I was reading an interesting article in The Nation this morning that discussed how wrong economists, especially highlighting Paul Krugman, were about globalization and how while it is obvious to most "people" that the politics of global trade economics were disastrously wrong (except for the 1%), somehow economists and politicians, including current world leaders don't seem to get it - and won't discuss their utter failure.
After I found myself fairly impressed with the article, I read the comments that followed and was equally impressed by a general consensus that while I was firmly in the intelligent observer camp, I was also helplessly naive about economic history and the general uselessness of (probably) all experts in that field.
Also interesting was the idea that "you can't go back".
This is something that I have no problem accepting in so many areas of life but have never really considered as an unalterable, universal principle - though now I am beginning to consider it might be that way.
Once the factors in an equation have changed, the equation must also change; you can't just go back to what seemed to work before and expect it to work again when things are different.
Pandora's box, as it were, has been opened and all that came out is not going to get stuffed back in no matter how much we want it or how hard we try or how much we pay, pray or envision.
While I do have some specific ideas about Global Trade and Capitalism, which are primarily that we should eviscerate them and return to local production and local consumption, taking the immoral, ill gotten gains of opportunistic capitalism and returning it to the victims of "voodoo economics", put basic services in the hands of "the people", and make the Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness a reality for all people instead of just a privileged and corrupt few, I am not planning on going into great detail about that right now.
I do think that considering this article is a good thing, but hope we can recognise that neither the problem nor the solution are an either/or, black/white kind of thing.
Recognising that you have a problem is always the first step to resolving it.
We should recognize that we do have a tremendous problem that is likely to explode in our faces in an astronomical manner.
The solution?
Well, we know we can't just tap the "way-back machine" for that, but we do have to adjust our view and actions to those that retard excess and embrace equality and a restoration of the liberties, freedoms and opportunities that offer a life of opportunity and dignity that includes the prospect of everyone enjoying the expectation that they are free and able to pursue and achieve happiness.
I also recommend the accompanying 10 min. video.
Here is the article.
http://www.thenation.com/article/173593/why-was-paul-krugman-so-wrong?utm_medium=email&utm_source=HeadlineNation&utm_term=&utm_campaign=
Here are a couple of the comments that caught my attention.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sad reality is that "experts", all of them, every one, totally suck at making accurate predictions. Krugman is not special that way at all.
Read Future Babble by Dan Gardner for good evidence of this thesis.
"In 2008, as the price of oil surged above $140 a barrel, experts said it would soon hit $200; a few months later it plunged to $30. In 1967, they said the USSR would have one of the fastest-growing economies in the year 2000; in 2000, the USSR did not exist. In 1911, it was pronounced that there would be no more wars in Europe; we all know how that turned out. Face it, experts are about as accurate as dart-throwing monkeys. And yet every day we ask them to predict the future — everything from the weather to the likelihood of a catastrophic terrorist attack. Future Babble is the first book to examine this phenomenon, showing why our brains yearn for certainty about the future, why we are attracted to those who predict it confidently, and why it's so easy for us to ignore the trail of outrageously wrong forecasts."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greider steps back into the past and lives there. The refurbishing of American industry is not going to happen to any great extent, the game of the planned industrial economy as Germany has used is over because economic growth is over. In fact using real inflation rates the US hasn't grown since 2000.
Growth is over because the "powers that be" in the US, the EU and Japan have decided to save the oligarchs with zombie economies rather than write off unpayable debt. This has worked well for the 1% as their wealth and income since 2009 has soared. Not so good for the rest of us consumers.
Growth is over because the world has reached peak energy, (especially oil,) water, soil and the ability of the earth to provide ever increasing commodities while trying to absorb ever increasing amounts of pollution. The price of fuel and climate change are soon going to starve many in the less wealthy countries.
Greider needs to get up to speed on the realities of the 21st century before he starts recommending any sort of economic plans to be adopted. Greider still thinks the growth party will make a roaring comeback while debt gets piled ever higher, climate change gets even nastier and oil gets ever more expensive and harder to find ...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And here is the video.
In this RSA Animate, celebrated academic David Harvey looks beyond
capitalism towards a new social order. Can we find a more responsible,
just, and humane economic system?
