[re: below-- note-- I launched www.PetitionOnline.com/PriObama back in August]
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Cornel West: “We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions. We want to send a lesson to ourselves, to our loved ones, our families, our communities, our nation and the world, that out of deep love for working and poor people, that we are willing to put whatever it takes, even if we get arrested today, and say we will not allow this day of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memorial to go without somebody going to jail, because Martin King would be here right with us, willing to throw down out of deep love. And I want to add a special word for our brothers and sisters in the police force, because we want to let them know that we are standing with them as working people, as well. We’re here to bear witness with, to be in solidarity with the Occupy movement all around the world, because we love poor people, we love working people, and we want Martin Luther King, Jr., to smile from the grave that we haven’t forgot his movement.”
Cornel West: “It’s impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one demand, or two demands. We’re talking about a democratic awakening...you’re talking about raising political consciousness so it spills over all parts of the country, so people can begin to see what’s going on through a set of different lens, and then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be. Because in the end we’re really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution: A transfer of power from oligarchs to everyday people of all colors. And that is a step by step process.”
Cornel West: “What we’re trying to do is connect what’s going on on Wall Street with what’s going on in Harlem, because if in fact we continue to have this kind of magnificent movement here and around the world, we want to be able to connect the corporate greed not just on Wall Street, but in the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and the corporate-media multiplex, so that we have an inclusive, systemic analysis, even as we’re willing to bear witness to the love for poor and working people. What the Occupy movement is, it’s been able to show the ways in which both parties are tied to oligarchic rule, both parties are tied to big money. And we’ve got some real possibilities, I think, with it.”
Cornel West: “Without a primary challenge from the left, the president will not have to explain to his supporters why he directly escalated the war in Afghanistan and broadened America’s covert war in Pakistan, why he chose to engage in a military intervention in Libya, or why he has maintained the Bush Administration’s national security apparatus that allows for the suspension and abuse ofconstitutionally protected civil liberties--dismissing Congress all the way. In an uncontested Democratic primary, President Obama will never have to justify his decision to bail out Wall Street’s most profitable firms while failing to push for effective prosecution of the criminal behavior that triggered the recession, or his failure to push for real financial reform. He will not have to defend his decision to extend the Bush era tax cuts nor justify his acquiescence to Republican extortion during the debt ceiling negotiations. He will not have to answer questions on how his Administration completely failed to protect homeowner’s losing their homes to predatory banks, or even mention the word “poverty,” as he failed to do in his most recent State of the Union Address, even as more and more Americas sink into financial despair.”
Cornel West: “Without a primary challenge from the left, the president will never be challenged to fulfill his pledge to actively pursue a Labor-supported card check, or his promise to increase the federal minimum wage or why he took single payer off the table after he said he believes in it. The American labor movement, facing an unprecedented onslaught by the Right will not have the opportunity to voice its concerns and rally around a supportive candidate. The president will not be pressed to answer how he spent four years in office withoutaddressing the ongoing destabilization of our climate or advocating a coherent and ecologically sound energy policy including defending his position on nuclear power and so called clean coal. Nor will he discuss regulatory agency deficiencies in enforcing corporate law and order in an era marked by a corporate crime wave having devastating economic consequences onworkers and taxpayers and their savings and pensions. There will be no opportunity for the Hispanic and other relevant communities to speak out on immigration reform even as the Republicans continue to use it as a weapon of political demagoguery.”
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
county budget update-- twelve censored facts-- speak up, fwd/share!...
[again: join hundreds already signed on to http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-layoffs ; pass it on!]
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Hi all...
You hopefully might be aware by now that the annual official public hearing for the proposed 2012 Dutchess County Budget is this Thursday, Dec. 1st at 7 pm at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House at 35 Market Street in Poughkeepsie (and I sincerely hope you all show up and speak out Thurs.!)...
But-- did you know you also have a chance to speak up today (Tues.) at 5 pm re: county budget cuts?...
[see: http://www.dutchessny.gov/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/CLBudgetCalendar2011.pdf ; note, too-- next Mon. Dec. 5th is the monthly full board mtg. for Co. Leg.-- speak then re: cuts too, k?]
[also-- No. Du. Co. folks-- I'm hosting forum on all this tomorrow at Rhinebeck Town Hall-- at 5:30 pm!]
Yep-- 'tis true-- our County Legislature's Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee will be meeting today at 5 pm on the sixth floor of our County Office Building at 22 Market St. in Poughkeepsie-- and you all have a chance to speak for three minutes!...(if you care: to save the jobs and services noted below)...
[full budget here-- http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/CountyExecutive/20601.htm ]
Recall-- see below-- simple fact is that it's just plain illegal what Steinhaus has proposed-- re: contract...
Twelve facts to send now-- to countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us, countyexec@co.dutchessny.us(!):
Fact #1: "The County will not exercise its right to contract work out if the result of contracting out is the layoff or discharge of then existing employees." [22 county employees in DMH about to be laid off!]
[from page 25 of Dutchess County's contract (1/1/05-12/31/09) with CSEA-- still in effect now, folks]
Fact #2: It would only "cost" about $1.200,000 to keep 22 county employees doing the valuable work they now do in our county Department of Mental Hygiene's Continuing Day Treatment program (more on this below; scroll down for email from Shaun Chesley).
Fact #3: As it is right now already, Dutchess County taxpayers unfairly subsidize privatization through poverty wages-- $3 to 10 million annually for Medicaid, Family Health Plus, and Child Health Plus for members of working families (when folks have jobs but can't afford to pay for health care for families).
[study-- http://www.petitiononline.com/duhealth ; http://clawback.org/category/hidden-taxpayer-costs/ ]
Fact #4: As it is already right now, "Dutchess County taxes its residents 23% less per capita and spends 26% less per capita than the statewide average, ranking us among the lowest of all 57 New York counties for spending and taxes per resident."
[Steinhaus: http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/CountyExecutive/20604.htm ]
Fact #5: GOP Co. Leg. leaders are going around telling people our county's Finance Commissioner Pam Barrack has stated true current fund balance is actually $52 million (far more than Steinhaus est.).
Fact #6: The Daily Freeman reported Sept. 29th that "In a memo released Wednesday...by Dutchess County Budget Director Valerie Sommerville and Finance Commissioner Pamela Barrack...the county's fund balance currently stands at $30.9 million, a number that is significantly above the $17.5 million fund balance the county ended 2010 with." [Poughkeepsie Journal and MidHudsonNews.com = same]
[ http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2011/09/30/news/doc4e8519aa68730023971139.txt ]
Fact #7: The GOP are proposing to waste another $4.2 million in next year's budget on housing out inmates-- instead of investing pro-actively in our youth-- and instead of following the proven, cost-saving recidivism-cutting re-entry system examples of Brooklyn's ComAlert system and Peter Young [ http://www.BrooklynDA.org ; http://www.PYHIT.com ; http://www.JobsNotJails.weebly.com ; http://www.FightCrime.org ; http://www.petitiononline.com/comalert ].
Fact #8: The GOP are proposing to waste another $4 million next year on incineration through our county's Resource Recovery Agency (RRA "service fees")-- instead of saving millions meaningfully moving towards zero waste by properly incentivizing businesses in the private sector to help create an eco-industrial resource recovery park to recycle and compost our county's "garbage."
[90+ already on board @ http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes ; "Zero Waste Dutchess" on Facebook;
http://www.dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/10/rally-for-zero-waste-oct-27th-save.html ]
Fact #9: It's been proven over and over again that every dollar invested in pre-school special education for children 3-5 and early intervention (for 0-3) saves many tax dollars down the road.
[ http://www.fightcrime.org/sites/default/files/reports/Cost-Bft%20Br%20FINAL%204-30-03.pdf ;
http://www.pacca.org/parents.aspx?id=376 ;
http://www.aecf.org/upload/PublicationFiles/ED3622H1409.pdf ;
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20060424/READERS/104240090 ]
Fact #10: However, it appears the current uber-GOP Co. Leg. majority is going along with the County Executive's proposed $1.5 million cut to pre-school special education for children 3-5 and $850,000 cut to early intervention for children 0-3.
Fact #11: Sadly, it also appears the current uber-GOP Co. Leg. majority is going along with the County Executive's proposed $25,000 cut to Cornell Cooperative Extension of Dutchess County's Energy and Environmental Program-- which may well make it impossible for them to continue their strong support and assistance for our county's hard-working Environmental Management Council
[ http://CCEDutchess.org/environmentenergy/overview ; http://DutchessEMC.org ; in particular, see NRI: http://ccedutchess.org/environmentenergy/environment-energy-program-blog/330-natural-resource-inventory-conference ]
Fact #12: It would only "cost" $20,356 to make sure the 14 employees (not the Commissioners) at our county Board of Elections (seven employees on each side-- elections specialists, Voting Machine Coordinators, Senior Elections Specialists and Deputy Commissioners)-- get 3% raises in the 2012 county budget (unlike CSEA, these employees do not receive merit increases or longevity raises).
Important: can't make it?...email countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us, countyexec@co.dutchessny.us...
[again-- scroll down a bit for polls that repeatedly show most of us in U.S. AGAINST big federal cuts]
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
http://www.DutchessDemocracy.blogspot.com
http://www.JoelforCongress.org
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel
[join 200+ already signed on in support!]
[don't forget to email "Mr. CSEA" Molinaro-- at marcus@molinarofordutchess.com -- tell him: wake up!]
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From: Shaun Chesley
Subject: Figures for the 22 positions
Date: Nov 29, 2011 2:23 PM
After review of the Budget and knowing your intentions to save the 22 positions for entire year, please consider the following:
In the budget:
Page 303 top right corner of the page shows a figure of $419,315 to fund the 22 employees for the 1st Quarter. This figure includes fringe.
I simply multiplied that figure by 3 to come up with an additional figure of $1,257,945 (this is what is needed to fund the end of the year, this number also includes fringe.)
If the 1.5 million refused by the County Executive were accepted we could actually fund all 22 positions until the end of the year and still have monies left over, nearly $300,000 that could be used to further offset the County Tax Levy or used for other issues.
Plus...
The number includes fringe, which does not need to be considered for Tax Levy .... an Additional Savings.
Plus...
This will cover all 22 positions. People will be Retiring or moving to work in other parts of County employment or moving to Occupations Inc.
Plus...
Shared staffing would even mean more monies coming back to the County.
Thank you again,
Shaun Chesley
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From: Shaun Chesley
Please consider the appeal for your help below. If you could consider this and or sending it out to your contact listings it would be appreciated..we are at a critical point.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
You may already know that the Dutchess County Executive has released his Tentative 2012 Budget to the Legislature. A budget that calls for the Layoff of 22 employees in the Department of Mental Hygiene and ending services to Dutchess Counties most vulnerable population, the mentally ill. As employees we are trying to save our jobs as well as represent the population of Dutchess County that we Serve. They have no Union, no voice or representation but us.
Please help us to get the attention of the Dutchess County Legislature to STOP THE LAYOFFS and continue the services, by taking a moment to sign our petition at the link below. Each signature will automatically send an email to the general Legislative email account. When you are done signing would you also consider forwarding this note to any of your friends you think might also help.
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-layoffs
Thank you for your time and helping save Jobs and Services.
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Here's a breakdown of the draconian county budget cuts Dutchess GOP have proposed for 2012:
[co. budget info-- http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/CountyExecutive/20601.htm ]
-- $3.3 million cut to our county's Department of Mental Hygiene (meaning 22 to be laid off!)
-- $1.5 million cut to pre-school special education for children 3-5
-- $850,000 cut to early intervention for children 0-3
-- $798,000 less for day care in 2012 than in 2010
-- $158,000 less for our county's Youth Bureau in 2012 than in 2009
-- $135,000 cut to Dutchess Community College
-- $25,000 less for Cornell Cooperative Extension's Energy and Environment Program (CRUCIAL!)
-- $197,000 less for Mid-Hudson Library System in 2012 than in 2009
-- $151,000 less for Dutchess County Arts Council in 2012 than in 2009
-- $82,000 less for Family Services in 2012 than in 2009
-- $104,000 less for our county's Workforce Investment Board in 2012 than in 2009
-- $59,000 less for our county's Soil and Water Conservation Board in 2012 than in 2009
-- $125,000 less for BI Community Transitions in 2012 than in 2009 [I've visited facility; cuts will hurt!]
-- $960,000 less in services for DSS recipients in 2012 than in 2009
-- $484,000 less for Dutchess County Community Action in 2012 than in 2012
-- $740,000 less for Hudson Valley Mental Health in 2012 than in 2009
-- $191,000 less for Hudson River Housing in 2012 than in 2009
-- $30,000 less for Grace Smith House in 2012 than in 2009
[...and again-- see http://www.TriCountyCrisisCenter.org ; Grace Smith needs funds; TCCC does too!...]
[again: Gibson's allegiance to Norquist no help; http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ILikeIke : my solution!]
[wake up Dutchess-- FDR didn't get us out of the Depression with budget cuts, layoffs, union-busting!]
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Dutchess County Dept. of Mental Hygiene CSEA Shop Steward Shaun Chesley statement on all this:
"Almost two years ago, CSEA was informed of the transition plans of contracting out the services of the Continuing Treatment centers of the Department of Mental Hygiene to Occupations Inc.
