Human Misery in the Cause of Making Profits

[Time for change]

Most people would agree that the ideal economic system consists of some combination of private and public sector activity. Private sector, “free market” economic activity often works well because it can provide incentives for people to be productive. But government provision of services, or collaboration with or regulation of the private sector are sometimes necessary for services where “free market” principles are not adequate to serve a nation’s vital interests. The challenge is to ascertain what types of services are best handled by the private sector and what types are best handled by the public sector or a combination of the two. I certainly do not claim to know what the ideal combination is. But while nobody has yet found the ideal combination, there are some general principles that are useful to keep in mind.

Government is needed to regulate economic activity so as to ensure basic fairness. A good example of that is the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890, the purpose of which was to prevent unfair monopolistic practices, especially with respect to services that are essential to the American people, such as gas and electric utilities. Another good example is government regulation of the public airways, which began in 1934 with the Federal Communications Act, but which was greatly weakened with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which led to excessive monopolistic control of the information that Americans receive.

Free market principles cannot operate well when the involved parties lack essential information with which to evaluate the goods or services that they purchase. For example, few Americans possess the expertise required to evaluate the safety of the food, drugs, or many other consumer products that they buy. Scientific research is required to establish that information. That is why we have regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Sometimes we are adversely affected by economic activity occurring between parties with whom we have no direct involvement. For example, industrial activities produce materials that get into our air, water or soil, which have the potential to damage our health. Thus we need government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate such activities.

Then there are services that are so essential to our citizens that they should be considered rights, or which are (or should be) essential activities of government. When such things are supplied by the private sector, the profit motive, while working fine to produce profits, may greatly interfere with the quality of services provided, thereby endangering the public welfare, our democracy, or our national security. I’ll now discuss these things in more detail, using a few examples.


THE CONCEPT OF ECONOMIC RIGHTS

Most Americans are quite familiar with the concepts of legal rights and political rights. But most of us would be very surprised to learn that much of the rest of the world also takes very seriously the concept of economic rights. The reason that most Americans would be surprised to learn that is that economic rights are rarely talked about in our country. Talk of economic rights raises the spectre of Communism or socialism, which are greatly frowned upon by our nation’s elites.

Nevertheless, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which are an expansion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the United Nations in 1948) was ratified by 142 nations as of 2003. Furthermore, the commitment to economic and social rights throughout the world is manifested by their inclusion in the constitutions of numerous countries. And the European Social Charter, signed by 24 European countries, establishes such rights as the right to work for fair remuneration, health care and social security. Not surprisingly, the United States has not yet either signed the Covenant or incorporated any of these rights into its own Constitution. Yet, most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that at least three of our greatest Presidents have considered economic rights to be important:


Three U.S. Presidents who were concerned about economic rights for Americans

James Madison
Madison recommended the following as being important to the preservation of democracy:

… By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited accumulation of riches; by the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the laws of property, reduce extreme wealth to a state of mediocrity, and raise indigence toward a state of comfort.

Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson saw things much the same way:

The consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislatures cannot invest too many devices for subdividing property… Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FDR first began speaking about our country’s need for economic and social rights to compliment the political rights granted to us in our original Bill of Rights during his first campaign for President, in 1932. Though his whole twelve year Presidency and four presidential campaigns centered largely on advocating for and implementing those rights, it wasn’t until his January 11th, 1944 State of the Union address to Congress that he fully enumerated his conception of those rights in what he referred to as a “Second Bill of Rights”. The elements of that conception fall into two major categories – opportunity and security. Here is a partial introduction to and list of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, as enumerated in his 1944 State of the Union address:

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all – regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are:

Opportunity
 The right to a useful and remunerative job…
 The right to a good education
 The right of every businessman… to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies…

Security
 The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment
 The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health
 The right of every family to a decent home
 The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

Unfortunately, as discussed by Cass R. Sunstein, Professor of Jurisprudence at Chicago School of Law, in his book, “The Second Bill of Rights – FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More Than Ever”, FDR’s Second Bill of Rights has to this day only been partially implemented in the United States.


Some examples of economic rights in the United States

The concept of economic rights did not gain much traction in the United States until the election of a President (FDR) who fervently believed in them coincided with circumstances (The Great Depression) that made their need glaringly apparent to a large proportion of American citizens.

