, and I am sorry if you have, you have probably seen speaker after speaker accuse Joe Biden and the Democratic Party of being SOCIALISTS who, if elected, will carry out the agenda of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar.
If only that were true…
But while they scream "socialist" as an epithet in their videos and from the stage, what everyone needs to know is that Trump and the Republican Party just LOVE socialism — a corporate socialism for the rich and the powerful.
And let's be clear. Their brand of socialism has resulted in more income and wealth inequality than at any time since the 1920s, with three multi-billionaires now owning more wealth than the bottom half of our nation. Their socialism has allowed, during this pandemic, the very, very rich to become much richer while tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs, their health care and face eviction.
While Trump denounces socialism let us never forget the $885 million in government subsidies and tax breaks the Trump family received for a real estate empire built on racial discrimination.
But Trump is not alone.
The high priest of unfettered capitalism, Trump’s National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, spoke in a video last night.
And who could ever forget when Larry was on television begging for the largest federal bailout in American history for his friends on Wall Street — some $700 billion from the Treasury and trillions in support from the Federal Reserve — after their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior created the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression.
But it is not just Trump and Larry Kudlow.
If you are a fossil fuel company, whose carbon emissions are destroying the planet, you get billions in government subsidies including special tax breaks, royalty relief, funding for research and development and numerous tax loopholes.
If you are a pharmaceutical company, you make huge profits on patent rights for medicines that were developed with taxpayer-funded research.
If you are a monopoly like Amazon, owned by the wealthiest person in America, you get hundreds of millions of dollars in economic incentives from taxpayers to build warehouses and you end up paying not one penny in federal income taxes.
If you are the Walton family, the wealthiest family in America, you get massive government subsidies because your low-wage workers are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and public housing in order to survive — all paid for by taxpayers.
This is what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. meant when he said that “This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.”
And that is the difference between Donald Trump and us.
Trump believes in corporate socialism for the rich and powerful.
We believe in a democratic socialism that works for the working families of this country. We believe that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, economic rights are human rights.
So yes, progressives and even moderate Democrats will face attacks from people who attempt to use the word "socialism" as a slur.
There is nothing new of that.
Like President Harry Truman said, "Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years … Socialism is what they called Social Security … Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people."
Our job in this moment is to stay focused.
First priority: defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history — and defeat him badly.
Then on Day 1 of the Biden administration, we will mobilize the working families of this country to demand a government that represents all of us and not just the few. We will fight to ensure that every American has a right to a decent job that pays a living wage, to health care, to a complete education, to affordable housing, to a clean environment, and to a secure retirement — and no more tax breaks for billionaires and large corporations.
Add your name to say you’re in this fight:
Sign my petition: add your name to say you’ll fight for a 21st Century Bill of Rights that guarantees everyone in this country a decent job with a living wage, quality health care, a complete education, affordable housing, a clean environment, and a secure retirement.
The one percent in this country may have enormous wealth and power, and they will use it to try and stop our agenda. But they are just the one percent. And if the 99 percent in this country stand together, defeat Trump, and go on to fight for the values we share, we can transform this country.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
Why Police Unions Are Not Part of the American Labor Movement
By Paul F. Clark
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/27/why-police-unions-are-not-part-of-the-american-labor-movement/
In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, news reports have suggested that police unions bear some of the responsibility for the violence perpetrated against African Americans.
Critics have assailed these unions for protecting officers who have abused their authority. Derek Chauvin, the former police officer facing second-degree murder charges for Floyd’s death, had nearly 20 complaints filed against him during his career but only received two letters of reprimand.
Many people who support labor unions in principle, who view them as a countervailing force against the power of employers, have only recently come to view police unions as problematic – as entities that perpetuate a culture of racism and violence.
But this sentiment reverberates through the history of the U.S. labor movement. As a labor scholar who has written about unions for decades, I think this viewpoint can be explained by the fact that police unions differ fundamentally from almost all trade unions in America.
Foot Soldiers for Status Quo
For many veterans of the labor movement, police have been on the wrong side of the centuries-old struggle between workers and employers. Rather than side with other members of the working class, police have used their legal authority to protect businesses and private property, enforcing laws viewed by many as anti-union.The strain between law enforcement and labor goes back to the origins of American unions in the mid 19th century. Workers formed unions to fight for wage increases, reduced working hours and humane working conditions.