CSEA was told that this transition would take place using attrition, meaning that if employees found other positions or retired, those positions were to be back-filled by Occupations Inc. employees. This plan is fair, and it has been done in the past. It means no layoffs, and it allows for all parties to transition painlessly while maintaining services to the residents of Dutchess County.
On November 1st we were surprised to learn that the County Executive suggests in his 2012 Tentative Budget to not only break the agreement of the Transition plans and our past practices, but to go against our Collective Bargaining agreement by contracting out services and laying off existing employees.
This is not only wrong; it is illegal, and we ask that you reject this proposal and return to the past practice of the agreed-upon transition plans."
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Recall-- from http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2011/November/02/DC_budget-02Nov11.html ...
POUGHKEEPSIE - Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus unveiled his proposed 2012 county budget of $411 million Tuesday. The proposal applies $24.4 million from the general fund balance, and cuts 49 mental hygiene full time equivalent positions.
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From: Tracey Osetek
Subject: 2012 Proposed Budget
Dear County Legislators,
My name is Tracey Osetek. I am a Dutchess County Department of Mental Hygiene employee working as a Recreation Therapy Aide for Millbrook Continuing Treatment Center. I came into this position 8 years ago simply looking for a job but found my calling in servicing those who are inflicted with mental illness. I have finally decided to pursue a career as a psychiatric nurse. Unfortunately, I will be unable to do that if the 2012 proposed budget is passed. This budget has called for the elimination of 22 DMH positions, mine included.
I have a 3 year old and a 17 year old to support. My 3 year old has a sensory processing disorder which requires a structured program and services to help him. I will not be able to continue to pay for this if I am laid off. My 17 year old is diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. He is doing well but he needs his medication to maintain the stability of his symptoms. I will not be able to provide his medication without my insurance.
This proposal does not only effect myself, my children, my coworkers, my friends, but it severely effects our main purpose, the clients we serve. The closing of Hudson River Psychiatric Center has already displaced many patients and with the closing of our three Continuing Treatment Center's these patients will be left with minimal services available to them.
A private organization is slated to take over all three of our Continuing Treatment Center's but they will only be able to serve the higher functioning patients since they operate under PROS, Personalized Recovery Oriented Services. This system is designed to encourage recovery which consist of symptom management, education, independence, job training and reintroduction into the community and work force. This is a great plan for those who are at the capacity to achieve those goals.
What about the large portion whose illness is severe and persistent? Where will they end up? Jail? On the street? There is no room at the hospitals due to Hudson River's closing. I work as a per diem Pt Care Tech on the 5th floor at St Francis Hospital and have witnessed first hand the cycle that occurs. St Francis is overflowing and patients have been sent as far as Glenn Falls because there are no beds.
I ask that you restore and fund these positions so that DMH employees can continue to provide the services this population so desperately needs and continue to try and formulate a more cost effective plan to operate Mental Hygiene.
Sincerely,
Tracey Osetek
##################################################
Again-- I received a call recently from one county employee (of 49) from Dutchess Co. Dept. of Mental Hygience to be laid off; they've been working with mentally ill folks unemployed who have turned to alcohol/substance abuse-- this county employee pointed out to us the irony of GOP creating more depressed unemployed who may well turn to alcohol or drug abuse after being laid off-- insanity...
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Don't forget-- Dutchess CSEA's Shaun Chesley, Hyde Park's Doris Kelly, Rhinebeck's Marcia Slatkin, Ruth Boyer, Fred Nagel, Sandra Oldenburg, and Edmond Roberts, Clinton's Pat Zolnik, Carmen Region, Milan's Sheila Buff, Fishkill's Josh and Mara Farrell, Wappinger's Philip Banco, Rich Carlson and Richard Vineski, Beacon's Susan Osberg, Erika Waldron, and Dan Rigney, Poughkeepsie's Barbara Lindsey, Scott Patrick Humphrey, East Fishkill's Joette Kane, Red Hook's Cary Kittner and Doris Soroko, Dover's Nora Edwards, Bangall's Alison Francis, Millerton's Dianne Engleke and Joan Daidone, and Pleasant Valley's Sue MacNish all signed (35 total now):
http://www.petitiononline.com/cobudget .
[my petition to avoid ALL county employees from being laid off-- while eliminating county property taxes-- county-level income tax as solution to stop county budget/tax insanity for 2011, beyond-- if
OK for certain GOP state legislators to propose income tax to fund schools, why not this local reform?]
[economists agree: massive budget cuts and layoffs are exact WRONG thing to do in current recession; if we here in Dutchess aren't going to honor FDR's legacy and fight draconian cuts like this-- who will?...more and more from all over embracing progressive solution: http://www.petitiononline.com/cobudget ; as it is already, GOP have privatized far too many mental health services over the past few decades to non-union nonprofits-- driving down wages locally]
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[again-- see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org for state budget position that Molinaro SHOULD have been pushing-- instead of massive state budget cuts to schools and everything else that he and Cuomo rammed down our throats this year; solution = progressive taxation of millionaires that poll after poll after poll has proven vast majority of us want-- Marist, Siena, Quinnipiac, Hart poll; recall massive statewide Growing Together Better Choice Budget Coalition-- NYS Library Association, NYS Coalition Against Domestic Violence, NYS AFL-CIO, NYSUT, CSEA, PEF, AFSCME, NY Jobs with Justice, Dutchess Outreach, NY Statewide Senior Action Council, NYS Alliance for Retired Americans, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith Impact of NYS, Environmental Advocates, Citizen Action, NYS Community Action Association, Hunger Action Network of NYS, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, FPI:
http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki ]
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[here below-- reminder of just how much county budget has already been slashed over past few years]
From http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/12/eight-crucial-programs-slashed-in.html ...
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Eight crucial programs slashed in county budget-- help get truth out, folks...
The fact is that after all the county budget kabuki theatre over the
last few months, the County Exec and GOP Co. Leg. majority completely
eliminated the following eight crucial, proven cost-saving, and
pro-active programs-- preventive programs which, now cut (laying off
28 county workers) by their absence, will end up driving up county
property taxes further: [hold 'em accountable now, folks-- before
this all stale]
[note: contrast these first three cuts w/GOP drive for new $75
million, 300-bed jail addition; wake up!]
1. GOP eliminated county funding for the BOCES GED program in our Jail (program endorsed
even by jail's leadership).
[tho only $87,000/year this program cuts recidivism rate in half for
Transition Unit-- from 56% to 28%]
2. GOP eliminated Project Return (juvenile delinquency prevention)
for 45 kids at county Youth Bureau.
[effectively costing only $24/day to keep youth with
families--instead of $657/day to be incarcerated!]
3. GOP eliminated Mediation Center of Du. Co. (juvenile delinquency
prevention for troubled teens).
[youth in 245 different families served last year in community-- not
$240,000/year each for incarceration]
4. GOP eliminated the senior home care program at our county's Health
Department; workers laid off.
[will end up costing local taxpayers more-- with increasing number of
seniors in nursing home instead]
5. GOP eliminated Senior Friendship Centers at Millerton, Pawling,
and Fishkill-- with workers laid off.
[will end up costing local taxpayers more-- could well end up pushing
local seniors into nursing homes]
6. GOP eliminated our county's Office of Consumer Affairs [we are all
consumers here in Dutchess!].
[according to County Exec, will mean 76% decrease in ability to
handle local consumer complaints]
7.. GOP eliminated county Health Department water lab
http://wwww.RealMajorityProject.blogspot.com .
[even though Dutchess has literally more public water supplies here
than any other county in NYS!]
8. GOP eliminated our county's Human Rights Commission (in spite of
over 900 complaints annually!).
[slap in face to local African-Americans, Latino immigrants, women,
seniors, disabled, gays, lesbians]
Let's also not forget the fact that the County Exec and GOP Co.
Leg. majority also, frankly, decimated county $$$ for Cornell
Cooperative Extension of Dutchess County (scroll down just a bit), leaving CCEDC's
Environmental, Agricultural, and Horticultural programs underfunded
by $327,000 for 2011 compared to this year, left the Dutchess County
Arts Council underfunded by $96,933 for 2011 compared to 2010
left Hudson Valley Mental Health clinics underfunded by $200,000 for
2011 (compared to 2010-- meaning higher costs to taxpayers down the road from psychiatric ward, jail, prison)-- and left the Lexingon Center for Recovery
underfunded by $20,000 (no methadone treatment 50 heroin addicts)...
[recall 12/2 statement: Bardavon county budget hearing on need to
fund treatment for 300, not just 250!]
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From http://www.CCEDutchess.org (Cornell Cooperative Extension of Dutchess)...
2011 County Funding - Impact on CCEDC
On behalf of Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County's Board and our constituents, we thank our Dutchess County Legislators for restoring as much as they could for CCEDC county appropriations in the 2011 Dutchess County Budget during their December 7, 2010 Legislative Meeting. Their amended budget for CCEDC resulted in restoring our 2011 budget from the County Executive's initial $150,000 to $520,000 - 56% of our 2010 budget. Please join our Board in thanking our Legislators for doing their best during a challenging process.
The $404,779 (44%) reduction in 2011 County appropriations has resulted in staffing reductions, loss of match dollars leading to grant funding reductions, and reductions or eliminations of educational programming and resources for Dutchess County residents. Specifically:
· 13 positions have been affected: 7 staff in currently filled positions have been laid off; 1 staff member's term has not been renewed; 1 vacant position has been eliminated; 1 vacant position has been reduced; 3 current staff have been impacted with reduced hours/job responsibilities - - - 35% of 2010 positions.
· All current programs are undergoing restructuring due to funding and staff reductions:
The $150,000 restored for 4-H Youth Development enables 4-H to continue in 2011
. This 28% reduction has led to a staff reduction from 3 to 1? staff with a restructured volunteer management system planned for 2011, as well as a reprioritizing of educational programming.
A $130,718 (41%) county funding reduction for Agriculture/Horticulture has resulted in:
* Decreased commercial Agriculture/Horticulture expertise with some areas eliminated due to staff layoffs/position reductions. Specific program decisions are in the midst of discussion. Commercial diagnostics will continue to be available.
* Diagnostic Lab hours will be decreased from 3 mornings/week to 1 morning/week April through October.
* Community Horticulture, including the educational demonstration gardens will continue through fundraising efforts and volunteer Master Gardeners support.
2011 grant funding enables Green Teen Community Gardening to continue with program reprioritizing due to the elimination of 100% county funding.
With 100% county funding eliminated, Financial Management Education is severely impacted with the layoff of the sole county funded educator. Most programming will be eliminated with the Family Budget Volunteer Educators in transition pending further review. Other current programming will remain dependent upon grant funding.
With the restoration of 63% of the Environment and Energy Program's county funding, GIS services will be fully available. With a 37% county funding reduction resulting in the elimination of 1 ? positions, the remaining programming will be reduced and/or eliminated, pending further discussions. Watershed programming will continue through grant funding.
The 28% reduction in county funding for Nutrition Programs, as well as the 44% reduction in county funding for the entire organization, has led to a loss of critical match dollars for a major Nutrition Grant serving food stamp recipients. This loss of grant and county funding has led to layoffs and ultimately less available educational programs for those in need.
The Relatives as Parents program, currently solely funding by grant dollars, will continue due to that funding.
As Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County looks to 2011 and celebrating 100 years of CCE in New York State, we will also engage in strategic planning for the future including restructuring, shared positions and resources, and other opportunities. CCEDC has a proud past, and although the CCEDC you know and rely on today will be different in 2011, we look forward to continuing to serve Dutchess County residents and welcome any ideas you may have.
2011 County Funding by program area are:
$150,000 for 4-H
$75,000 for Nutrition
$185,000 for Commercial Ag/Hort
$110,000 for Environment ($75,000 specifically for GIS)
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Don't forget-- all the following cuts went through in the 2010 County Budget:
[despite best efforts from Joel on this; thanks to 120+ of you signed on over the past year to my http://www.PetitionOnline.com/SaveDuCo petition effort to find alternative cost-savers to cuts here]
-- $1,000,000-plus cut to our county's Board of Elections
-- $26,000 cut to the Dutchess County Office of Veterans Affairs (part-time employee laid off)
-- $233,000 cut to our county's Office for the Aging (Senior Friendship Centers now on 4-day weeks instead of 5-day)
-- $209,839 cut to Dutchess County Community Action Agency (meaning less services, layoffs)
-- $200,000-plus cut to DCDOH- laying off 4 county employees, eliminating county's senior home care program
-- $185,000 cut to Cornell Cooperative Extension (meaning less services, layoffs)
-- $165,960 cut to the Astor Home for Children (meaning less services, layoffs)
-- $114,000 cut to Family Services (meaning less services for the most vulnerable in our county)
-- $111,000 cut to Grace Smith House (meaning less services)
-- $106,987 cut to Hudson River Housing (in the midst of worst housing/foreclosure crisis in decades)
-- $56,553 cut to the Lexington Center for Recovery (shortfunding methadone clinic for heroin addicts)
-- $55,000 cut to Dutchess County Arts Council (meaning less services)
-- $41,000 cut to Mid-Hudson Library System (meaning less services)
-- $28,111 cut to the Mediation Center of Dutchess County (meaning less services)
-- $23,000 cut to Mental Health Association of Dutchess County (meaning less services)
-- $23,000 cut to BOCES (meaning less services in transition/re-entry program)
-- $11,000 cut to Lexington Center and $3000 cut to Literacy Connections (meaning less services)
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Hi all...