Some of the most concrete results of FDR’s efforts were the Social Security Act of 1935, the creation of several agencies that produced greatly needed jobs, labor protection laws that created the right for workers to organize into unions and a federal minimum wage, antitrust policies, the GI bill of rights, and to help pay for some of those programs, record tax rates on wealthy corporations and individuals. But perhaps more important than these concrete accomplishments, by the end of FDR’s Presidency large segments of the American population accepted many aspects of his Second Bill of Rights as legitimate rights – for example, the right to a good education.


Health care

Yet despite all this, today there are 47 million Americans without health insurance, which results in thousands of premature deaths every year, including thousands of infants. Moreover, the health insurance that tens of millions of other Americans have is woefully inadequate.

Too many Americans have felt cheated when they find out that their insurance companies refuse to cover their serious illnesses, thereby leaving them without access to the life-saving medical care that they need. To what extent actual cheating has been responsible for these all too frequent tragedies is an open question. But the bottom line is that our current system has failed way too many American families. One indication of this is the fact that medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcies in our country – as evidenced by a study showing that about half of the 1.5 million bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by medical expenses, affecting two million people, including 700,000 children.

Our government could prevent or greatly reduce these tragedies by providing adequate health insurance directly to the American people. That is the principle behind President-Elect Obama’s health care plan.

Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that our private health care insurance system has failed so many Americans. Meeting our health care needs is not the purpose of private insurance companies. Their purpose is to make profits. The purpose of government sponsored health insurance, on the other hand, would be to meet the health care needs of the American people. And it would be accountable to the American people. If health care is a right, then we should have it.


EXAMPLES OF ESSENTIAL GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS FOR WHICH THE U.S. GOVERNMENT SHOULD HAVE MORE CONTROL

When services that are essential to the functioning of our government are under control of the private sector, there is always the possibility that the American people could be short changed by the quest for profits. Therefore, serious consideration should be given to whether such functions should be firmly under the control of government, rather than provided privately by those whose main goal is to make profits. Let’s consider some examples:


The U.S. prison system

A prison system is an intrinsic institution of government. Yet, in our country, recent decades have seen more and more of the functioning of our prison system relegated to the private sector. This has contributed to some very undesirable consequences. Lawrence Brown describes some of the problems:

A for-profit prison system sees medical care, retraining and rehabilitation as overhead and cuts corners whenever possible. The corporate prison industry requires as many customers as possible. Turning felons back into citizens is already very difficult. Pilot programs exist that have dramatically cut recidivism, but for-profit institutions have vested interests in not trying them.

The fact that our country has the highest incarceration rate in the world should be a major embarrassment to us. With only 5% of the world’s population, the United States has almost one quarter of the world’s prisoners. It currently has 2.3 million prisoners, a rate of 751 per 100,000 population – by far the highest rate in the world.

There are a number of reasons for this outrageous incarceration rate. But certainly the prison lobby is one very important reason. One thing they do to increase our prison population is lobby against drug treatment for non-violent offenders as an alternative to imprisonment. They lobby for mandatory minimum prison sentences, which prevent judges and juries from exercising their judgment, thereby forcing longer prison sentences. And they stoke the fires of our “War on drugs”, whose lone “success” has been to keep our prisons filled.

And most egregious of all, the prison industry often uses their prisoners for slave labor:

“The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners' work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself," says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."

Elections

Few functions are as integral to democracy as our elections. Yet our country contracts with private electronic voting machine companies to provide the machines that determine the results of our elections. These machines not only break down frequently, but they have often been proven to be insecure and inaccurate.

Worst of all, they claim that their machines are “proprietary” and therefore immune to inspection by government in order to ascertain the accuracy of their results in elections where the outcome is close or in doubt. As such, voting machine companies have actually prevented government from inspecting their machines in order to discover the source of errors, by threatening lawsuits against them.

The ultimate and worst consequence of this is that we often lack the means to verify the results of our elections. Electronic voting machines can be programmed – by the voting machine companies themselves – to manipulate vote counts. When that happens, the ability of our government to identify and verify the fraud is severely limited because of the extent to which our government has turned over the control of our elections to private voting machine companies.

The 2004 Presidential election is a case in point. Exit polls showed John Kerry clearly winning both the national popular vote and enough states to win the electoral vote as well. But the official vote count gave both the popular vote and the electoral vote count to George Bush. Yet, because of the lack of a paper trail of the vote count, as well as a lack of will to recount states where a paper trail existed and where the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote count was great, that crucial election was never adequately investigated.