This RSA Animate was taken from
a lecture given as part of the RSA's free public lecture programme. The
RSA is a 258 year-old charity devoted to driving social progress and
spreading world-changing ideas. For more information, visit http://www.thersa.org
Showing posts with label Jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jobs. Show all posts
2/13/13
Dr. Jill Stein of Green Party Weighs In On 2013 State of the Union Address
The end of the 2012 Election did not slow down Jill Stein.
She is still very active and appears to be continuing as the Green Party's Presidential Candidate.
Dr. Stein, before, during and after the last campaign was constantly in the streets, connecting with the American People, getting arrested, jailed and basically standing up for her beliefs as no other candidate would even consider.
She is the only candidate for President that stands out as committed to resolving the real issues affecting "the People" with real, workable and novel solutions that no one else in government is considering.
Dr. Stein is not a polished, trained political entertainer, but she is clear, honest, committed and intelligent.
Here is her response to President Obama's 2013 State of the Union Address.
Unlike the GOP and TP responses, she offers real solutions instead of critical political posturing.
Stein's participation here lasts about 40 minutes.
She is still very active and appears to be continuing as the Green Party's Presidential Candidate.
Dr. Stein, before, during and after the last campaign was constantly in the streets, connecting with the American People, getting arrested, jailed and basically standing up for her beliefs as no other candidate would even consider.
She is the only candidate for President that stands out as committed to resolving the real issues affecting "the People" with real, workable and novel solutions that no one else in government is considering.
Dr. Stein is not a polished, trained political entertainer, but she is clear, honest, committed and intelligent.
Here is her response to President Obama's 2013 State of the Union Address.
Unlike the GOP and TP responses, she offers real solutions instead of critical political posturing.
Stein's participation here lasts about 40 minutes.
Watch live streaming video from greenpartyus at livestream.com
12/17/12
UPDATE ON MICHIGAN RTW - OOPS!
Oops: Michigan Republicans Have Passed a Right to Work Law that may be Impossible to Implement
From Politicus USA http://www.politicususa.com/oops-michigan-republicans-passed-work-law-unimplementable.html
Did Michigan Republicans even read the ALEC-Koch “Right-to-Work” legislation they just passed?
It doesn’t appear likely. Why? Because the law may not be able to be implemented as intended.
Just as the Wisconsin law violated their state constitution, so it appears the Michigan law does the same, albeit for different reasons. In addition to the violation of the state constitution, just as in Wisconsin, we also have a lawsuit filed over the violation of the Michigan Open Meetings law. But to the constitutional issue…
Michigan Senate Democrats report, “The Michigan Constitution gives clear authority to the Civil Service Commission over conditions of employment for the state’s workforce. Experts have suggested today only a vote of the Civil Service Commission could enact Right to Work policies for state workers.”
Oopsie.
This is the sort of thing that happens when a national organization is writing your legislation for you. But one assumes that the big boys at ALEC did not count on the uber laziness of the Republicans. Surely they were meant to fine tune the bill to suit their state. But then, when you shove a bill through in a lameduck session and don’t hold it open for debate, these things tend to happen.
Senator Bert Johnson (D – Detroit) pointed out that not only the public, but also the lawmakers were not given a chance to read the bills, “The public was not given an opportunity to read these bills, legislators were not given an opportunity to read these bills, and we now know that the Governor himself either didn’t read or didn’t understand these bills himself. This process has been a complete affront to Democracy from the start and was nothing more than a political gift to the Koch Brothers and ALEC who bought and paid for this legislation.”
Over and over again, we see Republicans violating the law to pass ALEC legislation, and we also see them refusing to even read the bills they present let alone the bills of the opposition. What, exactly, are they being paid by the people to do, if not read and write legislation that actually fits the laws?
The same law that Governor Walker passed in violation of Open Meetings laws and in violation of the state constitution was struck down by the courts in September. The millions wasted on passing legislation illegally and fighting it in courts speaks to the seriousness of Republicans when they talk about deficits. There’s always money to enact a political agenda aimed at the opposition party, but there’s no money for starving kids.
Further irony is provided by Michigan State Rep. Lisa Posthumus Lyons (R-Alto), who called the passage of the “right-to-work” law “freeing” the workers. Apparently Ms. Lyons didn’t want her husband freed. He is a corrections officer and Ms. Lyons fought to have corrections officers exempted from the law. She explained, “When we talk about the brave women in police and fire we need to remember people in corrections. These guys work in conditions that we can’t even begin to imagine. It’s not financial. It’s philosophy. I am saying we need to treat our corrections officers that way we treat our police men and women and firefighter men and women.”