You hopefully might be aware by now that the annual official public hearing for the proposed 2012 Dutchess County Budget is this Thursday, Dec. 1st at 7 pm at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House at 35 Market Street in Poughkeepsie (and I sincerely hope you all show up and speak out Thurs.!)...
But-- did you know you also have a chance to speak up today (Tues.) at 5 pm re: county budget cuts?...
[see: http://www.dutchessny.gov/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/CLBudgetCalendar2011.pdf ; note, too-- next Mon. Dec. 5th is the monthly full board mtg. for Co. Leg.-- speak then re: cuts too, k?]
[also-- No. Du. Co. folks-- I'm hosting forum on all this tomorrow at Rhinebeck Town Hall-- at 5:30 pm!]
Yep-- 'tis true-- our County Legislature's Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee will be meeting today at 5 pm on the sixth floor of our County Office Building at 22 Market St. in Poughkeepsie-- and you all have a chance to speak for three minutes!...(if you care: to save the jobs and services noted below)...
[full budget here-- http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/CountyExecutive/20601.htm ]
Recall-- see below-- simple fact is that it's just plain illegal what Steinhaus has proposed-- re: contract...
Twelve facts to send now-- to countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us, countyexec@co.dutchessny.us(!):
Fact #1: "The County will not exercise its right to contract work out if the result of contracting out is the layoff or discharge of then existing employees." [22 county employees in DMH about to be laid off!]
[from page 25 of Dutchess County's contract (1/1/05-12/31/09) with CSEA-- still in effect now, folks]
Fact #2: It would only "cost" about $1.200,000 to keep 22 county employees doing the valuable work they now do in our county Department of Mental Hygiene's Continuing Day Treatment program (more on this below; scroll down for email from Shaun Chesley).
Fact #3: As it is right now already, Dutchess County taxpayers unfairly subsidize privatization through poverty wages-- $3 to 10 million annually for Medicaid, Family Health Plus, and Child Health Plus for members of working families (when folks have jobs but can't afford to pay for health care for families).
[study-- http://www.petitiononline.com/duhealth ; http://clawback.org/category/hidden-taxpayer-costs/ ]
Fact #4: As it is already right now, "Dutchess County taxes its residents 23% less per capita and spends 26% less per capita than the statewide average, ranking us among the lowest of all 57 New York counties for spending and taxes per resident."
[Steinhaus: http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/CountyExecutive/20604.htm ]
Fact #5: GOP Co. Leg. leaders are going around telling people our county's Finance Commissioner Pam Barrack has stated true current fund balance is actually $52 million (far more than Steinhaus est.).
Fact #6: The Daily Freeman reported Sept. 29th that "In a memo released Wednesday...by Dutchess County Budget Director Valerie Sommerville and Finance Commissioner Pamela Barrack...the county's fund balance currently stands at $30.9 million, a number that is significantly above the $17.5 million fund balance the county ended 2010 with." [Poughkeepsie Journal and MidHudsonNews.com = same]
[ http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2011/09/30/news/doc4e8519aa68730023971139.txt ]
Fact #7: The GOP are proposing to waste another $4.2 million in next year's budget on housing out inmates-- instead of investing pro-actively in our youth-- and instead of following the proven, cost-saving recidivism-cutting re-entry system examples of Brooklyn's ComAlert system and Peter Young [ http://www.BrooklynDA.org ; http://www.PYHIT.com ; http://www.JobsNotJails.weebly.com ; http://www.FightCrime.org ; http://www.petitiononline.com/comalert ].
Fact #8: The GOP are proposing to waste another $4 million next year on incineration through our county's Resource Recovery Agency (RRA "service fees")-- instead of saving millions meaningfully moving towards zero waste by properly incentivizing businesses in the private sector to help create an eco-industrial resource recovery park to recycle and compost our county's "garbage."
[90+ already on board @ http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes ; "Zero Waste Dutchess" on Facebook;
http://www.dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/10/rally-for-zero-waste-oct-27th-save.html ]
Fact #9: It's been proven over and over again that every dollar invested in pre-school special education for children 3-5 and early intervention (for 0-3) saves many tax dollars down the road.
[ http://www.fightcrime.org/sites/default/files/reports/Cost-Bft%20Br%20FINAL%204-30-03.pdf ;
http://www.pacca.org/parents.aspx?id=376 ;
http://www.aecf.org/upload/PublicationFiles/ED3622H1409.pdf ;
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20060424/READERS/104240090 ]
Fact #10: However, it appears the current uber-GOP Co. Leg. majority is going along with the County Executive's proposed $1.5 million cut to pre-school special education for children 3-5 and $850,000 cut to early intervention for children 0-3.
Fact #11: Sadly, it also appears the current uber-GOP Co. Leg. majority is going along with the County Executive's proposed $25,000 cut to Cornell Cooperative Extension of Dutchess County's Energy and Environmental Program-- which may well make it impossible for them to continue their strong support and assistance for our county's hard-working Environmental Management Council
[ http://CCEDutchess.org/environmentenergy/overview ; http://DutchessEMC.org ; in particular, see NRI: http://ccedutchess.org/environmentenergy/environment-energy-program-blog/330-natural-resource-inventory-conference ]
Fact #12: It would only "cost" $20,356 to make sure the 14 employees (not the Commissioners) at our county Board of Elections (seven employees on each side-- elections specialists, Voting Machine Coordinators, Senior Elections Specialists and Deputy Commissioners)-- get 3% raises in the 2012 county budget (unlike CSEA, these employees do not receive merit increases or longevity raises).
Important: can't make it?...email countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us, countyexec@co.dutchessny.us...
[again-- scroll down a bit for polls that repeatedly show most of us in U.S. AGAINST big federal cuts]
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
http://www.DutchessDemocracy.blogspot.com
http://www.JoelforCongress.org
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel
[join 200+ already signed on in support!]
[don't forget to email "Mr. CSEA" Molinaro-- at marcus@molinarofordutchess.com -- tell him: wake up!]
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From: Shaun Chesley
Subject: Figures for the 22 positions
Date: Nov 29, 2011 2:23 PM
After review of the Budget and knowing your intentions to save the 22 positions for entire year, please consider the following:
In the budget:
Page 303 top right corner of the page shows a figure of $419,315 to fund the 22 employees for the 1st Quarter. This figure includes fringe.
I simply multiplied that figure by 3 to come up with an additional figure of $1,257,945 (this is what is needed to fund the end of the year, this number also includes fringe.)
If the 1.5 million refused by the County Executive were accepted we could actually fund all 22 positions until the end of the year and still have monies left over, nearly $300,000 that could be used to further offset the County Tax Levy or used for other issues.
Plus...
The number includes fringe, which does not need to be considered for Tax Levy .... an Additional Savings.
Plus...
This will cover all 22 positions. People will be Retiring or moving to work in other parts of County employment or moving to Occupations Inc.
Plus...
Shared staffing would even mean more monies coming back to the County.
Thank you again,
Shaun Chesley
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From: Shaun Chesley
Please consider the appeal for your help below. If you could consider this and or sending it out to your contact listings it would be appreciated..we are at a critical point.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
You may already know that the Dutchess County Executive has released his Tentative 2012 Budget to the Legislature. A budget that calls for the Layoff of 22 employees in the Department of Mental Hygiene and ending services to Dutchess Counties most vulnerable population, the mentally ill. As employees we are trying to save our jobs as well as represent the population of Dutchess County that we Serve. They have no Union, no voice or representation but us.
Please help us to get the attention of the Dutchess County Legislature to STOP THE LAYOFFS and continue the services, by taking a moment to sign our petition at the link below. Each signature will automatically send an email to the general Legislative email account. When you are done signing would you also consider forwarding this note to any of your friends you think might also help.
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-the-layoffs
Thank you for your time and helping save Jobs and Services.
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Here's a breakdown of the draconian county budget cuts Dutchess GOP have proposed for 2012:
[co. budget info-- http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/CountyExecutive/20601.htm ]
-- $3.3 million cut to our county's Department of Mental Hygiene (meaning 22 to be laid off!)
-- $1.5 million cut to pre-school special education for children 3-5
-- $850,000 cut to early intervention for children 0-3
-- $798,000 less for day care in 2012 than in 2010
-- $158,000 less for our county's Youth Bureau in 2012 than in 2009
-- $135,000 cut to Dutchess Community College
-- $25,000 less for Cornell Cooperative Extension's Energy and Environment Program (CRUCIAL!)
-- $197,000 less for Mid-Hudson Library System in 2012 than in 2009
-- $151,000 less for Dutchess County Arts Council in 2012 than in 2009
-- $82,000 less for Family Services in 2012 than in 2009
-- $104,000 less for our county's Workforce Investment Board in 2012 than in 2009
-- $59,000 less for our county's Soil and Water Conservation Board in 2012 than in 2009
-- $125,000 less for BI Community Transitions in 2012 than in 2009 [I've visited facility; cuts will hurt!]
-- $960,000 less in services for DSS recipients in 2012 than in 2009
-- $484,000 less for Dutchess County Community Action in 2012 than in 2012
-- $740,000 less for Hudson Valley Mental Health in 2012 than in 2009
-- $191,000 less for Hudson River Housing in 2012 than in 2009
-- $30,000 less for Grace Smith House in 2012 than in 2009
[...and again-- see http://www.TriCountyCrisisCenter.org ; Grace Smith needs funds; TCCC does too!...]
[again: Gibson's allegiance to Norquist no help; http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ILikeIke : my solution!]
[wake up Dutchess-- FDR didn't get us out of the Depression with budget cuts, layoffs, union-busting!]
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Dutchess County Dept. of Mental Hygiene CSEA Shop Steward Shaun Chesley statement on all this:
"Almost two years ago, CSEA was informed of the transition plans of contracting out the services of the Continuing Treatment centers of the Department of Mental Hygiene to Occupations Inc.
CSEA was told that this transition would take place using attrition, meaning that if employees found other positions or retired, those positions were to be back-filled by Occupations Inc. employees. This plan is fair, and it has been done in the past. It means no layoffs, and it allows for all parties to transition painlessly while maintaining services to the residents of Dutchess County.
On November 1st we were surprised to learn that the County Executive suggests in his 2012 Tentative Budget to not only break the agreement of the Transition plans and our past practices, but to go against our Collective Bargaining agreement by contracting out services and laying off existing employees.
This is not only wrong; it is illegal, and we ask that you reject this proposal and return to the past practice of the agreed-upon transition plans."
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Recall-- from http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2011/November/02/DC_budget-02Nov11.html ...
POUGHKEEPSIE - Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus unveiled his proposed 2012 county budget of $411 million Tuesday. The proposal applies $24.4 million from the general fund balance, and cuts 49 mental hygiene full time equivalent positions.
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From: Tracey Osetek
Subject: 2012 Proposed Budget
Dear County Legislators,
My name is Tracey Osetek. I am a Dutchess County Department of Mental Hygiene employee working as a Recreation Therapy Aide for Millbrook Continuing Treatment Center. I came into this position 8 years ago simply looking for a job but found my calling in servicing those who are inflicted with mental illness. I have finally decided to pursue a career as a psychiatric nurse. Unfortunately, I will be unable to do that if the 2012 proposed budget is passed. This budget has called for the elimination of 22 DMH positions, mine included.
I have a 3 year old and a 17 year old to support. My 3 year old has a sensory processing disorder which requires a structured program and services to help him. I will not be able to continue to pay for this if I am laid off. My 17 year old is diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. He is doing well but he needs his medication to maintain the stability of his symptoms. I will not be able to provide his medication without my insurance.
This proposal does not only effect myself, my children, my coworkers, my friends, but it severely effects our main purpose, the clients we serve. The closing of Hudson River Psychiatric Center has already displaced many patients and with the closing of our three Continuing Treatment Center's these patients will be left with minimal services available to them.
A private organization is slated to take over all three of our Continuing Treatment Center's but they will only be able to serve the higher functioning patients since they operate under PROS, Personalized Recovery Oriented Services. This system is designed to encourage recovery which consist of symptom management, education, independence, job training and reintroduction into the community and work force. This is a great plan for those who are at the capacity to achieve those goals.
What about the large portion whose illness is severe and persistent? Where will they end up? Jail? On the street? There is no room at the hospitals due to Hudson River's closing. I work as a per diem Pt Care Tech on the 5th floor at St Francis Hospital and have witnessed first hand the cycle that occurs. St Francis is overflowing and patients have been sent as far as Glenn Falls because there are no beds.
I ask that you restore and fund these positions so that DMH employees can continue to provide the services this population so desperately needs and continue to try and formulate a more cost effective plan to operate Mental Hygiene.
Sincerely,
Tracey Osetek
##################################################
Again-- I received a call recently from one county employee (of 49) from Dutchess Co. Dept. of Mental Hygience to be laid off; they've been working with mentally ill folks unemployed who have turned to alcohol/substance abuse-- this county employee pointed out to us the irony of GOP creating more depressed unemployed who may well turn to alcohol or drug abuse after being laid off-- insanity...