Energy development

The functioning of our nation and the welfare of our people are dependent upon an accessible source of energy. But our dependence upon fossil fuels as our main source of energy has led to extremely serious problems.

For one thing, fossil fuels are a finite energy source, and there is little disagreement that their availability will begin to decline in the not too distant future. Even with the world availability of fossil fuels near its peak, our country has on various occasions committed aggressions against other nations in its attempt to gain or keep control over oil sources. It is very scary to contemplate how aggressive our nation may become as the world-wide availability of oil dwindles.

But even if the easy availability of fossil fuels would last another million years, they would still be very problematic because of their contribution to global warming. There is almost total consensus among knowledgeable scientists that the burning of fossil fuels is the most important cause of global warming, and that if the trend is not reversed before too long we will face catastrophic consequences, such as the flooding of our planet’s coastal areas, more frequent incidents of increasingly destructive hurricanes, and world-wide drought.

This problem has gotten out of hand because of the machinations of those who profit from it. Exxon-Mobile launched a major propaganda campaign to convince the American people that global warming is not a problem that we should be concerned about. Both the oil industry and the auto industry, through their lobbying efforts, have prevented us from adopting more extensive mass transportation systems which would reduce our use of oil, or putting a greater effort into the development of alternative, clean energy sources.

The development of clean energy sources is therefore a matter of national need and national security. We cannot afford to leave this effort to those who are mainly interested in short-term profits. Barack Obama has developed a plan for the development of alternative energy sources, which operates mainly through the private sector. If it works, that would be great. But to the extent that it doesn’t work, our government will need to increase its involvement. This issue is too important to leave to the whims of the “free market”.


Defense

Although our military is for the most part government operated, a whole series of industries has grown up around our military, whose profits are roughly proportional to the amount that we spend on it. Some call this the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). And many of us believe that the MIC has played a major role in driving us into unnecessary wars and ballooning the size of our military budget.

The military budget of the United States is now nearly as large as that of the rest of the world combined. It is a major cause of our ballooning national debt. Our wars and our national debt are ruining our country and placing virtually insurmountable burdens on our children and grandchildren.

Reasonable and sincere people may argue about how much money we need to spend on our military. But the very last thing we need is a system that encourages war profiteers who drive us into one war after another. Perhaps if we found a way to take the profit out of war we would have a lot less of it, and our military budget would dwindle substantially.


HUMAN MISERY IN THE CAUSE OF PROFIT

What all the topics discussed in this post have in common is the profit motive as a cause of human misery. The profit motive run wild has contributed to the lack of adequate health care for our citizens. It has contributed to a greater prison rate in our country than that of the most repressive countries in the world. It has given us an election system of questionable and unverifiable accuracy and integrity. It has contributed to a critically dangerous dependence on foreign oil and a world that could self-destruct due to out-of-control climate change. And worst of all, it contributes to war.

I don’t want to exaggerate this. I believe that the profit motive can be useful to our country. I believe that by motivating people to increase their inventiveness and productivity, it has much potential to benefit us all.

But it also can and has been a force for great evil. The preamble to our Constitution clearly states that one of the major purposes of our government is to “promote the general welfare”. That means that it shouldn’t leave the powerful free to do whatever they please, at the expense of everyone else. When the welfare of the American people is severely endangered, our government should not just stand by and let those who profit from that endangerment remain in control of it. It is OUR government. Our Declaration of Independence clearly says so. We, the American people, must make sure that it operates in OUR interest.

[leftstreet]

1. MIC was originally penned as Military Industrial Congressional Complex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex

In the penultimate draft of the address, Eisenhower initially used the term military-industrial-congressional complex, and thus indicated the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry. But, it is said, that the president chose to strike the word congressional in order to placate members of the legislative branch of the federal government.

K&R for lots of good info

[Time for change]

7. Very interesting

I wonder if he considered using the Executive Branch in the term?

[stillcool]

2. I didn't read it all..

just scanned through at the things that popped out at me. You're such a good gatherer and presenter of facts. I'm bookmarking for later. Thanks.

[Time for change]

15. Thank you

I really enjoy doing it.