So, Ms. Lyons believes that we should treat our corrections officers (like her husband) the way we treat our police and firefighters, which she implies is better than we treat the other workers, because they work in tough conditions and therefor deserve or have earned the right to be treated better. And yet, she calls denying the right to collectively bargain freedom. What we have here is an admission by a Republican that when it comes to their own personal lives, they’ll take the union, please. No doubt Ms. Lyons is familiar with all that the union does to protect her husband. If she’s lucky, the law she supported will be struck down.
Ms. Lyon’s amendment was not taken up by the Michigan legislature, but then, seeing as they appear not to have read the actual bill they passed, she should take heart that it wasn’t personal. ALEC doesn’t recognize corrections officers as worthy; aka, voting Republican.
10/17/12
Jill Stein Slaughters Opponents - Including Obama/Romney in 2nd Presidential Debate
I believe that anyone who would watch the Democracy Now Expanded Debate would easily and overwhelmingly vote for Jill Stein, the Candidate for the Green Party.
Thanks to Democracy Now all candidates who were willing to participate, who could actually win in the electoral college were represented for the American People to consider - except one who refused his invitation. (plus he's kind of a dick)
Watch this "Expanded" Debate a little further down this post.
What we saw was the two corporately owned candidates, Obama and Romney, evade questions for most of the time and fall back on their old worn talking points.
Especially at the very beginning they both repeated their TP's virtually word for word in both their answers and their follow-up responses. It was almost funny.
Where Romney couldn't evade, he simply lied. Fact checkers will be flooding the media with calling him on his BS for days, while some of it was caught in real time by both the moderator and the President.
The Third Party Candidates who participated - Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) declined again - featured Jill Stein of the Green Party, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party and Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party.
Where Romney and Obama evaded issues, Anderson and Goode seemed to not understand the question or the issue.
Anderson was pretty right-on about a few things and called Romney and Obama out on some of their misrepresentations.
Goode's answer to every virtually question was about green cards and unfettered access to military grade weapons for all with no restrictions whatever.
Only Jill Stein directly addressed the issues presented and offered concrete solutions with some specific examples of how her plan would proceed and why it would work. More specifics are available on her website www.jillstein.org
She also was the only candidate who showed an understanding of the real underlying causes of our problems and offered solutions to remedying those causes.
I was so impressed with her.
She stood head and shoulders above the field.
And she represented herself as capable of leading our nation in a productive, positive and responsible manner, with a quick turnaround in our most pressing problems.
If you haven't voted already, you really owe it to yourself and your family to watch this expanded debate.
In many states you can still get an absentee ballot (that is how I'm voting today) and many states do not require a "reason" to justify obtaining one.
Regardless of how you choose to vote. Please vote. Vote your conscience.
I'm voting for Stein.
Sadly, the "downticket" Green Party candidates in Michigan are not so impressive, so I will likely vote mostly for Democrats for local offices and other Federal Offices.
Though not perfect (no one is) I appreciate my current Congressman, Sander Levin and Senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow.
In protest of the GOP anti-American, NeoCon "Tea Party" takeover, I will NOT vote for any Republicans this time.
The conduct of the GOP in both Federal and Michigan Legislative and Judicial bodies is undeserving of support and worthy of prosecution.
Thanks to Democracy Now all candidates who were willing to participate, who could actually win in the electoral college were represented for the American People to consider - except one who refused his invitation. (plus he's kind of a dick)
Watch this "Expanded" Debate a little further down this post.
What we saw was the two corporately owned candidates, Obama and Romney, evade questions for most of the time and fall back on their old worn talking points.
Especially at the very beginning they both repeated their TP's virtually word for word in both their answers and their follow-up responses. It was almost funny.
Where Romney couldn't evade, he simply lied. Fact checkers will be flooding the media with calling him on his BS for days, while some of it was caught in real time by both the moderator and the President.
The Third Party Candidates who participated - Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) declined again - featured Jill Stein of the Green Party, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party and Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party.
Where Romney and Obama evaded issues, Anderson and Goode seemed to not understand the question or the issue.