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Don't forget-- Dutchess CSEA's Shaun Chesley, Hyde Park's Doris Kelly, Rhinebeck's Marcia Slatkin, Ruth Boyer, Fred Nagel, Sandra Oldenburg, and Edmond Roberts, Clinton's Pat Zolnik, Carmen Region, Milan's Sheila Buff, Fishkill's Josh and Mara Farrell, Wappinger's Philip Banco, Rich Carlson and Richard Vineski, Beacon's Susan Osberg, Erika Waldron, and Dan Rigney, Poughkeepsie's Barbara Lindsey, Scott Patrick Humphrey, East Fishkill's Joette Kane, Red Hook's Cary Kittner and Doris Soroko, Dover's Nora Edwards, Bangall's Alison Francis, Millerton's Dianne Engleke and Joan Daidone, and Pleasant Valley's Sue MacNish all signed (35 total now):
http://www.petitiononline.com/cobudget .
[my petition to avoid ALL county employees from being laid off-- while eliminating county property taxes-- county-level income tax as solution to stop county budget/tax insanity for 2011, beyond-- if
OK for certain GOP state legislators to propose income tax to fund schools, why not this local reform?]
[economists agree: massive budget cuts and layoffs are exact WRONG thing to do in current recession; if we here in Dutchess aren't going to honor FDR's legacy and fight draconian cuts like this-- who will?...more and more from all over embracing progressive solution: http://www.petitiononline.com/cobudget ; as it is already, GOP have privatized far too many mental health services over the past few decades to non-union nonprofits-- driving down wages locally]
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[again-- see http://www.ABetterChoiceforNY.org for state budget position that Molinaro SHOULD have been pushing-- instead of massive state budget cuts to schools and everything else that he and Cuomo rammed down our throats this year; solution = progressive taxation of millionaires that poll after poll after poll has proven vast majority of us want-- Marist, Siena, Quinnipiac, Hart poll; recall massive statewide Growing Together Better Choice Budget Coalition-- NYS Library Association, NYS Coalition Against Domestic Violence, NYS AFL-CIO, NYSUT, CSEA, PEF, AFSCME, NY Jobs with Justice, Dutchess Outreach, NY Statewide Senior Action Council, NYS Alliance for Retired Americans, Interfaith Alliance of NYS, Interfaith Impact of NYS, Environmental Advocates, Citizen Action, NYS Community Action Association, Hunger Action Network of NYS, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, FPI:
http://www.hungeractionnys.org/Poeple%20SOS%20release%202011.pdf ;
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940073&category=state ;
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/08/16/100816ta_talk_surowiecki ]
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[here below-- reminder of just how much county budget has already been slashed over past few years]
From http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/12/eight-crucial-programs-slashed-in.html ...
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Eight crucial programs slashed in county budget-- help get truth out, folks...
The fact is that after all the county budget kabuki theatre over the
last few months, the County Exec and GOP Co. Leg. majority completely
eliminated the following eight crucial, proven cost-saving, and
pro-active programs-- preventive programs which, now cut (laying off
28 county workers) by their absence, will end up driving up county
property taxes further: [hold 'em accountable now, folks-- before
this all stale]
[note: contrast these first three cuts w/GOP drive for new $75
million, 300-bed jail addition; wake up!]
1. GOP eliminated county funding for the BOCES GED program in our Jail (program endorsed
even by jail's leadership).
[tho only $87,000/year this program cuts recidivism rate in half for
Transition Unit-- from 56% to 28%]
2. GOP eliminated Project Return (juvenile delinquency prevention)
for 45 kids at county Youth Bureau.
[effectively costing only $24/day to keep youth with
families--instead of $657/day to be incarcerated!]
3. GOP eliminated Mediation Center of Du. Co. (juvenile delinquency
prevention for troubled teens).
[youth in 245 different families served last year in community-- not
$240,000/year each for incarceration]
4. GOP eliminated the senior home care program at our county's Health
Department; workers laid off.
[will end up costing local taxpayers more-- with increasing number of
seniors in nursing home instead]
5. GOP eliminated Senior Friendship Centers at Millerton, Pawling,
and Fishkill-- with workers laid off.
[will end up costing local taxpayers more-- could well end up pushing
local seniors into nursing homes]
6. GOP eliminated our county's Office of Consumer Affairs [we are all
consumers here in Dutchess!].
[according to County Exec, will mean 76% decrease in ability to
handle local consumer complaints]
7.. GOP eliminated county Health Department water lab
http://wwww.RealMajorityProject.blogspot.com .
[even though Dutchess has literally more public water supplies here
than any other county in NYS!]
8. GOP eliminated our county's Human Rights Commission (in spite of
over 900 complaints annually!).
[slap in face to local African-Americans, Latino immigrants, women,
seniors, disabled, gays, lesbians]
Let's also not forget the fact that the County Exec and GOP Co.
Leg. majority also, frankly, decimated county $$$ for Cornell
Cooperative Extension of Dutchess County (scroll down just a bit), leaving CCEDC's
Environmental, Agricultural, and Horticultural programs underfunded
by $327,000 for 2011 compared to this year, left the Dutchess County
Arts Council underfunded by $96,933 for 2011 compared to 2010
left Hudson Valley Mental Health clinics underfunded by $200,000 for
2011 (compared to 2010-- meaning higher costs to taxpayers down the road from psychiatric ward, jail, prison)-- and left the Lexingon Center for Recovery
underfunded by $20,000 (no methadone treatment 50 heroin addicts)...
[recall 12/2 statement: Bardavon county budget hearing on need to
fund treatment for 300, not just 250!]
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From http://www.CCEDutchess.org (Cornell Cooperative Extension of Dutchess)...
2011 County Funding - Impact on CCEDC
On behalf of Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County's Board and our constituents, we thank our Dutchess County Legislators for restoring as much as they could for CCEDC county appropriations in the 2011 Dutchess County Budget during their December 7, 2010 Legislative Meeting. Their amended budget for CCEDC resulted in restoring our 2011 budget from the County Executive's initial $150,000 to $520,000 - 56% of our 2010 budget. Please join our Board in thanking our Legislators for doing their best during a challenging process.
The $404,779 (44%) reduction in 2011 County appropriations has resulted in staffing reductions, loss of match dollars leading to grant funding reductions, and reductions or eliminations of educational programming and resources for Dutchess County residents. Specifically:
· 13 positions have been affected: 7 staff in currently filled positions have been laid off; 1 staff member's term has not been renewed; 1 vacant position has been eliminated; 1 vacant position has been reduced; 3 current staff have been impacted with reduced hours/job responsibilities - - - 35% of 2010 positions.
· All current programs are undergoing restructuring due to funding and staff reductions:
The $150,000 restored for 4-H Youth Development enables 4-H to continue in 2011
. This 28% reduction has led to a staff reduction from 3 to 1? staff with a restructured volunteer management system planned for 2011, as well as a reprioritizing of educational programming.
A $130,718 (41%) county funding reduction for Agriculture/Horticulture has resulted in:
* Decreased commercial Agriculture/Horticulture expertise with some areas eliminated due to staff layoffs/position reductions. Specific program decisions are in the midst of discussion. Commercial diagnostics will continue to be available.
* Diagnostic Lab hours will be decreased from 3 mornings/week to 1 morning/week April through October.
* Community Horticulture, including the educational demonstration gardens will continue through fundraising efforts and volunteer Master Gardeners support.
2011 grant funding enables Green Teen Community Gardening to continue with program reprioritizing due to the elimination of 100% county funding.
With 100% county funding eliminated, Financial Management Education is severely impacted with the layoff of the sole county funded educator. Most programming will be eliminated with the Family Budget Volunteer Educators in transition pending further review. Other current programming will remain dependent upon grant funding.
With the restoration of 63% of the Environment and Energy Program's county funding, GIS services will be fully available. With a 37% county funding reduction resulting in the elimination of 1 ? positions, the remaining programming will be reduced and/or eliminated, pending further discussions. Watershed programming will continue through grant funding.
The 28% reduction in county funding for Nutrition Programs, as well as the 44% reduction in county funding for the entire organization, has led to a loss of critical match dollars for a major Nutrition Grant serving food stamp recipients. This loss of grant and county funding has led to layoffs and ultimately less available educational programs for those in need.
The Relatives as Parents program, currently solely funding by grant dollars, will continue due to that funding.
As Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County looks to 2011 and celebrating 100 years of CCE in New York State, we will also engage in strategic planning for the future including restructuring, shared positions and resources, and other opportunities. CCEDC has a proud past, and although the CCEDC you know and rely on today will be different in 2011, we look forward to continuing to serve Dutchess County residents and welcome any ideas you may have.
2011 County Funding by program area are:
$150,000 for 4-H
$75,000 for Nutrition
$185,000 for Commercial Ag/Hort
$110,000 for Environment ($75,000 specifically for GIS)
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Don't forget-- all the following cuts went through in the 2010 County Budget:
[despite best efforts from Joel on this; thanks to 120+ of you signed on over the past year to my http://www.PetitionOnline.com/SaveDuCo petition effort to find alternative cost-savers to cuts here]
-- $1,000,000-plus cut to our county's Board of Elections
-- $26,000 cut to the Dutchess County Office of Veterans Affairs (part-time employee laid off)
-- $233,000 cut to our county's Office for the Aging (Senior Friendship Centers now on 4-day weeks instead of 5-day)
-- $209,839 cut to Dutchess County Community Action Agency (meaning less services, layoffs)
-- $200,000-plus cut to DCDOH- laying off 4 county employees, eliminating county's senior home care program
-- $185,000 cut to Cornell Cooperative Extension (meaning less services, layoffs)
-- $165,960 cut to the Astor Home for Children (meaning less services, layoffs)
-- $114,000 cut to Family Services (meaning less services for the most vulnerable in our county)
-- $111,000 cut to Grace Smith House (meaning less services)
-- $106,987 cut to Hudson River Housing (in the midst of worst housing/foreclosure crisis in decades)
-- $56,553 cut to the Lexington Center for Recovery (shortfunding methadone clinic for heroin addicts)
-- $55,000 cut to Dutchess County Arts Council (meaning less services)
-- $41,000 cut to Mid-Hudson Library System (meaning less services)
-- $28,111 cut to the Mediation Center of Dutchess County (meaning less services)
-- $23,000 cut to Mental Health Association of Dutchess County (meaning less services)
-- $23,000 cut to BOCES (meaning less services in transition/re-entry program)
-- $11,000 cut to Lexington Center and $3000 cut to Literacy Connections (meaning less services)
Sunday, November 27, 2011
re: smear email attacking me recently sent out anonymously to folks across 20th c.d...
Hi all...
I recently become aware of an email that some anonymous coward has sent out to folks all across the 20th c.d.-- unjustifiably attacking me as a "psychopath" and "moron", among other things...
I wasn't going to dignify this idiocy with a response-- until it became apparent recently that this same anonymous smear attack email has been sent out to folks all over the 20th congressional district...
[note-- pls let me know asap if you've received it if you don't mind; it's already in Columbia/Warren co.'s; much easier for us to trace back to person actually sending out these emails if y'all can help on this!]
So-- just for the record-- allow me to make a few things crystal clear here, people...
[fact: folks I've known in my personal life mentioned in attack email already willing testify on my behalf]
[also-- yes, I know I'm a public figure (I'm a big boy; I can take care of myself, as they say)...however-- there still are laws here and now on the books in NYS in 2011 that make clear-- lies can be prosecuted:
http://www.enotes.com/everyday-law-encyclopedia/libel-and-slander (I've spoken w/lawyer already);
http://newyorkpersonalinjurylegalblog.com/new-york-defamation/ (need your help to bring to justice);
http://www.employmentlawyernewyork.com/defamation-libel-and-slander.html (donate: address below)]
Fact: I'm proud of my personal and professional life-- bring on the microscope-- I've worked for literally the last twenty-four years in public and private schools from Hudson to the Bronx to the City of Poughkeepsie and beyond. I taught math for five years in the Bronx at P.S. 32, the Belmont School of Global Studies; I decided to leave when the principal down there told me I had to make a decision between showing up at a dozen County Legislature Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee meetings every November-- or keeping my teaching job (I had just run and lost
five different times for county legislature and state legislature; I didn't and don't take this lightly). Once I was elected I devoted myself 24/7/365 to being the best county legislator I could be; it became impossible for me to finish the Master's degree I had started and be a good county legislator. For the last two years I've subbed extensively in Hudson, Millbrook, and Arlington school districts (and yes, frankly, to this day one of my proudest achievements ever was being named the seventh residential staff of 40+ to be chosen as Staff of the Month at Devereux back 20 years ago-- the truth).
Fact: Yes, I live with my mother; she's a widow (her husband-- my stepfather-- died twelve years ago as I was giving him CPR); we live in a beautiful, wonderful, huge, old house on ten acres of land-- I want to keep it in the family; I help pay the bills and do chores around the house (sad; this isn't first time right wing has attacked me on this; when will they get tired of picking on me for this?...(perhaps 2525?)).