[DCKit]

3. K&R

[babylonsister]

4. Could you try to feed DU a bit at a time? So much to absorb! nt

[Time for change]

19. I do try

I try to keep my posts to a reasonable length, but sometimes I feel the need to make them longer in order to make them more coherent. Unfortunately that means that some people, who otherwise might read them, won't have the time.

[Career Prole]

5. A masterpiece. Simply put, a masterpiece.

Bravo! :applause:

[Time for change]

9. Thank you very much

[Turbineguy]

6. This is great!

Let's not forget Bush's SEC, I figure they are responsible for at least 1/3 of the equity destruction in the stock markets.

Another 10 or so Trillion to add to the Bush Bill.

[Time for change]

12. Thank you -- What the Bush administration did to our country is going to take a long time to repair

If Obama is able to do that, he will deserve to be regarded as one of our best Presidents on that basis alone.

[Octafish]

8. Outstanding analysis,

Thank you for another excellent article, Time for change. Our nation should be using its resources to make life better for all Americans.

An honest Capitalist explained to me that the problem of recent decades has been the unfettered greed on the part of many of the world's wealthiest individuals. They have used their position and power -- through their surrogates in government and business -- to accumulate ever increasing hoards. And money makes money, just being there.

Unfortunately for us today, the money is not banked in the traditional manner, where it could be reinvested in the nation's economy. It is moved and hoarded overseas, where the wealthy can hide it from the tax man.

As throughout history, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And, because war is so profitable and the poor are so unrepresented in our democracy, the poor get used for cannon fodder.

Like you, I hope we use the present crisis as an opportunity to reinvent the economic system. It requiers a complete overhaul and redirection -- from one based on war and exploitation to one based on peace and cooperation. It may be our only chance of surviving the mess these greedheads have gotten us in. Thanks for giving us what's needed most to draw up the road map to safety -- the truth.

[Time for change]

13. Thank you Octafish

"It requiers a complete overhaul and redirection -- from one based on war and exploitation to one based on peace and cooperation. It may be our only chance of surviving the mess these greedheads have gotten us in."

Isn't that the truth. I think that the American people are now about as far to the left of their government as they've ever been, with the possible exception of during the Great Depression. What will it take for us to turn our government around?

[Laelth]

10. Great post. Excellent research. Jefferson's words are astounding.

Reposted from above ...

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=967

That's just awesome, and it makes me proud to be an American. It's so clear that we have lost our way.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Time for change]

16. Those words by Jefferson came more than a century before

the progressive income tax was written into our Constitution.

He was way ahead of his time.

I doubt whether manay (or any) grade school or high school children learn about this in school.

[WilliamHenryMee]

20. Trust In Government

Building Trust in Government

As the incoming Obama Administration ponders how to get us out of this economic mess at home and how to restore our reputation abroad---a great part of this is to restore the people’s belief in their government.

Do we “Trust” our government? Is trust or confidence a necessary component of an effective government? How did we get here to this lowest point of credibility from the high point of the Founding Fathers who under a bond of “hanging together” invested everything they had including their personal safety and lives in their newly formed government.

“In God We Trust” adorns our currency and this is a testament to the American ideal that the origins and purpose of our country are bigger than those of other countries and the ideals of any one political entity (state?), political party or presidential administration. The motto first appeared on currency in 1964, largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil War, a war which seemingly would last forever. The motto was an expression of hope and the average American’s penchant for optimism.

The motto E Pluribus Unum (Latin for "from many, one") was approved for use on the Great Seal of the United States in 1782. Originally suggesting that out of many colonies or states emerge a single nation, it has come to suggest that out of many peoples, races, and ancestries has emerged a single people and nation – illustrating the concept of the melting pot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Unum). The motto still appears on coins and currency, and was widely considered the de facto national motto. However, by 1956 it had not been established so by legislation as the official "national motto". The Congressional Record of 1956 reads: "At the present time the United States has no national motto. The committee deems it most appropriate that 'In God we trust' be so designated as U.S. national motto" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust).

So the inherent distrust of government is codified into our laws and programmed into our individual psyche.

This choice of distrust being thrust upon us by rabid evangelical Christians who distained President Jefferson’s letter enumerating the “Separation between Church and State”; even though this principal protects their rights to their own beliefs in perpetuity (what better deal is there?). Their animosity continues through subsequent Supreme Court decisions upholding this wall of separation and the Internal Revenue Service ruling enacting a prohibition on political activities. You can tell these people when they say: “we are a Christian Nation”; a bizarre rewriting of the history of the Puritans coming here to flee the Anglicans---and other groups who came to America for religious freedom. By secularism there is a perpetual protection for all religions.