Anderson was pretty right-on about a few things and called Romney and Obama out on some of their misrepresentations.
Goode's answer to every virtually question was about green cards and unfettered access to military grade weapons for all with no restrictions whatever.
Only Jill Stein directly addressed the issues presented and offered concrete solutions with some specific examples of how her plan would proceed and why it would work. More specifics are available on her website www.jillstein.org
She also was the only candidate who showed an understanding of the real underlying causes of our problems and offered solutions to remedying those causes.
I was so impressed with her.
She stood head and shoulders above the field.
And she represented herself as capable of leading our nation in a productive, positive and responsible manner, with a quick turnaround in our most pressing problems.
If you haven't voted already, you really owe it to yourself and your family to watch this expanded debate.
Regardless of how you choose to vote. Please vote. Vote your conscience.
I'm voting for Stein.
Sadly, the "downticket" Green Party candidates in Michigan are not so impressive, so I will likely vote mostly for Democrats for local offices and other Federal Offices.
Though not perfect (no one is) I appreciate my current Congressman, Sander Levin and Senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow.
In protest of the GOP anti-American, NeoCon "Tea Party" takeover, I will NOT vote for any Republicans this time.
The conduct of the GOP in both Federal and Michigan Legislative and Judicial bodies is undeserving of support and worthy of prosecution.
6/26/12
Capitalism Failing Worldwide But In Spain An Alternative Enjoys Long Term Success
Published on Monday, June 25, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
Yes, There Is an Alternative to Capitalism: Mondragon Shows the Way
Why are we told a broken system that creates vast inequality is the only choice? Spain's amazing co-op is living proof otherwise
There is no alternative ("Tina") to capitalism?
Dani
Martinez, innovation director at Orbea bicycles, part of Mondragon
Co-operative Corporation, in Mallabia, 2011. (Photograph: Vincent
West/Westphoto for the Guardian)
Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?
I understand why such a system's leaders would like us to believe in Tina. But why would others?
Of course, alternatives exist; they always do. Every society chooses – consciously or not, democratically or not – among alternative ways to organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible.
Modern societies have mostly chosen a capitalist organization of production. In capitalism, private owners establish enterprises and select their directors who decide what, how and where to produce and what to do with the net revenues from selling the output. This small handful of people makes all those economic decisions for the majority of people – who do most of the actual productive work. The majority must accept and live with the results of all the directorial decisions made by the major shareholders and the boards of directors they select. This latter also select their own replacements.
Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises. Tina believers insist that no alternatives to such capitalist organizations of production exist or could work nearly so well, in terms of outputs, efficiency, and labor processes. The falsity of that claim is easily shown. Indeed, I was shown it a few weeks ago and would like to sketch it for you here.
In May 2012, I had occasion to visit the city of Arrasate-Mondragon, in the Basque region of Spain. It is the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation (MC), a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production.
MC is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits).
As each enterprise is a constituent of the MC as a whole, its members must confer and decide with all other enterprise members what general rules will govern MC and all its constituent enterprises. In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker's salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)
Given that MC has 85,000 members (from its 2010 annual report), its pay equity rules can and do contribute to a larger society with far greater income and wealth equality than is typical in societies that have chosen capitalist organizations of enterprises. Over 43% of MC members are women, whose equal powers with male members likewise influence gender relations in society different from capitalist enterprises.
MC displays a commitment to job security I have rarely encountered in capitalist enterprises: it operates across, as well as within, particular cooperative enterprises. MC members created a system to move workers from enterprises needing fewer to those needing more workers – in a remarkably open, transparent, rule-governed way and with associated travel and other subsidies to minimize hardship. This security-focused system has transformed the lives of workers, their families, and communities, also in unique ways.
The MC rule that all enterprises are to source their inputs from the best and least-costly producers – whether or not those are also MC enterprises – has kept MC at the cutting edge of new technologies. Likewise, the decision to use of a portion of each member enterprise's net revenue as a fund for research and development has funded impressive new product development. R&D within MC now employs 800 people with a budget over $75m. In 2010, 21.4% of sales of MC industries were new products and services that did not exist five years earlier. In addition, MC established and has expanded Mondragon University; it enrolled over 3,400 students in its 2009-2010 academic year, and its degree programs conform to the requirements of the European framework of higher education. Total student enrollment in all its educational centers in 2010 was 9,282.