Fact: Since 2003 I've been pushing for an electricians' licensing law for Dutchess County; the truth is that ever since I read in late 2003 in the Daily Freeman that Greene County was considering licensing electrical contractors, that's the moment I started pushing for it-- not five years later. I can even recall to this day that the article on this was all the way in the lower right-hand corner of the Daily Freeman. Note, too-- 'twas back in 2004 that I myself launched a petition effort to build support for electrician licensing across Dutchess County; see http://www.PetitionOnline.com/SafeWire -- long before 2008 (the only reason I finally ended up voting for it a few years ago is because even Richard Morse publicly stated at a Tom Mansfield/Red Hook Town Hall forum that the law wouldn't hurt folks like him). Period.
Fact: I just got re-elected once more this month, unopposed, to a fifth term in the Dutchess County Legislature down here to represent Rhinebeck and Clinton, now have well over 200 folks supporting my campaign for Congress at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel (join us!) and have even been recognized as one of the most innovative and effective local elected officials in the Hudson Valley; I was named a "Local Luminary" by Chronogram magazine four years ago; see:
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2007/10/View+From+the+Top/Local-Luminary-Joel-Tyner .
Fact: What I am is someone who's proven five elections in a row now that I can get elected in essentially GOP/Conservative district-- while not compromising on core progressive Democratic values (BECAUSE I haven't compromised; folks believe in me-- for better or worse)...(I would dare to say for the better).
I could be wrong-- but I think I'm the best hope Dems in the 20th have to replace Mr. Gibson...
[with your help!...(letters to editor needed, folks)]
Again-- put this on your calendars too-- I'll also be hosting a screening of "An Inside Job" Friday, Dec. 2nd-- 7 pm Rock Hill Bake House in Glens Falls 19 Exchange St: http://www.RockHillBakeHouse.com ; recall-- "An Inside Job" is Charles Ferguson's Oscar winner-- see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/ !
Pass it on...
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.JoelforCongress.org
p.s. If you haven't yet-- join 200+ already signed on-- at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel -- pass it on!
p.p.s. Stand up to this obvious attempt to smear me-- donate to "Joel for Congress", 324 Browns Pond Road, Staatsburg, NY 12580!...
p.p.p.s. Check these four new must-read's!...(first one in particular; read, fwd widely):
"Ten Great Things To Be Thankful For in 2011" by Scott Thill
http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153187/10_great_things_to_be_thankful_for_in_2011_
"The Uprising of 2012?" by Kara Miller
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/27-4
"Washington Leaves Millions to Die" by Jeffrey D. Sachs
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/27-1
"Rich Nations Accused of Climate-Change 'Bullying'" by Jonathan Owen
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/27-0 ]
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Again-- nothing personal w/Gibson-- but in no way, shape, or form is he standing up for us on these ten:
[these ten issues are the reason I launched my campaign for Congress; will not be distracted/diverted!]
Fact #1: 81% of Americans support taxing millionaires/billionaires more to solve federal budget problems.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7333/what_americans_want_the_peoples_budget
Fact #2: 78% of Americans support protecting Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid from any cuts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-shows-americans-oppose-entitlement-cuts-to-deal-with-debt-problem/2011/04/19/AFoiAH9D_story.html
Fact #3: 59% of Americans support expanding Medicare to cover us all-- to save $400 billion a year.
http://www.healthcare-now.org/another-poll-shows-majority-support-for-single-payer/
Fact #4: 67% of Americans support $10-an-hour minimum wage to put money in pockets of working class.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/06/americans-minimum-wage-poll_n_752921.ZZZhtml
Fact #5: 53% of Americans support full federal funding for Planned Parenthood and reproductive justice.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/15708
Fact #6: More New Yorkers support protecting our drinking water with statewide ban on fracking than not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/15/new-york-gas-drilling-rul_n_900011.html
Fact #7: 54% of Americans support full funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-- not cuts.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/harris-poll-epa-budget/
Fact #8: 79% of New Yorkers support Clean Money Clean Elections-- real campaign finance reform.
http://rochesterturning.com/2008/04/28/poll-says-3-of-4-new-yorkers-support-publicly-financed-elections/
Fact #9: 80% of Americans support amending the Constitution to make it clear-- corporations aren't people.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/02/in-supreme-court-ruling-on-campaign-finance-the-public-dissents.html ; http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/node/75
Fact #10: 59% of Americans support our troops coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq now without delay.
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/afghanistan-get-out-59-percent
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Ten more reasons here to replace Mr. Gibson-- with all due respect...
1. Fact: According to the Center for Responsive Politics OpenSecrets.org database, Gibson already this year has raked in $10,150 in from Wall Street securities and investment firms, $15,700 from the insurance industry, $22,500 from the military/aerospace industry, and $7000 from electric utilities, besides the $2000 he got from Goldman Sachs last September, $5000 this July from Eric Cantor's PAC (and $13,000 last year from the insurance industry)-- disgusting (I refuse donations from all of these!).
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycl...e=2012&cid=N00031998&type=I&newmem=N
2. Fact: Even the Wall Street Journal reported April 4th this year that the Gibson/Cantor/Boehner "Cut, Cap, and Kill" legislation would "essentially end Medicare" while eliminating 700,000 jobs; meanwhile, Gibson and his staff continue to lie about this to anyone calling his offices-- unconscionable.
[ http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/08/truth-re-gibson-anti-senior-anti.html ]
3. Fact: Gibson refuses to support Obama's American Jobs Act-- and he also refuses to support Rep. Jan Schakowsky's even better "Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act", which would create 2.2 million jobs rebuilding our infrastructure and hiring in our schools, hospitals, child care centers, parks, police officers, firefighters, weatherization, and recycling-- by raising taxes for Americans who earn more than $1 million and $1 billion, by eliminating subsidies for big oil companies, and by closing loopholes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.
[see: http://www.AmericanJobsAct.com ; recall my http://www.PetitionOnline.com/JobsNow effort]
4. Fact: Gibson's signing on to Grover Norquist's "no new tax" pledge means Congressman 1% will continue ignoring an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in March finding that 81% of Americans support taxing millionaires to solve federal budget problems-- not putting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on chopping block (send me to Washington-- I'll be an even louder voice telling both GOP and Dems to save all 3 of these from cuts; see just below-- new United for a Fair Economy update on this.
[recall-- infamous Town Hall forum Gibson hosted in August in Millerton-- folks are upset(!)...I was there]
[ http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7333/what_americans_want_the_peoples_budget ;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/invoke-the-14th--and-end-the-debt-standoff/2011/07/01/gHQAUif8yH_story.html ; http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ILikeIke ;
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/26/305451/citizen-slams-gop-rep-over-anti-tax-pledge-we-are-your-consituents-not-grover-norquist/ ]
5. Fact: Gibson voted last month for only $3.65 billion in funding for FEMA for Tropical Storm Irene relief for homeowners, businesses, and our communities-- even after the Senate had just approved $6.9 billion for FEMA in strong bipartisan majority.
[ http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/10/shame-on-gibsonhayworth-only-26-billion.html ]
6. Fact: Gibson voted last month to kill more American jobs by extending so-called "free-trade" agreements to Korea, Panama, and Colombia-- though we've already lost 5 million jobs from NAFTA.
[ http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/83832/tonko-gibson-at-odds-on-trade-agreements/ ;
http://www.americanjobsalliance.com/content/new-free-trade-pacts-will-hurt-middle-class ]
7. Fact: Gibson voted this February to eliminate $300 million in Title X Planned Parenthood funding-- even though "Title X funding can only be used for family planning services including birth control, life saving cervical and breast cancer screenings, HIV counseling and testing, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and education. The funding cannot and is not used to provide abortion services. Under the proposal, 48 percent of Planned Parenthood patients nationwide would be cut off from their source of health care for these essential services. Ninety-seven percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are preventive, most of which are women's gynecology services."
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/local-press-releases/representatives-gibson-hayworth-vote-block-funds-planned-parenthood-would-cut-health-care-milli-36335.htm
8. Fact: Gibson voted last month for HR 358-- legislation that "would allow a hospital to deny a woman lifesaving emergency abortion care-even if a doctor deems it necessary. It would also take comprehensive health care coverage away from women and create loopholes that states and insurance companies could exploit to undermine the new requirement that insurance companies provide birth control with no co-pays or deductibles."
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/local-press-releases/rep-gibson-votes-deny-lifesaving-emergency-health-care-women-38215.htm
9. Fact: Gibson's allegiance to Grover Norquist jeopardizes national support for farmland protection.
As Rhinebeck resident and Scenic Hudson Senior Vice President Steve Rosenberg noted this morning on WAMC, it's crucial that even the small amount of federal funding for farmland protection ($100 million) now in the the farm bill about to be re-authorized be maintained-- the fact is this becomes more and more impossible with Norquist acolytes like Gibson in office who reject progressive taxation.
[ http://www.riverkeeper.org/news-events/news/stop-polluters/pollution-enforcement/outlining-vision/ ]
10. Fact: Gibson refuses to push for a wide variety of common-sense progressive initiatives that have broad populist support, as evidenced repeatedly by many polls-- a statewide ban on fracking (and immediate national moratorium), a liveable minimum wage, Medicare for all, Clean Money Clean Elections campaign finance reform, amending the Constitution to make it clear corporations aren't people, taxing Wall Street, breaking up the big banks, bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, ending the speculation driving gas/oil prices up through the roof, bringing our troops now from Afghanistan, Iraq, and all over the globe to save $125 billion a year for taxpayers (and redirect $ home to our needs)-- and he refuses to lift a finger to join Sen. Bernie Sanders in seriously challenging the $16 TRILLION the Federal Reserve recently lent out to practically every major financial institution and corporation around.
[ http://www.AMillionFrackingLetters.com ; http://www.FrackAction.com ; http://www.ToxicsTargeting.com
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/node/75 ; http://www.PetitionOnline.com/FDRagain ;
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/afghanistan-get-out-59-percent ]
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Accomplishments in the Dutchess County Legislature Since 2003
Proven results-- from ability to effectively work across party lines with Republicans:
* The Town of Rhinebeck is now (and has been for over six years)
part of the Greenway Compact.
[recall-- recent Greenway grant funding for sidewalk improvements in
Village of Rhinebeck; over $100,000 in county funding for Rhineson
property for town park after Rhinebeck joined Greenway Compact;
Rhinebeck Town Board had been dead-set against joining Greenway Compact]
* got resolution passed 22-2 to push County Exec to delay no
further; appoint County Historian
[see 246 signed on to my http://www.petitiononline.com/hirehist ]
* got resolution passed unanimously in March to save millions of
county tax dollars by avoiding needless jail expansion
[see http://www.JobsNotJails.weebly.com -- countywide multiracial coalition Joel created]
* got Dutchess County Executive and County Legislature in 2004 to stop homeless
veterans from being turned away from overnight shelter
* succeeded in keeping county funding steady for Mental Health
America's Court-Appointed Special Advocate program for foster children
* working with Dutchess County's Health Department and Ferncliff Nursing
Home to make sure seniors' rights are fully respected
* in 2004 and 2005, during my very first term in office, with
only 8 Dems and 17 GOP county legislators, I got resolutions passed
unanimously for a health insurance group discount committee, for IBM
to protect retirees' health benefits, for a public hearing on St.
Lawrence Cement expansion, to protect wetlands, and purchase of wind power.
* in 2005 successfully initiated move for our county's
Consumer Affairs website to expand with gas and prescription drug
price information, and for AED defibrillator discount program as well
* for eight years now researched/educated public re: MTBE water
contamination rampant all over Rhinebeck and Clinton
Full list here of twenty different resolutions Joel got passed in 2008 and 2009 (many with GOP support):
1. For Independent Dutchess Energy Alliance towards goal of $1 billion in savings on
electric bills over ten years.
[based on successful green jobs/retrofits example of Cambridge, MA-- see
[ http://www.CambridgeEnergyAlliance.org/ ; also Town of Babylon's
http://www.LIGreenHomes.com/ ; Town of Bedford's [http://www.EnergizeBedford.org ;
http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2009/03/our-bright-idea-growin-bri... ]
2. For Dutchess to save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars
annually on power costs w/Municipal Electricity Gas Alliance (as in
Putnam, Ulster, Sullivan, and twenty other counties).
[ http://www.MEGAEnergy.org/ ]
3. For saving 30% on lighting bills in county buildings switching
fixtures from T-12's to T-8's/metal halides.
[ http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Replace-T8-Or-T12-Lights-With-New-Energ... 99 ]
4. For Dutchess County to keep using lever voting machines and state/federal
government to make sure we can too.
[ http://www.ETCNYS.org/ ; http://nylevers.wordpress.com/ ]
5. For zero-waste approach to resource recovery in Dutchess County: save
money, create clean green jobs.
[see over 90 other Dutchess residents on board this-- at
http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes ]
6. For cost-saving green roofs, rain gardens, wind turbines,
composting toilets to be on Dutchess County property.
[ http://www.GreenRoofs.com/ ; http://www.RainGardens.org / ;
http://bianys.com/node/418 ; http://www.petitiononline.com/goldpoop ;
http://www.CompostingToilets.org/ ]
7. For solar panels on Dutchess County Office Building/22 Market
St./Poughkeepsie (then all county buildings).