The evangelical Christians must be disappointed with the Republican Party who promised them to end abortion and gay rights. When in complete control of the House, Senate, Presidency, press and at a time when the Supreme Court made decisions like Bush versus Gore completely on ideological positions and not legally based ; the Karl Rove planners talked Sen. Bill Frist and Rep. Tom Delay out of bringing forward a test case against Roe versus Wade at the local level. This was because if Roe was overturned it would permanently eliminate the campaign strategy of inciting the base to riot. It is much like the Nuclear Option against filibusters being used against Republicans when out of power.

Obama’s inspirational messages of: ‘hope’, ‘change we can believe in’ and ‘yes we can’; offer a bond to the American people of taking back their government from the forces of fraud, evil and oil. Taking it back from the cronyism, corruption and incompetence of the Bush-Cheney Administration’s last eight years.

President Bush’s approval rating at 22% in November 2008 is the lowest of any President since the ratings were first taken. The Vice President’s rating of 9% back in 2006 is equally the lowest rating ever recorded. But equally bad are the approval ratings of Congress reaching a low of 10%.

There is a listing of criminal enterprises happening within the Bush-Cheney Administration (http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/broken_government/); listing 128 areas of failure. There are non-partisan Government Accountability Office reports like GAO #09-14 on the Department of Labor (Better Cost Assessments and Department-wide Performance Tracking Are Needed to Effectively Manage Competitive Sourcing Program). Where in the report it documents how the costs savings of privatization were faked. There are “officially” released lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction, al Qaeda in Iraq, the Katrina response, Walter Reed Hospital. Political campaigns with lies about Vietnam War heroes Max Cleland, John Kerry and Al Gore---while the opposing Republican candidates had dubiously obtained war deferments or even deserted ---shatter the confidence we have in public officials when the truth finally comes out (and it always does).

The Lee Atwater-Karl Rove style of Republican politics literally brainwashed voters by running 24/7 on television and radio stations with outright lies about their opponents. Then if the truth is ever found out about the false advertising after the election (like Willie Horton ads against Dukasis), the general public feels duped and begins to distrust government even more. The more outrageous an accusation is about the opposition candidate the more the media runs with it and the harder it is to defend against it. This is the ‘politics of personal destruction’ that the Clintons labeled and complained about. PBS’ Frontline did an expose on Atwater/Rove called Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/atwater/). In fact, the campaign against Bill Clinton started in 1989 in Arkansas and not in 1992. As a voter, a taxpayer or a citizen it becomes: the more you believe in something the more it will be undermined by these types of influence peddlers until eventually you believe in nothing—and you trust no one. This is the goal of the Republican and Neo-con operatives---you are made to ‘fear' your government.

Think back to some other Republicans to prove these points:

Nixon’s Watergate highlights probably the biggest failure of government.

Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” and “morning in America” themes of his Administration were framed by two quotations:

1. Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. The era of big government is dead.
2. The nine most dangerous words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’’

And two actions:

1. Iran-Contra (the selling of drugs in Central America to buy weapons for the hostage takers in Iran).
2. Marine Barracks in Beirut (in light of our 9-11 experience).

So no wonder we are conditioned to thinking that government fails us---when our experiences with a non-government politician show failure and his advice to us is not to trust our government. Government is said to be not as good as the private sector. The business of Big Business is doing business good. In other words, privatization saves money and does the job more efficiently. Government is incapable of being as effective as business because they have the profit motive to contend with.

But the history books don’t point out the failures of the self-described “Washington Outsiders”---guys who are supposedly not corruptible or better than the experienced set of leaders. Yet, some 3,000 officials of the Reagan Administration were investigated or indicted for a variety of corruption charges. To this day--- the Reagan Administration is held up as a model of “good government.” People are still talking about taking Democrat Jackson off the $20 bill to be replaced by Reagan and petitions circulate on the Internet. Another idea is taking Democrat FDR off the dime to be replaced by Republican Reagan.