The largest corporation in the Basque region, MC is also one of Spain's top ten biggest corporations (in terms of sales or employment). Far better than merely surviving since its founding in 1956, MC has grown dramatically. Along the way, it added a co-operative bank, Caja Laboral (holding almost $25bn in deposits in 2010). And MC has expanded internationally, now operating over 77 businesses outside Spain. MC has proven itself able to grow and prosper as an alternative to – and competitor of – capitalist organizations of enterprise.
During my visit, in random encounters with workers who answered my questions about their jobs, powers, and benefits as cooperative members, I found a familiarity with and sense of responsibility for the enterprise as a whole that I associate only with top managers and directors in capitalist enterprises. The easy conversation (including disagreement), for instance, between assembly-line workers and top managers inside the Fagor washing-machine factory we inspected was similarly remarkable.
Our MC host on the visit reminded us twice that theirs is a co-operative business with all sorts of problems:
Dani
Martinez, innovation director at Orbea bicycles, part of Mondragon
Co-operative Corporation, in Mallabia, 2011. (Photograph: Vincent
West/Westphoto for the Guardian)Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism's recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?
I understand why such a system's leaders would like us to believe in Tina. But why would others?
Of course, alternatives exist; they always do. Every society chooses – consciously or not, democratically or not – among alternative ways to organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make individual and social life possible.
Modern societies have mostly chosen a capitalist organization of production. In capitalism, private owners establish enterprises and select their directors who decide what, how and where to produce and what to do with the net revenues from selling the output. This small handful of people makes all those economic decisions for the majority of people – who do most of the actual productive work. The majority must accept and live with the results of all the directorial decisions made by the major shareholders and the boards of directors they select. This latter also select their own replacements.
Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises. Tina believers insist that no alternatives to such capitalist organizations of production exist or could work nearly so well, in terms of outputs, efficiency, and labor processes. The falsity of that claim is easily shown. Indeed, I was shown it a few weeks ago and would like to sketch it for you here.
In May 2012, I had occasion to visit the city of Arrasate-Mondragon, in the Basque region of Spain. It is the headquarters of the Mondragon Corporation (MC), a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production.
MC is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits).
As each enterprise is a constituent of the MC as a whole, its members must confer and decide with all other enterprise members what general rules will govern MC and all its constituent enterprises. In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker's salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)
Given that MC has 85,000 members (from its 2010 annual report), its pay equity rules can and do contribute to a larger society with far greater income and wealth equality than is typical in societies that have chosen capitalist organizations of enterprises. Over 43% of MC members are women, whose equal powers with male members likewise influence gender relations in society different from capitalist enterprises.
MC displays a commitment to job security I have rarely encountered in capitalist enterprises: it operates across, as well as within, particular cooperative enterprises. MC members created a system to move workers from enterprises needing fewer to those needing more workers – in a remarkably open, transparent, rule-governed way and with associated travel and other subsidies to minimize hardship. This security-focused system has transformed the lives of workers, their families, and communities, also in unique ways.
The MC rule that all enterprises are to source their inputs from the best and least-costly producers – whether or not those are also MC enterprises – has kept MC at the cutting edge of new technologies. Likewise, the decision to use of a portion of each member enterprise's net revenue as a fund for research and development has funded impressive new product development. R&D within MC now employs 800 people with a budget over $75m. In 2010, 21.4% of sales of MC industries were new products and services that did not exist five years earlier. In addition, MC established and has expanded Mondragon University; it enrolled over 3,400 students in its 2009-2010 academic year, and its degree programs conform to the requirements of the European framework of higher education. Total student enrollment in all its educational centers in 2010 was 9,282.
The largest corporation in the Basque region, MC is also one of Spain's top ten biggest corporations (in terms of sales or employment). Far better than merely surviving since its founding in 1956, MC has grown dramatically. Along the way, it added a co-operative bank, Caja Laboral (holding almost $25bn in deposits in 2010). And MC has expanded internationally, now operating over 77 businesses outside Spain. MC has proven itself able to grow and prosper as an alternative to – and competitor of – capitalist organizations of enterprise.