For employers, this was an attack on the existing societal power structure. They enlisted the government as the defender of capital and property rights, and police officers were the foot soldiers who defended the status quo.
When workers managed to form unions, companies called on local police to disperse union gatherings, marches and picket lines, using violence and mass arrests to break the will of strikers.Narrow Focus
Police work is a fundamentally conservative act. And police officers tend to be politically conservative and Republican.
A poll of police conducted in September 2016 by POLICE Magazine found that 84 percent of officers intended to vote for Donald Trump that November. And law enforcement unions like the Fraternal Order of Police, the International Union of Police Associations and the National Border Patrol Council all endorsed Trump’s candidacy in 2016.
This contrasts sharply with the 39 percent share of all union voters who voted for Trump and the fact that every other union which made an endorsement supported Hillary Clinton.Exclusively protecting the interests of their members, without consideration for other workers, also sets police unions apart from other labor groups. Yes, the first priority of any union is to fight for their members, but most other unions see that fight in the context of a larger movement that fights for all workers.
Police unions do not see themselves as part of this movement. With one exception – the International Union of Police Associations, which represents just 2.7 percent of American police – law enforcement unions are not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the U.S. labor body that unites all unions.
Alternative Justice System
A central concern with police unions is that they use collective bargaining to negotiate contracts that reduce police transparency and accountability. This allows officers who engage in excessive violence to avoid the consequences of their actions and remain on the job.
In a way, some police unions have created an alternative justice system that prevents police departments and municipalities from disciplining or discharging officers who have committed crimes against the people they are sworn to serve.
In Minneapolis, residents filed more than 2,600 misconduct complaints against police officers between 2012 and 2020. But only 12 of those grievances resulted in discipline. The most significant punishment any officer received was a 40-hour suspension.
Besides collective bargaining, police have used the political process – including candidate endorsements and lobbying – to secure local and state legislation that protects their members and quells efforts to provide greater police accountability.
Police officers are a formidable political force because they represent the principle of law and order. Candidates endorsed by the police unions can claim they are the law and order candidate. Once these candidates win office, police unions have significant leverage to lobby for policies they support or block those they oppose.
Because of this power, critics claim that police unions don’t feel accountable to the citizens they serve. An attorney who sued the Minneapolis Police Department on behalf of a Black resident who was severely beaten by police officers said that he is convinced that Minneapolis “officers think they don’t have to abide by their own training and rules when dealing with the public.”
George Floyd’s death has raised serious concerns about the current role of police and police unions in our society. Several unions have demanded that the International Union of Police Associations be expelled from the U.S. labor federation. Other unions oppose expulsion. They argue that the labor movement can have a greater impact on a police union that is inside the “House of Labor.”
In any case, there is a growing recognition that police unions differ significantly from other unions. And there is a growing acceptance that they are not part of the larger American labor movement but rather a narrowly focused group pursuing their own self-interests, often to the detriment of the nation at large.
WILDFIRE, HURRICANES, FLOODS AND DROUGHTS QUADRUPLED IN COST SINCE 1980
https://popularresistance.org/wildfire-hurricanes-floods-and-droughts-quadrupled-in-cost-since-1980/
By Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News.August 26, 2020
| EDUCATE!
A New Report Looks At The Price Of Climate-Linked Natural Disasters And How Global Warming Is Making Them Worse.
Lisa Paul was still recovering from the wildfire trauma of 2017 when she experienced a renewed wave of sickening dread last week, the skies above her home and vineyard in the mountains east of Sonoma, California, filled with lightning that sparked hundreds of wildfires.
“I had pretty close to a panic attack when the Hennessy Fire, near Lake Berryessa, exploded into almost a mushroom cloud,” she said, adding that she could see the blaze just over the hills, “where the 2017 fires crested.”
The Wine Country fires of two years ago were fanned by a diablo wind that pushed the flames directly toward her property, destroying gardens, orchards and vineyards.
Those fires killed 22 people and damaged or destroyed more than 5,600 structures, burning across about 56 square miles. Property damage totaled $14.5 billion. Firefighting costs were estimated at $1.5 billion.
One year later, the $16.5 billion Camp Fire burned across 240 square miles and incinerated the town of Paradise in Butte County, California, about 180 miles northeast of Sonoma, killing 85 people and destroying or damaging more than 18,000 buildings.