In the present day we know the signs of failure by a leader that doesn’t want to be in government:

1) In the article: In Tales from the Dark Side---in the trenches of Bush government…..
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/WilliamHenryMee/3
In 2004, I met a very top official in the Veteran's Administration (flying on an airplane from Washington, D.C.). This official had been an independent appointed by HW Bush, a WWII veteran, who was very committed to veterans. They were telling stories about going to Russia and inspecting the Nuclear disarmament process. If the Homeland Security effort was a serious and valid effort to protect the nation and not to just enrich a few friends of the Presidential Administration, the following things would have been done……

2) In the article: “What is the Depth of the Bush corruption?”
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/WilliamHenryMee/4
The most scary thing about Sen. John McCain’s run for the Presidency is that he had tremendous last minute support from the Bush-Cheney crowd. Something that he couldn’t distance himself from or divorced himself from. Something he had to embrace to garner the support of the GOP base. There are probably some 30,000 individuals that have directly obtained federal employment under G.W. Bush by their political support of the Neocon movement.

Even the recent $700 Billion Bailout is perceived by most Americans as ineptness of the Bush Administration.

What will it take to “restore” our trust in government? Our belief in the ‘American Way.’

What will it take to be able to believe that government can help us in solving our Country’s problems?

Is it such a ‘credibility gap’ that the populace will never unify behind its government?

These are dark and desperate times, but we can rebuild the credibility if we try. It starts with transparency, transition and trust.

FDR got us out of the Republican Great Depression through a series of work programs called the New Deal. Things Big Business was incapable and unwilling to do (so much so that they funded a revolt against FDR using Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler and being organized by Prescott Bush and the American Liberty League). During WWII, Senator Harry S. Truman had to crack down on war profiteering and inefficient companies in his Committee hearings. Some companies were nationalized when they refused to support the war effort. We forget this history and are doomed to repeat it unless we can remember the 5th of November.

As out of work actors, television directors, cameramen and artists sat around---FDR put them to work making propaganda films---thus restoring the confidence of the American People in their government. They made films that explained how the dust bowl happened and the massive erosion on the Mississippi River that happened after the floods—and encouraged farmers to start anew. Films that showed how damming the smaller rivers and making electricity from them would bring the Appalachian Mountains out of darkness and poverty (Tennessee Valley Authority). Films that showed how helping Black people in Detroit with illiteracy was just as important as helping you back home on Main Street, U.S.A. (overcoming racism and the mistrust of strangers coming to work in your town). These were films that showed people doing productive work to bring back their dignity instead of resorting to crime or begging. Artists made posters to explain what the government was doing. Teenagers and young men joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and planted three billion trees. The Works Progress Administration built public buildings still in use today. People were taught new skills or given a chance to operate in their old industries which were long shut down by an ailing economy. Government’s job was to prevent a complete breakdown of society and to protect the greedy businesses from being looted by the 95% of people who had nothing. Small government proponents had no platform or voice because their ideas were void of reality and merit.

Vice President Al Gore’s Reinventing Government was a major effort to reshape the federal government into an organization that better served its customers. Here is an excerpt from a report titled: Common Sense Government:

People said it couldn't be done. When President Bill Clinton announced in March 1993 that "the federal government is broken and we intend to fix it," the old hands in Washington, D.C., shook their heads. You'll never fix the federal government, they said. Been there, done that, doesn't work. When he announced a government wide initiative to "reinvent government" called the National Performance Review, the skeptics raised a collective eyebrow. And six months later, when the National Performance Review's first report From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less, the blueprint for reinvention was published, they sighed, "Another report for the shelf."

Recognizing that the only way to remove skepticism was to rebuild trust, the report stated:

For a long while, Americans liked what they got from the federal government. They trusted it to do the right thing and to do it well. In 1963, more than three quarters of all Americans said they believed the federal government did the right thing most of the time. But today (1993) that figure has dropped to less than 20 percent.

Al Gore started another initiative called: “Rebuilding Citizen Trust in Governance Project” and this project greatly increased America’s trust in its government. I wrote the following in 1995 to describe the mood of the times:

We are working in a time and age where public servants are considered to be overpaid, under-worked and generally incompetent. They have become the targets of violence, ridicule and disrespect by citizens opposed to the actions of their government; with the worst case scenario being the bombing of the Federal Center in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh. Trust in the government has dropped from 76% in 1964 to 25% in 1980, then back up to 45% in 1984, and then to an all time low of 20% in 1993. By 1997, it was back up to 39% according to the Pew Foundation. Nearly every taxpayer says their taxes are too high for the value received. Only half of our citizens vote anymore because of their total disgust with the political process.