During my visit, in random encounters with workers who answered my questions about their jobs, powers, and benefits as cooperative members, I found a familiarity with and sense of responsibility for the enterprise as a whole that I associate only with top managers and directors in capitalist enterprises. The easy conversation (including disagreement), for instance, between assembly-line workers and top managers inside the Fagor washing-machine factory we inspected was similarly remarkable.
Our MC host on the visit reminded us twice that theirs is a co-operative business with all sorts of problems:
"We are not some paradise, but rather a family of co-operative enterprises struggling to build a different kind of life around a different way of working."Nonetheless, given the performance of Spanish capitalism these days – 25% unemployment, a broken banking system, and government-imposed austerity (as if there were no alternative to that either) – MC seems a welcome oasis in a capitalist desert.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited
5/11/12
Chomsky: Do We Have the Makings of a Real Revolution?
Chomsky is a really smart guy. This article is about much more than Occupy. It is very worth reading and considering.
The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development.
Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like it that I can
think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be
sustained through a long, dark period ahead -- because victory won’t
come quickly -- it could prove a significant moment in American history.
The fact that the Occupy movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it’s an unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways. That’s another story, but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development, and hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.
I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s -- although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today -- nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,” even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it will get better.”
There was militant labor union organizing going on, especially from the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are frightening to the business world -- you could see it in the business press at the time -- because a sit-down strike is just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. The idea of worker takeovers is something which is, incidentally, very much on the agenda today, and we should keep it in mind. Also New Deal legislation was beginning to come in as a result of popular pressure. Despite the hard times, there was a sense that, somehow, “we’re gonna get out of it.”
It’s quite different now. For many people in the United States, there’s a pervasive sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair. I think it’s quite new in American history. And it has an objective basis.
On the Working Class
In the 1930s, unemployed working people could anticipate that their jobs would come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today -- the current level of unemployment there is approximately like the Depression -- and current tendencies persist, those jobs aren’t going to come back.
The change took place in the 1970s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying factors, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Brenner, was the falling rate of profit in manufacturing. There were other factors. It led to major changes in the economy -- a reversal of several hundred years of progress towards industrialization and development that turned into a process of de-industrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued overseas very profitably, but it’s no good for the work force.
Along with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise -- producing things people need or could use -- to financial manipulation. The financialization of the economy really took off at that time.
On Banks
Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college. That changed dramatically in the 1970s. Until then, there had been no financial crises since the Great Depression. The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.
And it was egalitarian. The lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quintile. Lots of people moved into reasonable lifestyles -- what’s called the “middle class” here, the “working class” in other countries -- but it was real. And the 1960s accelerated it. The activism of those years, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent.
When the 1970s came along, there were sudden and sharp changes: de-industrialization, the off-shoring of production, and the shift to financial institutions, which grew enormously. I should say that, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was also the development of what several decades later became the high-tech economy: computers, the Internet, the IT Revolution developed substantially in the state sector.
The developments that took place during the 1970s set off a vicious cycle. It led to the concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. This doesn’t benefit the economy -- it probably harms it and society -- but it did lead to a tremendous concentration of wealth.
On Politics and Money
Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The legislation, essentially bipartisan, drives new fiscal policies and tax changes, as well as the rules of corporate governance and deregulation. Alongside this began a sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drove the political parties even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector.
The parties dissolved in many ways. It used to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee chair, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector (increasingly the financial sector).
This cycle resulted in a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the top tenth of one percent of the population. Meanwhile, it opened a period of stagnation or even decline for the majority of the population. People got by, but by artificial means such as longer working hours, high rates of borrowing and debt, and reliance on asset inflation like the recent housing bubble. Pretty soon those working hours were much higher in the United States than in other industrial countries like Japan and various places in Europe. So there was a period of stagnation and decline for the majority alongside a period of sharp concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve.
There has always been a gap between public policy and public will, but it just grew astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact. Take a look at the big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on: the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not regarded as much of an issue. And it isn’t really much of an issue. The issue is joblessness. There’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls. The public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply in this period of stagnation and decline, and the preservation of limited social benefits.
The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger pointed at the heart of the country.
Plutonomy and the Precariat
For the general population, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movement, it’s been pretty harsh -- and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less -- the .1% -- it’s just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?
Take, for example, Citigroup. For decades, Citigroup has been one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations, repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer, starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through the corruption, but it’s pretty astonishing.