The cost of this year’s fires—the first of which has so far burned their way across more than 1,400 square miles, destroyed hundreds of structures and are still not close to being contained—can’t even be guessed at. Fire season is just beginning. And global warming is going to make it worse, according to a new analysis commissioned by the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Defense Fund that looks at the cost of climate-linked natural disasters.The report details how the financial impacts of fires, tropical storms, floods, droughts and crop freezes have quadrupled since 1980.
“It shows what happens if we don’t do anything about global warming,” said EDF’s Elgie Holstein. “There’s no denying the trends and the fact this all becomes more expensive going forward.”
As if to underscore Holstein’s point, the latest swarm of wildfires to erupt in northern and central California have pushed the state’s wildfire fighting capacity to the edge, with officials warning that they are running out of resources to respond to new blazes, and urgently requesting help from other regions.
Here Are Five Take-Aways From The Report:
1. Climate Disasters are Expensive, and the Damage is Increasing
In the last 40 years, 663 disasters linked to climate change in the United States killed 14,223 people. The total cost: an estimated $1.77 trillion, a bit more than Canada’s Gross National Product in 2018.
Economic losses in Europe resulting from climate-linked extreme weather from 1980 to 2017 were lower, totaling $537 billion. The difference was the cost of tropical storms, which don’t affect Europe but accounted for nearly half of the U.S. total costs.
The report analyzed data going back to 1980 from several sources, including a database of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that catalogs climate disasters with costs of $1 billion or more and is continually updated. Only disasters with costs of that magnitude were included in the analysis.
The $1.77 trillion total cost in the United States included $954.4 billion from 45 tropical storms and hurricanes, by far the most costly extreme weather category. Next came $268.4 billion in costs from 125 hail, wind, ice storms, and blizzards, followed by $252.7 billion from drought, $150.4 billion from flooding, and $85.4 billion from wildfires.
In the 1980s, the annual average cost of climate and extreme weather disasters in the United States was about $18 billion per year. By the 2010s, the total annual cost more than quadrupled, to $80 billion per year.
A key assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change estimated that the economic damage caused by climate change will continue to increase by about 1.2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warming, coming out to $257 billion, just a little more than California’s entire current state budget of $222 billion.
2. Scientific Evidence Shows Strong Links to Climate Change
Tropical storms, hurricanes, droughts and floods account for about three-quarters of the cost of the extreme weather damage categorized in NOAA’s $1 billion disaster database, and there is strong scientific evidence showing that global warming caused by humans is making their impact worse. Based on that research, the EDF report says the current costs are “only a lower bound to what is anticipated” if global temperatures continue to rise.
Here are the costs of various types of disasters in the United States in the 40 years from 1980 to 2020, and how global warming is making such extreme weather worse.:
Tropical Storms
Most of the damage from tropical storms and hurricanes is caused by flooding, and damage from the storms totaled $954.4 from 1980 to 2020. The warmer the atmosphere gets, the more moisture it can hold, at the rate of 7 percent for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit warming. So tropical storms also have the potential to produce heavier rains.
One study showed that global warming made Hurricane Harvey three times more likely and 15 percent more intense.
Other research suggests that hurricanes may stall more often over coastal areas to drop devastating rainfall, and there are signs that global warming will cause an increase in the number of the largest and most damaging hurricanes, prompting warnings of “super storms.”
Research also suggests hurricane paths are shifting, potentially threatening new areas that aren’t expecting destructive storms.
Added to that is the steady increase in sea level rise, which is happening faster in tropical and subtropical areas where hurricanes are active. Low-lying coastal areas are increasingly being swamped by sunny flooding because the ocean is creeping up. When a hurricane pushes a storm surge on shore, it magnifies that increase, pushing coastal flooding farther inland.
Droughts
Droughts accounted for 14.1 percent of the total cost of climate-linked disasters in the 40-year period analyzed in the EDF report, totaling $252.7 billion, nearly the size of the annual budget of Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Global warming makes drought worse because a warmer atmosphere sucks moisture out of the ground and from plants, and also shifts rain patterns, as well as the timing and melt of snow.
One indicator of the change is the steep decline of spring season snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. That trend sets the stage for drying during the hottest summer months.
Global warming is drying up the Colorado River Basin and the larger surrounding Southwest region, with huge implications for the 40 million people who depend on the river for water.