The report on the results of the Rebuilding Citizen Trust in Governance Project says in part:

The movement to reform, redesign, and reinvent government to be more accountable for performance is partly driven by declining levels of citizen trust and engagement. Public managers everywhere face more complicated duties when the public - customers - are dissatisfied. This project draws on the latest research and practice information as it searches for ways to increase levels of citizen engagement and trust in government. An Academy panel will issue a report recommending specific steps government can take to address this important issue. This project, funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to the Academy, includes a web page for scholars and practitioners working on this topic.

Media Support Project

Print and broadcast journalists help define citizen perceptions about government and public policy. If they are uninformed or misinformed, there is much greater chance that the public will be, too. This project assists journalists and news organizations in covering the biggest government news story of today - the devolution of programs, particularly welfare, from the federal government to the states. Supported by the Annie E. Casey foundation, the project provides journalists with direct linkages to experts for assistance in covering the devolution process. In addition, journalists in the six target states - Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, Texas, and Washington - receive regular mailings about policy changes and new story ideas. Journalists may also attend related conferences and have access to extensive online resources provided by welfare reform research groups.

Reinventing Government and the National Performance Review was destroyed by the Bush Administration eager to get rid of anything stamped “Clinton.” Yet, their replacement programs do not take shape until four years afterward when they realize ---they too needed to rebuild the image of government. But after Katrina and Bush’s quote of “great job Brownie!”---their chance to claim the mantle of trust evaporated.

Now the torch passes to a new administration and its standard bearer just seems more trustworthy and competent. A results-oriented and straight talking person, Barack Obama, is likely to be successful in regaining the trust of the American People. Obama’s NEW New Deal or Green New Deal is what we need to get American back on its feet again.

Trusting our government is easy when the People and not the politicians are given an opportunity to forge that new bond of trust.

<End>

[Ron Green]

11. The profit motive being a natural and necessary element in our society, how do we then

ensure that there is an element to balance, to "do the right thing?" And how do we know what "the right thing" is?

I suggest that government, in order to keep the profit motive in check, must be influenced by a cultural force in balance with the natural fear-driven greed that drives profit. Historically, the Church was charged with keeping in check the excesses of the Market, but of course it's been more complicit than corrective throughout its life. A modern version of "the Church" might include non-profit foundations, educational organizations, charities, scientific groups, liberal think tanks, labor unions, and any organization that exists for the betterment of human life.

The problem has always been that fear, rather than love, quickly takes over any segment of society, whether it's for the purpose of profit, charity, or legislation. If legislators are to act in a way to rein in corporate power, there must be a creed, a voice, and a lobby in equal opposition to the natural efforts of profit-makers to get their way.

I believe a 3-part system (Church, State, Market) has always existed, and must continue. The question is How to keep it in balance and uncorrupted by the Market.

[Time for change]

14. Very interesting thoughts

You are undoubtedly correct that in order to make our government work for us -- keep it in balance as you say -- there must be some force that pressures them to do that. If not, government will eventually become corrupted, and that is what we now have on our hands.

I also think that a big part of the solution is to somehow educate the American people against the propaganda that we have been hearing from right wingers throughout our history. That is, the propaganda that says that the so-called "free market" will solve all our problems, and that any deviation from the "free-market" puts us on the slippery slope to totalitarian Communism. In short, the American people need to be a lot more educated about history, politics and a lot of other things.

[Ron Green]

17. That "free market" propaganda

has always appeared in the guise of "personal responsibility." I mean, who can argue with the idea that we should make good decisions, be responsible for our mistakes, work hard to succeed, and all that?

The problem is that the Law of the Jungle is always in effect, although the propaganda doesn't talk about this. That law makes sure the less fortunate will be exploited by the powerful, while being promised power of their own if they only support the exploiters.

I believe that what we define as "evil" is simply a separation from the truth of our commonalities and our shared existence. Our "free market" propaganda machine emphasizes our individuality, and is fundamentally fear-based. A message system that reminds us again and again of our unity should be the job of the Church, but we can see how that has worked out.

[Time for change]

18. Yeah, the church in general has failed to play that role

The Christian religion has been corrupted to the point where many variants of it in the United States today barely resemble the message of its founder, whom its adherants to revere. In the same way, in many respects our country has been corrupted to the extent that in many respects it barely resembles today what our founders envisioned.