In 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure for investors called “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances.” It urged investors to put money into a “plutonomy index.” The brochure says, “The World is dividing into two blocs -- the Plutonomy and the rest.”
Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that’s where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don’t really care about them. We don’t really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function. These days they’re sometimes called the “precariat” -- people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it’s not the periphery anymore. It’s becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.
So, for example, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, at the time when he was still “Saint Alan” -- hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this was before the crash for which he was substantially responsible) -- was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years, and he explained the wonders of the great economy that he was supervising. He said a lot of its success was based substantially on what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If working people are insecure, if they’re part of the precariat, living precarious existences, they’re not going to make demands, they’re not going to try to get better wages, they won’t get improved benefits. We can kick ’em out, if we don’t need ’em. And that’s what’s called a “healthy” economy, technically speaking. And he was highly praised for this, greatly admired.
So the world is now indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat -- in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1% and the 99%. Not literal numbers, but the right picture. Now, the plutonomy is where the action is and it could continue like this.
If it does, the historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. And the Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done.
Toward Worker Takeover
I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.
Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.
It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded.
And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.
The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need.
We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.
It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy.
Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue.
Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons
I’ve kept to domestic issues, but there are two dangerous developments in the international arena, which are a kind of shadow that hangs over everything we’ve discussed. There are, for the first time in human history, real threats to the decent survival of the species.
One has been hanging around since 1945. It’s kind of a miracle that we’ve escaped it. That’s the threat of nuclear war and nuclear weapons. Though it isn’t being much discussed, that threat is, in fact, being escalated by the policies of this administration and its allies. And something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble.
The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps towards trying to do something about it. The United States is also taking steps, mainly to accelerate the threat. It is the only major country that is not only not doing something constructive to protect the environment, it’s not even climbing on the train. In some ways, it’s pulling it backwards.
And this is connected to a huge propaganda system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. “Why pay attention to these scientists?”
We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke. And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted -- and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.
It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures. It’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of numerous best-selling political works, most recently, Hopes and Prospects,Making the Future, and Occupy, published by Zuccotti Park Press, from which this speech, given last October, is excerpted and adapted. His web site is www.chomsky.info.
Copyright 2012 Noam Chomsky
May 8, 2012 |
Protesters at "Occupy Wall Street" camp, Liberty Square
Photo Credit: Sarah Jaffe
The fact that the Occupy movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it’s an unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways. That’s another story, but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development, and hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.
I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s -- although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today -- nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,” even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it will get better.”
There was militant labor union organizing going on, especially from the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are frightening to the business world -- you could see it in the business press at the time -- because a sit-down strike is just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. The idea of worker takeovers is something which is, incidentally, very much on the agenda today, and we should keep it in mind. Also New Deal legislation was beginning to come in as a result of popular pressure. Despite the hard times, there was a sense that, somehow, “we’re gonna get out of it.”
It’s quite different now. For many people in the United States, there’s a pervasive sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair. I think it’s quite new in American history. And it has an objective basis.
On the Working Class
In the 1930s, unemployed working people could anticipate that their jobs would come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today -- the current level of unemployment there is approximately like the Depression -- and current tendencies persist, those jobs aren’t going to come back.
The change took place in the 1970s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying factors, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Brenner, was the falling rate of profit in manufacturing. There were other factors. It led to major changes in the economy -- a reversal of several hundred years of progress towards industrialization and development that turned into a process of de-industrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued overseas very profitably, but it’s no good for the work force.
Along with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise -- producing things people need or could use -- to financial manipulation. The financialization of the economy really took off at that time.
On Banks
Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college. That changed dramatically in the 1970s. Until then, there had been no financial crises since the Great Depression. The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.
And it was egalitarian. The lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quintile. Lots of people moved into reasonable lifestyles -- what’s called the “middle class” here, the “working class” in other countries -- but it was real. And the 1960s accelerated it. The activism of those years, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent.
When the 1970s came along, there were sudden and sharp changes: de-industrialization, the off-shoring of production, and the shift to financial institutions, which grew enormously. I should say that, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was also the development of what several decades later became the high-tech economy: computers, the Internet, the IT Revolution developed substantially in the state sector.
The developments that took place during the 1970s set off a vicious cycle. It led to the concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. This doesn’t benefit the economy -- it probably harms it and society -- but it did lead to a tremendous concentration of wealth.