The current climate trajectory is toward a Southwest megadrought that could last for centuries, perhaps punctuated by a few decades of extreme rains.
Consistent with climate evidence from past geologic eras of warming, Earth’s dry subtropical belts, which include most of the world’s desert areas, are expanding poleward, which could be the force that’s driving the intensification of regional droughts.
Floods
Floods were the fourth-costliest type of extreme climate disasters from 1980 to 2020, accounting for $150.4 billion, about 8.4 percent of the total cost.
Climate science shows that global warming is driving up extreme precipitation in some regions, leading to greater chances of flooding.
Global warming is changing snowfall and snowmelt patterns, tripling the risk of particularly destructive rain-on-snow floods, when unseasonable rain suddenly melts the snowpack.
Flooding from sea level rise alone is forcing coastal cities to spend millions to build seawalls and levees and protect water sources.
Globally, the risk of glacier outburst floods is increasing, and a warming climate is changing seasonal flooding patterns, with new risks that some communities may not be expecting.
3. The Poor and People of Color Are Most Vulnerable
With nearly every climate-related disaster, poor people and people of color, and often, indigenous communities, are most vulnerable. They have the fewest resources to adapt, or to get themselves out of harm’s way.
During the current California wildfires, thousands of agricultural workers are harvesting produce in extreme heat and exposed to unhealthy levels of smoke that can cause severe illness. The EDF report noted that about 70 percent of California’s agricultural workers is Latinx. During the 2017 fires, some vineyards had to close because workers left after losing their homes.
A December 2019 study found that during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, “Hispanic, black and other racial/ethnic minority households experienced more extensive flooding than white households,” and lower income households faced more extensive flooding than higher income households.
A 2008 report from a Washington, D.C. think tank said that Hurricane Katrina in 2005 offered a “bitter gift” by refocusing attention on the enduring legacy of racial segregation and poverty in the Gulf South.
Climate experts have found that drought in Central America is part of the reason for a continued stream of migration to the United States, which can multiply the already existing environmental injustice in immigrant and refugee communities.
Globally, drought and water shortages have increased the potential for international conflicts.
4. Nowhere is Safe; Specific Threats Vary by Region
Nowhere is immune to the threat of increasing weather extremes, made more likely by global warming. The National Climate Assessment outlines the regional risks.
Based on the damage trends over the last 40 years, the Gulf Coast and the Southeastern United States are most at-risk for deadly and costly damages from sea level rise flooding, storm surge and the extreme winds of tropical storms and hurricanes.
Extreme rainfall events have increased substantially in the Midwest, leading to more extreme floods that damage homes and fields, and so also threatening food supplies.
The Southwest is threatened by a persistent and intensifying drought that has dried up forests and brushlands and drained rivers and reservoirs.
Wildfires have increased exponentially with warming temperatures, and global warming will increase the risk in most of the West, especially California, recent research concluded.
Parts of the East Coast are sea level rise hotspots, according to a 2017 study.
5. The Biggest Future Safeguard: A Zero Emissions Economy
The EDF report recommends that, to protect the most vulnerable communities that are hit by “climate change-fueled extreme weather events first and worst,” federal lawmakers should invest in adaptive strategies in advance of disasters and not just after the fact.
Coastal areas vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding from tropical storms should build up natural ecosystems like dunes and wetlands to buffer storm and sea level rise impacts
Some emergency response funds should be freed up to help with analyzing growing risks from floods and droughts.
Overall, the biggest goal must be to build a zero emissions renewable economy to avoid as much additional global warming as possible
The EDF report focused in part on decarbonizing the transportation sector by switching to electric vehicles. Electrification of school bus fleets and commercial trucks represent low-hanging fruit, the report said.
Modernizing regional electric grids will help integrate and maximize the benefits of the rapidly growing supply of renewable energy, according to the report. Making buildings more energy efficient is another short-term goal with a big payoff.
Finally, investing now in sustainable agriculture will help protect food supplies and farm livelihoods.
None of this is new, said EDF’s Holstein, who was a high-level NOAA official in the early 2000s.
“We already knew ice caps were melting and that glaciers were retreating,” he said. “The changes we’re seeing are best explained by climate change. Nothing has changed, except all the indicators are moving in the direction of bad news. That’s what is in this report. There’s no denying the trends and the fact this becomes more expensive going into the future.”
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