[ http://www.osc.state.ny.us /press/releases/mar08/0306 08.htm ;
http://www.HVCE.com/ ]
8. For new SuperLOOPer discount card at local stores and restaurants
for frequent users of Dutchess CountyLOOP bus.
[ http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Tom+Malon e/01Ur0if9hQ8Ic/1 ]
9. For Dutchess to hold Home Heating Summit re: home heating oil
crisis (as in Ulster and Orange counties).
[ http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/September08/10/DC_hm_heat-10Sep08.html ]
10. For Dutchess County Environmental Science Advisory Network "Recommendations for
Stream/Flood Management in Dutchess" to be followed.
[ http://www.dutchessemc.org/ESANRecomendations.pdf ]
11. For Green Map added to Dutchess County website: list farmer's
markets/green resources (as in Westchester).
[ http://greenmap.westchestergov.com/ ; http://www.GreenMap.org/ ]
12. For bike rental program in Dutchess at no cost to taxpayers (as
is already in Washington, D.C.).
[ http://www.SmartBikeDC.com / ]
13. For Dutchess County to be part of Hudson Valley Community
Preservation Act to save open space.
[ http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=101&sh=story&sto ry=23825 ]
14. For cost-saving "Green House Project" nursing home in county--
proven to make seniors happier.
[ http://www.TheGreenHousePr ject.org/ ]
15. For particulate matter air pollution to be measured in Dutchess
County as it was until 2002.
[ http://www.ALANY.org/ ]
16. For greatly expanding current circuitbreaker for school property
taxes (bipartisan Little/Galef bill).
[ http://www.petitiononline. com/taxcut ; http://www.TrendNY.org/ ]
17. For real relief for Dutchess County property taxpayers-- Omnibus
Property Tax Relief and Reform Act.
[ http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org/ ]
18. For ending secret market manipulations on Wall Street causing
higher gas/home heating oil prices.
[ http://www.StopOilSpeculators.com ]
19. For wetlands (even small ones) in Dutchess County to be saved from being
paved over by developers.
[ http://www.eany.org/capitolwatch/memos%202009/21_Wet landsProtection.pdf ]
20. For Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies recommendations re: air
pollution/quality standards to be followed.
[ http://www.ecostudies.org/threats_from_above.html ]
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From http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153187/10_great_things_to_be_thankful_for_in_2011_ ...
AlterNet / By Scott Thill
10 Great Things To Be Thankful For in 2011
From Occupy and Elizabeth Warren to the Nissan Leaf and Col. Ann Wright, progressives have quite a few things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
November 23, 2011 |
Thanksgiving's traditional harvest festival in the United States is about much more than doping up on tryptophan. It's a time to reflect on the bounty of our singular planet and its diverse people, especially when it comes to earnest progressives, who are out there fighting hard for the best interests of both. Here are their shining examples from across the spectrum:
Occupy Worldwide: A defiant populist uprising that has shone a searching light on both America's compromised political system and the powers-that-be that bought it for a song, the global Occupy movement is the greatest thing that has happened to progressives in this still-new century. That's not really setting the bar high, given the rapacious resource wars and financial scams that have more or less destroyed the light-speed American cultural and political evolution which astounded the world last century. But Occupy's true impact has yet to be measured, although it has quickly seized the planet's imagination and attention, after being calculatedly ignored until thuggish cops in New York, Oakland and UC Davis made that impossible. Today, Occupy Wall Street's dogged activism has done more than its part to pull the emperor's clothes off of the world's morally bankrupt FIRE economy -- the aptly named acronym for the finance, insurance and real estate markets -- than activists from any other traditional party or organization.
And unlike the armchair warmongers who are wrecking Roosevelt's New Deal with a fascist, consumerist panopticon that has exploded the gap between the rich and the poor, the Occupy movement has actually taken bullets for this country's impressive past and uncertain future. Climate change's intensified winter could threaten its short-term existence in the months ahead, but only useful idiots think that the Occupy movement will go away just in time for the 2012 elections. Rarely in history has such a stunning opportunity armed with true believers promised to reshape the world, and chances are it will go one of two ways.
Its walk-the-walk progressives tired of Wall Street's corporate personhood and hostile takeover of American governance could either triumph, and help reinstitute the regulatory regimes that saved the U.S. from the Great Depression in the first. Or they could be brutally put down by the same powers-that-be which mostly killed off the similarly optimistic movements of the '60s and greatly contributed to our current dystopia. But no matter may come, Occupy's place in progressive history is secure.
Elizabeth Warren: Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul recently called her a "socialist," politely truncating the heckling jackass who called her a "socialist whore" during her recent speech in Massachusetts. But despite the empty insults, one thing is utterly clear: Elizabeth Warren is a sincere progressive threat to the status quo on Wall Street and in the Senate.
As of this writing, she's unbeatable by former nude model Scott Brown, who traded wisecracks with Warren about disrobing for money to make economic ends meet. Considering that she helped create the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and watched as the 2008 bank bailouts missed their economic goals, Warren is light-years ahead of Brown when it comes to turning the nation's economy around -- especially because she probably knows where all the banksters' bodies are buried. Watch Warren's politically progressive instincts hit the ground shortly after she wins the 2012 state election in Massachusetts, with or without a strategic alignment with Occupy Wall Street.
Bernie Sanders: Unlike Warren, Bernie Sanders actually is a self-described democratic socialist, although he's formally registered as an independent. But regardless of the political pigeonhole, he's a stalwart progressive champion for Vermont and the nation. He bravely closed out 2010 by delivering an eight-hour filibuster blistering the Obama administration's preservation of Bush-era tax cuts, publishing it in March 2011 under the title The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class. This summer, he outed 10 corporate tax cheats, from Bank of America to Valero Energy that have blatantly avoided paying their fair share.
Most recently, Sanders spearheaded an inquiry into the corporate influence of the State Department's handling of the environmentally disastrous Keystone XL pipeline, a fossil fools' errand whose implementation would essentially mean game over for Earth's hospitable climate, according to NASA's outspoken atmospheric physicist James Hansen. That triumphant stall kicked Keystone's toxic can down the road to 2012, where it can fully become the hot-button election issue it should be. For reasons like these, Sanders remains America's finest progressive of any political persuasion.
Judges Tom Nelson and Aleta Trauger: Nashville hasn't had much great news since the White Stripes' Jack White opened his own label Third Man Records there in 2009. But once the Occupy movement took hold in late October, progressive-minded judges started cropping up like pop hits. First, there was Night Court Judge Thomas Nelson, who refused to sign criminal trespassing warrants for Occupy Nashville protesters that called bullshit on a sneaky curfew instituted by Republican governor Bill Haslam, taking pains to note that it "is of particular consternation that the rules and curfew were enacted after a protest movement and occupation of Legislative Plaza had been tolerated for just over three weeks, with no notice that the group members were involved in criminal activity."
After that comparatively brave bit of correct legal interpretation, United States district judge Aleta Trauger granted the protestors' ACLU-backed temporary restraining order against Haslam and his officials, which rightly asserted that both the arrests and curfew violated their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly. The ruling could be a progressive legal precedent that sparks a nationwide rethink of the Occupy movement's political and legal freedoms.
Governor John Kitzhaber: Progressives understand more than everyone that citizen deliberation is an inextricable component of a fully functioning democracy. But few politicians besides Oregon governor John Kitzhaber have actually put that principle into practice, probably because most of them fear citizen deliberation more than they fear loss of office. Yet in July, Kitzhbaber signed into law a bill that institutionalizes the Citizens Initiative Review, which puts randomly chosen voters into a public hearing where they analyze ballot measures and submit their findings to the public as election-day aids.
It's a level of public service that the nation has mostly forgotten, lost as it has been in the civically bankrupt ideology of privatization. The National Science Foundation conducted an academic evaluation of the CIR, and found that its significant local popularity and sound politics was no fluke. Progressive activists looking for an instantly applicable and rewarding program for civic cooperation and analysis need look no further.
The Ohio Electorate: To be fair, they don't get points for sleeping at the wheel as a shock doctrinist like Republican governor John Kasich took power in 2010. But better late than never, Ohio seemed to say in early November, as it overturned Kasich's ridiculous law that restricted collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of public employees. It was an outright progressive victory that should have never happened, because Kasich should never have become governor in the first place.
Hopefully, Ohio learned an important civics lesson after thinking that it could nominate a years-long Fox News host and expect anything less than doomed austerity measures. Given that Kasich's current approval rating hovers in the low 30s, and that Ohioans who would vote for a different governor given the chance register in the mid-50s, it seems that Ohio's Kasich -- like Tennessee's Haslam (yeah, him again) -- is living on borrowed time in a state that might be ripe for a progressive takeover. Stay tuned.
Mass Mediators! Long before more widely distributed media champs like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow gave it significant air time, the Occupy movement, and every other news story that really matters, boasted extensive independent coverage from Democracy Now!, whose co-host and executive producer Amy Goodman remains America's most progressive investigative journalist. But eventually Olbermann, Maddow, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher joined the charge, further relegating the paid political advertisers at Fox and CNN to the dustbin of media history. Thanks to the nation's increasingly conscientious populism, those compromised dinosaurs are now being left behind as American viewers boast a growing bounty of talking heads who make for smart, mandatory viewing.
Whether they are straightforward analysts like Goodman and Maddow, or hyperreal pranksters like Colbert -- who in 2011 created his own SuperPAC to meticulously strip our labyrinthian political machinery's financial influence to the bone -- they've all saved television news from itself. If you're watching CNN or Fox for any reason at all -- and that includes dissecting its parrots for sport (you know who you are), you're wasting valuable progressive time, especially when there are so many other televisual voices worth your hard-earned hours.
Equal-Opprtunity Economists! The bad news is that you mostly can't throw a rock at a university economics department without hitting a steady stream of Wall Street sellouts. But the good news is that there are progressive geniuses out there, whose purposeful dissections of available and hidden data are pervasively disseminated in hopes of elevating our debased economic discourse. Chief among these champs is UC Berkeley's Robert Reich, whose prescient analyses of our Great Depression rerun -- as well as his proximity to its birth while serving in President Bill Clinton's deregulation-addicted administration -- are indispensably spread across mainstream and social media. He's followed by Columbia University's Joseph Stiglitz and the Nobel-winning Paul Krugman. All three have regular Twitter feeds, if you want consistent updates on their formidable counterattacks to the disaster capitalism that has enraptured the Obama administration, the mainstream media and the multinationals seemingly hell-bent on bleeding the global village to its last drop. Inscrutable economic strategists, and their stratagems, are now thankfully a thing of the past.
Nissan Leaf: True-school progressives ride bikes whenever possible. But until further notice, it's a serious pipe dream to picture a future where personal automobiles are extinct, even in our peak oil dystopia. The best progressives can hope for now is the electric car, currently best exemplified by the Nissan Leaf, which debuted late last year and, as of October of this year, has been certified by the Environmental Protection Agency as the most efficient vehicle of all time.
It's also notorious for threatening the nation's gas-tax hierarchy, if you ask Indiana governor Bill Haslam. (Why can't we shake this guy?) But despite that excellent offense, New York City is still using the Leaf to launch an electric taxi pilot program, Nissan is rolling out a charging network in Europe and the Leaf continues to dominate the electric car market, and the progressive imagination, in its first full year. While emissions figures remain murky on Toyota's more glamorous but less worthy hybrid Prius, there is no such confusion when it comes to the Leaf. From its zero tailpipe emissions to its all-electric vision, the Leaf is the automotive future until our bike-powered utopia arrives.
Ann Wright: The 99 percent could use more allies like retired Colonel Ann Wright, currently on trial for disrupting, along with 37 other protesters, the New York Air National Guard base, which routinely delivers death-from-above to Afghanistan via MQ-9 Reaper drones controlled by U.S.-based videogamers in the armed services. "Citizens have a responsibility to take actions when they see crimes committed," Wright unapologetically explained in early November. And she's lived that code with serious discipline, from filing a resignation with Colin Powell after the 2003 Iraq occupation and disrupting congressional hearings hosting Condoleezza Rice and David Petraeus to mercilessly setting Bill O'Reilly straight until he cut her mic.
Wright is a progressive paragon, which might seem weird, given her extensive military resume. But she puts the lie to the lore that progressives can't hail from all walks of life: Just because they served in Somalia and Afghanistan doesn't mean they're jingoists who won't board a Gaza flotilla or trespass at nuclear sites to change the world. In fact, it's usually the opposite: When military veterans like 2010's progressive champion Bradley Manning and Occupy Oakland's Scott Olsen respectively take on indefinite incarceration or tear gas canisters to the face for their beliefs, their causes become exponentially galvanized and patriotism is rightly redefined for the sane. Toast them all roundly on Thanksgiving, and then take some time to support all of the aforementioned progressives as they fight the good fight alongside us. Without them, we'd be much deeper in dystopia.
Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/27-4 ...
Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by the Boston Globe
The Uprising of 2012?
by Kara Miller
Around the world, this has been the year of uprisings - spurred in large part by financial concerns.
Athens, of course, has witnessed months of fiery protests. But the disaffected have also crowded the streets of Paris, London, Rome, and New York.