On Politics and Money
Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The legislation, essentially bipartisan, drives new fiscal policies and tax changes, as well as the rules of corporate governance and deregulation. Alongside this began a sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drove the political parties even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector.
The parties dissolved in many ways. It used to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee chair, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector (increasingly the financial sector).
This cycle resulted in a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the top tenth of one percent of the population. Meanwhile, it opened a period of stagnation or even decline for the majority of the population. People got by, but by artificial means such as longer working hours, high rates of borrowing and debt, and reliance on asset inflation like the recent housing bubble. Pretty soon those working hours were much higher in the United States than in other industrial countries like Japan and various places in Europe. So there was a period of stagnation and decline for the majority alongside a period of sharp concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve.
There has always been a gap between public policy and public will, but it just grew astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact. Take a look at the big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on: the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not regarded as much of an issue. And it isn’t really much of an issue. The issue is joblessness. There’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls. The public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply in this period of stagnation and decline, and the preservation of limited social benefits.
The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger pointed at the heart of the country.
Plutonomy and the Precariat
For the general population, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movement, it’s been pretty harsh -- and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less -- the .1% -- it’s just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?
Take, for example, Citigroup. For decades, Citigroup has been one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations, repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer, starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through the corruption, but it’s pretty astonishing.
In 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure for investors called “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances.” It urged investors to put money into a “plutonomy index.” The brochure says, “The World is dividing into two blocs -- the Plutonomy and the rest.”
Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that’s where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don’t really care about them. We don’t really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function. These days they’re sometimes called the “precariat” -- people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it’s not the periphery anymore. It’s becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.
So, for example, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, at the time when he was still “Saint Alan” -- hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this was before the crash for which he was substantially responsible) -- was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years, and he explained the wonders of the great economy that he was supervising. He said a lot of its success was based substantially on what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If working people are insecure, if they’re part of the precariat, living precarious existences, they’re not going to make demands, they’re not going to try to get better wages, they won’t get improved benefits. We can kick ’em out, if we don’t need ’em. And that’s what’s called a “healthy” economy, technically speaking. And he was highly praised for this, greatly admired.
So the world is now indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat -- in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1% and the 99%. Not literal numbers, but the right picture. Now, the plutonomy is where the action is and it could continue like this.
If it does, the historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. And the Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done.
Toward Worker Takeover
I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.
Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.
It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded.
And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.
The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need.
We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.
It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy.
Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue.
Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons
I’ve kept to domestic issues, but there are two dangerous developments in the international arena, which are a kind of shadow that hangs over everything we’ve discussed. There are, for the first time in human history, real threats to the decent survival of the species.
One has been hanging around since 1945. It’s kind of a miracle that we’ve escaped it. That’s the threat of nuclear war and nuclear weapons. Though it isn’t being much discussed, that threat is, in fact, being escalated by the policies of this administration and its allies. And something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble.
The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps towards trying to do something about it. The United States is also taking steps, mainly to accelerate the threat. It is the only major country that is not only not doing something constructive to protect the environment, it’s not even climbing on the train. In some ways, it’s pulling it backwards.
And this is connected to a huge propaganda system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. “Why pay attention to these scientists?”
We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke. And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted -- and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.
It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures. It’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of numerous best-selling political works, most recently, Hopes and Prospects,Making the Future, and Occupy, published by Zuccotti Park Press, from which this speech, given last October, is excerpted and adapted. His web site is www.chomsky.info.
Copyright 2012 Noam Chomsky
9/17/11
John Boehner tries to fool America with fake history and jobs talk.
The Speaker talks as if he doesn't realize it was Republicans like Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Republicans in Congress that not only created the outsourcing and restriction of American Labor and Industry, but also refuse to act in a bipartisan mode, instead dedicating themselves to failure of "the Democratic Party" via the destruction of America and abuse of the Constitution. Boehner has the temerity to say, "The responsibility for fixing this toxic environment for job creation is a bipartisan one. " What a sick joke. He obviously thinks regular people are just stupid. His party seems to relish the suffering of their neighbors especially if it benefits their political contributors. Read his whole "jobs" speech here. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/us/politics/jobs-speech-by-house-speaker-john-boehner.html?src=recg
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)