And economic woes extend far beyond the obvious.
As former New York Times war reporter - and current Truthdig columnist - Chris Hedges told me in August, the Arab Spring had a lot "to do with food prices. Commodity prices - especially wheat, which has increased in price by 100% in past eight months - has really made it difficult for families, especially poor families - and half of the population in Egypt lives on about two dollars a day - to feed themselves."
Hedges argued that skyrocketing prices helped foment dissatisfaction - and pushed people into the streets. "And that's why, if you looked closely," he said, "you saw within the crowds oftentimes, people actually carrying loaves of bread. And that's not going to go away."
Indeed, on the day before Thanksgiving, The Financial Times reported that more then 40% of food producers intend to hike consumer prices in the next few months, attempting to compensate for the rising cost of raw materials.
But the problem encompasses much more than food. Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia, wrote recently that the cost of education continues to outpace inflation - even as a four-year degree becomes a prerequisite for a comfortable, middle-class life. "Poor kids can't meet tuition," wrote Sachs, "and they drop out of college in droves. Yet with more cuts in state support for tuition and in federal Pell Grants, the situation is rapidly getting worse."
A few of the families that can't afford high tuitions protest. But most just feel angry, dispirited, and betrayed.
Still, as Sachs says, there is a strange, alternate narrative: "we have two economies, not one. The economy of rich Americans is booming. Salaries are high. Profits are soaring. Luxury brands and upscale restaurants are packed. There is no recession."
Hit up some of the more expensive restaurants in Boston, and you'll see $45 steaks and $60 bottles of wine liberally dotting packed tables.
The question, then - as prices for food, education, and health care continue to rise - is how long dissatisfaction can be contained.
"I drive by gated communities," the renowned geographer Jared Diamond wrote a few years ago, "guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools."
But financial insecurity can prove combustible. As Greece, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street have so powerfully demonstrated.
"If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people," Diamond says, with a nod to history, "gates will not keep the rioters out."
2011 may have seemed like a year of upheaval. But the real fireworks could be yet to come.
© 2011 Kara Miller
Kara Miller is an Assistant Professor of English, specializing in journalism, at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. She also serves as a guest panelist on WGBH-TV's "Beat the Press" and contributes to 89.7 FM WGBH (NPR). She received her Ph.D. from Tufts University.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/27-1 ...
Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by The Huffington Post
Washington Leaves Millions to Die
residents communicate with the public during wartime.
by Jeffrey D. Sachs
The wonder of our world is that scientific knowledge is now so powerful that we can save millions of children, mothers, and fathers from killer diseases each year at little cost. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria has mobilized that knowledge over the past decade to save more than 7 million lives and to protect the health of hundreds of millions more. Yet now the Global Fund is under mortal threat because of budget cuts approved by President Obama and the Congress.
The Obama Administration had pledged $4 billion during 2011-13 to the Global Fund, or $1.33 billion per year. Now it is reneging on this pledge. For a government that spends $1.9 billion every single day on the military ($700 billion each year), Washington's unwillingness to follow through on $1.33 billion for a whole year to save millions of lives is a new depth of cynicism and recklessness.
As a result of US budget cutbacks, and me-too cutbacks by other countries, the Global Fund this week closed its doors on providing new funds to impoverished nations. It was supposed to accept proposals next month from the poorest countries for an 11th round of disease-control funds. Instead, it has scrapped any new funding until 2014 at the earliest, and will only fund the continuation of the coverage of existing programs. US officials will prevaricate, noting that the US spends this amount or that amount. History will treat such excuses with the scorn they deserve.
Millions of people are now at risk of death in the coming years as a result of Obama's lassitude and neglect. Hundreds of thousands of children who would have been saved will now die of mosquito bites. They will die because they live in poor tropical environments where a mosquito bite kills, and where their impoverishment makes it impossible for them to afford a $5 bed net, $1 diagnostic test, $1 dose of anti-malaria medicine, or access to a clinic. Countless others will die because they cannot get AIDS or TB treatments to stay alive.
If you think that money spent on the Global Fund is money down the drain, think again. The Global Fund was created a decade ago because the world needed to respond to the uncontrolled epidemics of AIDS, malaria, and TB. It has been a historic success, proving the skeptics wrong. The Global Fund keeps alive 3.2 million people on anti-retroviral treatment. It has financed 8.2 million courses of TB treatment and the distribution of 190 million insecticide-treated nets. You can read an overview here.
The Global Fund money has reached millions of people in need. When its programs have been hit by corruption, audits have paused the funding and reoriented the programs. The result of this practical approach is great success in many of the world's poorest places. Malaria has come down sharply, averting an estimated 400,000 deaths per year in Africa compared to the baseline path as of the year 2000. Yet there are still around 700,000 malaria deaths each year that can be prevented if the Global Fund has the means. Read here about the remarkable progress against malaria. Similar progress is being made against AIDS. Now that progress is at dire risk.
Reorienting less than 1 day's military budget to help save millions of lives (in conjunction with the efforts of other countries) is not only a great humanitarian step but also the most cost-effective step we can take for our own security. Countries like Yemen or Somalia are falling apart because they cannot meet their most basic needs. We send in drone missiles -- each one at the cost of at least 20,000 bed nets -- but we will find no real security until we help address the problems of disease, poverty, and hunger that destabilize these regions.
It is painful to recall the campaign promises made by Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton. Both promised that they would step up the fight to control AIDS, TB, and malaria. Empty words. President Obama's aides tell him that foreign assistance is bad domestic politics and he listens. On this issue even George W. Bush knew better.
The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is not quiet. She is an aggressive and outspoken foe of foreign assistance, pretending to her constituents that cutting a $1 billion to the Global Fund is the way to balance the budget. Great, we're now 0.001 of the way there.
The United States Government, I noted earlier, is not alone in the collapse of morality, decency, and common sense. Each government that once contributed to the Global Fund takes refuge in the budget cuts by the US and the others. The apparent belief of the politicians is that there is safety in numbers if they all starve the Global Fund together.
We live in a country where the Federal Government doesn't think twice about the fate of impoverished and dying people. Such a government won't act to save your life or mine. Politicians so brazen and irresponsible need to be voted out of office. In the meantime, I will join the efforts around the world to find new means and new leaders to continue the struggle against the killer diseases. I hope that you will do so too.
© 2011 Jeffrey D. Sachs
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of "The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity."
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From http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/27-0 ...
Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by The Independent/UK
Rich Nations Accused of Climate-Change 'Bullying'
by Jonathan Owen
Britain and other rich countries are using aid money as a lever to bully developing countries over climate change, according to a new report by an anti-poverty pressure group.
With international climate change negotiations beginning in South Africa tomorrow, a report by the World Development Movement reveals that threats and bribery are often attached to aid packages.
The report also highlights how wealthy nations use secret meetings to produce last-minute deals - presenting poorer countries with a fait accompli, as happened in Copenhagen two years ago, when delegates had an hour to read the final document drawn up by 26 countries.
The negotiations in Durban are the last chance to set binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions before the Kyoto agreement expires next year.
Murray Worthy, of the World Development Movement, said: "The US, UK and EU are using the same strong-arm tactics to bribe developing countries that we saw at Copenhagen. Abandoning their previous commitments to provide finance to help developing countries deal with climate change, they are now saying finance will only be available to countries that agree to a new deal that effectively abandons the Kyoto treaty."
The report accuses countries such as America and Britain of using "unfair, undemocratic and even deceitful means to skew the climate change negotiations in their favour".
At Copenhagen, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was reported to have treated leaders of small island states as "naughty school children".
I recently become aware of an email that some anonymous coward has sent out to folks all across the 20th c.d.-- unjustifiably attacking me as a "psychopath" and "moron", among other things...
I wasn't going to dignify this idiocy with a response-- until it became apparent recently that this same anonymous smear attack email has been sent out to folks all over the 20th congressional district...
[note-- pls let me know asap if you've received it if you don't mind; it's already in Columbia/Warren co.'s; much easier for us to trace back to person actually sending out these emails if y'all can help on this!]
So-- just for the record-- allow me to make a few things crystal clear here, people...
[fact: folks I've known in my personal life mentioned in attack email already willing testify on my behalf]
[also-- yes, I know I'm a public figure (I'm a big boy; I can take care of myself, as they say)...however-- there still are laws here and now on the books in NYS in 2011 that make clear-- lies can be prosecuted:
http://www.enotes.com/everyday-law-encyclopedia/libel-and-slander (I've spoken w/lawyer already);
http://newyorkpersonalinjurylegalblog.com/new-york-defamation/ (need your help to bring to justice);
http://www.employmentlawyernewyork.com/defamation-libel-and-slander.html (donate: address below)]
Fact: I'm proud of my personal and professional life-- bring on the microscope-- I've worked for literally the last twenty-four years in public and private schools from Hudson to the Bronx to the City of Poughkeepsie and beyond. I taught math for five years in the Bronx at P.S. 32, the Belmont School of Global Studies; I decided to leave when the principal down there told me I had to make a decision between showing up at a dozen County Legislature Budget, Finance, and Personnel Committee meetings every November-- or keeping my teaching job (I had just run and lost
five different times for county legislature and state legislature; I didn't and don't take this lightly). Once I was elected I devoted myself 24/7/365 to being the best county legislator I could be; it became impossible for me to finish the Master's degree I had started and be a good county legislator. For the last two years I've subbed extensively in Hudson, Millbrook, and Arlington school districts (and yes, frankly, to this day one of my proudest achievements ever was being named the seventh residential staff of 40+ to be chosen as Staff of the Month at Devereux back 20 years ago-- the truth).
Fact: Yes, I live with my mother; she's a widow (her husband-- my stepfather-- died twelve years ago as I was giving him CPR); we live in a beautiful, wonderful, huge, old house on ten acres of land-- I want to keep it in the family; I help pay the bills and do chores around the house (sad; this isn't first time right wing has attacked me on this; when will they get tired of picking on me for this?...(perhaps 2525?)).
Fact: Since 2003 I've been pushing for an electricians' licensing law for Dutchess County; the truth is that ever since I read in late 2003 in the Daily Freeman that Greene County was considering licensing electrical contractors, that's the moment I started pushing for it-- not five years later. I can even recall to this day that the article on this was all the way in the lower right-hand corner of the Daily Freeman. Note, too-- 'twas back in 2004 that I myself launched a petition effort to build support for electrician licensing across Dutchess County; see http://www.PetitionOnline.com/SafeWire -- long before 2008 (the only reason I finally ended up voting for it a few years ago is because even Richard Morse publicly stated at a Tom Mansfield/Red Hook Town Hall forum that the law wouldn't hurt folks like him). Period.
Fact: I just got re-elected once more this month, unopposed, to a fifth term in the Dutchess County Legislature down here to represent Rhinebeck and Clinton, now have well over 200 folks supporting my campaign for Congress at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel (join us!) and have even been recognized as one of the most innovative and effective local elected officials in the Hudson Valley; I was named a "Local Luminary" by Chronogram magazine four years ago; see:
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2007/10/View+From+the+Top/Local-Luminary-Joel-Tyner .
Fact: What I am is someone who's proven five elections in a row now that I can get elected in essentially GOP/Conservative district-- while not compromising on core progressive Democratic values (BECAUSE I haven't compromised; folks believe in me-- for better or worse)...(I would dare to say for the better).
I could be wrong-- but I think I'm the best hope Dems in the 20th have to replace Mr. Gibson...
[with your help!...(letters to editor needed, folks)]
Again-- put this on your calendars too-- I'll also be hosting a screening of "An Inside Job" Friday, Dec. 2nd-- 7 pm Rock Hill Bake House in Glens Falls 19 Exchange St: http://www.RockHillBakeHouse.com ; recall-- "An Inside Job" is Charles Ferguson's Oscar winner-- see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/ !
Pass it on...
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.JoelforCongress.org
p.s. If you haven't yet-- join 200+ already signed on-- at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Joel -- pass it on!
p.p.s. Stand up to this obvious attempt to smear me-- donate to "Joel for Congress", 324 Browns Pond Road, Staatsburg, NY 12580!...
p.p.p.s. Check these four new must-read's!...(first one in particular; read, fwd widely):
"Ten Great Things To Be Thankful For in 2011" by Scott Thill
http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153187/10_great_things_to_be_thankful_for_in_2011_
"The Uprising of 2012?" by Kara Miller
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/27-4
"Washington Leaves Millions to Die" by Jeffrey D. Sachs
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/27-1
"Rich Nations Accused of Climate-Change 'Bullying'" by Jonathan Owen
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/27-0 ]
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Again-- nothing personal w/Gibson-- but in no way, shape, or form is he standing up for us on these ten:
[these ten issues are the reason I launched my campaign for Congress; will not be distracted/diverted!]
Fact #1: 81% of Americans support taxing millionaires/billionaires more to solve federal budget problems.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7333/what_americans_want_the_peoples_budget
Fact #2: 78% of Americans support protecting Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid from any cuts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-shows-americans-oppose-entitlement-cuts-to-deal-with-debt-problem/2011/04/19/AFoiAH9D_story.html
Fact #3: 59% of Americans support expanding Medicare to cover us all-- to save $400 billion a year.
http://www.healthcare-now.org/another-poll-shows-majority-support-for-single-payer/
Fact #4: 67% of Americans support $10-an-hour minimum wage to put money in pockets of working class.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/06/americans-minimum-wage-poll_n_752921.ZZZhtml
Fact #5: 53% of Americans support full federal funding for Planned Parenthood and reproductive justice.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/15708
Fact #6: More New Yorkers support protecting our drinking water with statewide ban on fracking than not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/15/new-york-gas-drilling-rul_n_900011.html
Fact #7: 54% of Americans support full funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-- not cuts.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2011/02/16/harris-poll-epa-budget/
Fact #8: 79% of New Yorkers support Clean Money Clean Elections-- real campaign finance reform.
http://rochesterturning.com/2008/04/28/poll-says-3-of-4-new-yorkers-support-publicly-financed-elections/
Fact #9: 80% of Americans support amending the Constitution to make it clear-- corporations aren't people.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/02/in-supreme-court-ruling-on-campaign-finance-the-public-dissents.html ; http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/node/75
Fact #10: 59% of Americans support our troops coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq now without delay.
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/afghanistan-get-out-59-percent
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Ten more reasons here to replace Mr. Gibson-- with all due respect...
1. Fact: According to the Center for Responsive Politics OpenSecrets.org database, Gibson already this year has raked in $10,150 in from Wall Street securities and investment firms, $15,700 from the insurance industry, $22,500 from the military/aerospace industry, and $7000 from electric utilities, besides the $2000 he got from Goldman Sachs last September, $5000 this July from Eric Cantor's PAC (and $13,000 last year from the insurance industry)-- disgusting (I refuse donations from all of these!).
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycl...e=2012&cid=N00031998&type=I&newmem=N
2. Fact: Even the Wall Street Journal reported April 4th this year that the Gibson/Cantor/Boehner "Cut, Cap, and Kill" legislation would "essentially end Medicare" while eliminating 700,000 jobs; meanwhile, Gibson and his staff continue to lie about this to anyone calling his offices-- unconscionable.
[ http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/08/truth-re-gibson-anti-senior-anti.html ]
3. Fact: Gibson refuses to support Obama's American Jobs Act-- and he also refuses to support Rep. Jan Schakowsky's even better "Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act", which would create 2.2 million jobs rebuilding our infrastructure and hiring in our schools, hospitals, child care centers, parks, police officers, firefighters, weatherization, and recycling-- by raising taxes for Americans who earn more than $1 million and $1 billion, by eliminating subsidies for big oil companies, and by closing loopholes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.
[see: http://www.AmericanJobsAct.com ; recall my http://www.PetitionOnline.com/JobsNow effort]
4. Fact: Gibson's signing on to Grover Norquist's "no new tax" pledge means Congressman 1% will continue ignoring an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in March finding that 81% of Americans support taxing millionaires to solve federal budget problems-- not putting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on chopping block (send me to Washington-- I'll be an even louder voice telling both GOP and Dems to save all 3 of these from cuts; see just below-- new United for a Fair Economy update on this.
[recall-- infamous Town Hall forum Gibson hosted in August in Millerton-- folks are upset(!)...I was there]
[ http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7333/what_americans_want_the_peoples_budget ;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/invoke-the-14th--and-end-the-debt-standoff/2011/07/01/gHQAUif8yH_story.html ; http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ILikeIke ;
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/08/26/305451/citizen-slams-gop-rep-over-anti-tax-pledge-we-are-your-consituents-not-grover-norquist/ ]
5. Fact: Gibson voted last month for only $3.65 billion in funding for FEMA for Tropical Storm Irene relief for homeowners, businesses, and our communities-- even after the Senate had just approved $6.9 billion for FEMA in strong bipartisan majority.
[ http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/10/shame-on-gibsonhayworth-only-26-billion.html ]
6. Fact: Gibson voted last month to kill more American jobs by extending so-called "free-trade" agreements to Korea, Panama, and Colombia-- though we've already lost 5 million jobs from NAFTA.
[ http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/83832/tonko-gibson-at-odds-on-trade-agreements/ ;
http://www.americanjobsalliance.com/content/new-free-trade-pacts-will-hurt-middle-class ]
7. Fact: Gibson voted this February to eliminate $300 million in Title X Planned Parenthood funding-- even though "Title X funding can only be used for family planning services including birth control, life saving cervical and breast cancer screenings, HIV counseling and testing, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and education. The funding cannot and is not used to provide abortion services. Under the proposal, 48 percent of Planned Parenthood patients nationwide would be cut off from their source of health care for these essential services. Ninety-seven percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are preventive, most of which are women's gynecology services."
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/local-press-releases/representatives-gibson-hayworth-vote-block-funds-planned-parenthood-would-cut-health-care-milli-36335.htm
8. Fact: Gibson voted last month for HR 358-- legislation that "would allow a hospital to deny a woman lifesaving emergency abortion care-even if a doctor deems it necessary. It would also take comprehensive health care coverage away from women and create loopholes that states and insurance companies could exploit to undermine the new requirement that insurance companies provide birth control with no co-pays or deductibles."
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/local-press-releases/rep-gibson-votes-deny-lifesaving-emergency-health-care-women-38215.htm
9. Fact: Gibson's allegiance to Grover Norquist jeopardizes national support for farmland protection.
As Rhinebeck resident and Scenic Hudson Senior Vice President Steve Rosenberg noted this morning on WAMC, it's crucial that even the small amount of federal funding for farmland protection ($100 million) now in the the farm bill about to be re-authorized be maintained-- the fact is this becomes more and more impossible with Norquist acolytes like Gibson in office who reject progressive taxation.
[ http://www.riverkeeper.org/news-events/news/stop-polluters/pollution-enforcement/outlining-vision/ ]
10. Fact: Gibson refuses to push for a wide variety of common-sense progressive initiatives that have broad populist support, as evidenced repeatedly by many polls-- a statewide ban on fracking (and immediate national moratorium), a liveable minimum wage, Medicare for all, Clean Money Clean Elections campaign finance reform, amending the Constitution to make it clear corporations aren't people, taxing Wall Street, breaking up the big banks, bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, ending the speculation driving gas/oil prices up through the roof, bringing our troops now from Afghanistan, Iraq, and all over the globe to save $125 billion a year for taxpayers (and redirect $ home to our needs)-- and he refuses to lift a finger to join Sen. Bernie Sanders in seriously challenging the $16 TRILLION the Federal Reserve recently lent out to practically every major financial institution and corporation around.
[ http://www.AMillionFrackingLetters.com ; http://www.FrackAction.com ; http://www.ToxicsTargeting.com
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/node/75 ; http://www.PetitionOnline.com/FDRagain ;
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/afghanistan-get-out-59-percent ]
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Accomplishments in the Dutchess County Legislature Since 2003
Proven results-- from ability to effectively work across party lines with Republicans:
* The Town of Rhinebeck is now (and has been for over six years)
part of the Greenway Compact.
[recall-- recent Greenway grant funding for sidewalk improvements in
Village of Rhinebeck; over $100,000 in county funding for Rhineson
property for town park after Rhinebeck joined Greenway Compact;
Rhinebeck Town Board had been dead-set against joining Greenway Compact]
* got resolution passed 22-2 to push County Exec to delay no
further; appoint County Historian
[see 246 signed on to my http://www.petitiononline.com/hirehist ]
* got resolution passed unanimously in March to save millions of
county tax dollars by avoiding needless jail expansion
[see http://www.JobsNotJails.weebly.com -- countywide multiracial coalition Joel created]
* got Dutchess County Executive and County Legislature in 2004 to stop homeless
veterans from being turned away from overnight shelter
* succeeded in keeping county funding steady for Mental Health
America's Court-Appointed Special Advocate program for foster children
* working with Dutchess County's Health Department and Ferncliff Nursing
Home to make sure seniors' rights are fully respected
* in 2004 and 2005, during my very first term in office, with
only 8 Dems and 17 GOP county legislators, I got resolutions passed
unanimously for a health insurance group discount committee, for IBM
to protect retirees' health benefits, for a public hearing on St.
Lawrence Cement expansion, to protect wetlands, and purchase of wind power.
* in 2005 successfully initiated move for our county's
Consumer Affairs website to expand with gas and prescription drug
price information, and for AED defibrillator discount program as well
* for eight years now researched/educated public re: MTBE water
contamination rampant all over Rhinebeck and Clinton
Full list here of twenty different resolutions Joel got passed in 2008 and 2009 (many with GOP support):
1. For Independent Dutchess Energy Alliance towards goal of $1 billion in savings on
electric bills over ten years.
[based on successful green jobs/retrofits example of Cambridge, MA-- see
[ http://www.CambridgeEnergyAlliance.org/ ; also Town of Babylon's
http://www.LIGreenHomes.com/ ; Town of Bedford's [http://www.EnergizeBedford.org ;
http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2009/03/our-bright-idea-growin-bri... ]
2. For Dutchess to save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars
annually on power costs w/Municipal Electricity Gas Alliance (as in
Putnam, Ulster, Sullivan, and twenty other counties).
[ http://www.MEGAEnergy.org/ ]
3. For saving 30% on lighting bills in county buildings switching
fixtures from T-12's to T-8's/metal halides.
[ http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Replace-T8-Or-T12-Lights-With-New-Energ... 99 ]
4. For Dutchess County to keep using lever voting machines and state/federal
government to make sure we can too.
[ http://www.ETCNYS.org/ ; http://nylevers.wordpress.com/ ]
5. For zero-waste approach to resource recovery in Dutchess County: save
money, create clean green jobs.
[see over 90 other Dutchess residents on board this-- at
http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes ]
6. For cost-saving green roofs, rain gardens, wind turbines,
composting toilets to be on Dutchess County property.
[ http://www.GreenRoofs.com/ ; http://www.RainGardens.org / ;
http://bianys.com/node/418 ; http://www.petitiononline.com/goldpoop ;
http://www.CompostingToilets.org/ ]
7. For solar panels on Dutchess County Office Building/22 Market
St./Poughkeepsie (then all county buildings).
[ http://www.osc.state.ny.us /press/releases/mar08/0306 08.htm ;
http://www.HVCE.com/ ]
8. For new SuperLOOPer discount card at local stores and restaurants
for frequent users of Dutchess CountyLOOP bus.
[ http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Tom+Malon e/01Ur0if9hQ8Ic/1 ]
9. For Dutchess to hold Home Heating Summit re: home heating oil
crisis (as in Ulster and Orange counties).
[ http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/September08/10/DC_hm_heat-10Sep08.html ]
10. For Dutchess County Environmental Science Advisory Network "Recommendations for
Stream/Flood Management in Dutchess" to be followed.
[ http://www.dutchessemc.org/ESANRecomendations.pdf ]
11. For Green Map added to Dutchess County website: list farmer's
markets/green resources (as in Westchester).
[ http://greenmap.westchestergov.com/ ; http://www.GreenMap.org/ ]
12. For bike rental program in Dutchess at no cost to taxpayers (as
is already in Washington, D.C.).
[ http://www.SmartBikeDC.com / ]
13. For Dutchess County to be part of Hudson Valley Community
Preservation Act to save open space.
[ http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=101&sh=story&sto ry=23825 ]
14. For cost-saving "Green House Project" nursing home in county--
proven to make seniors happier.
[ http://www.TheGreenHousePr ject.org/ ]
15. For particulate matter air pollution to be measured in Dutchess
County as it was until 2002.
[ http://www.ALANY.org/ ]
16. For greatly expanding current circuitbreaker for school property
taxes (bipartisan Little/Galef bill).
[ http://www.petitiononline. com/taxcut ; http://www.TrendNY.org/ ]
17. For real relief for Dutchess County property taxpayers-- Omnibus
Property Tax Relief and Reform Act.
[ http://www.OmnibusTaxSolution.org/ ]
18. For ending secret market manipulations on Wall Street causing
higher gas/home heating oil prices.
[ http://www.StopOilSpeculators.com ]
19. For wetlands (even small ones) in Dutchess County to be saved from being
paved over by developers.
[ http://www.eany.org/capitolwatch/memos%202009/21_Wet landsProtection.pdf ]
20. For Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies recommendations re: air
pollution/quality standards to be followed.
[ http://www.ecostudies.org/threats_from_above.html ]
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From http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153187/10_great_things_to_be_thankful_for_in_2011_ ...
AlterNet / By Scott Thill
10 Great Things To Be Thankful For in 2011
From Occupy and Elizabeth Warren to the Nissan Leaf and Col. Ann Wright, progressives have quite a few things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
November 23, 2011 |
Thanksgiving's traditional harvest festival in the United States is about much more than doping up on tryptophan. It's a time to reflect on the bounty of our singular planet and its diverse people, especially when it comes to earnest progressives, who are out there fighting hard for the best interests of both. Here are their shining examples from across the spectrum:
Occupy Worldwide: A defiant populist uprising that has shone a searching light on both America's compromised political system and the powers-that-be that bought it for a song, the global Occupy movement is the greatest thing that has happened to progressives in this still-new century. That's not really setting the bar high, given the rapacious resource wars and financial scams that have more or less destroyed the light-speed American cultural and political evolution which astounded the world last century. But Occupy's true impact has yet to be measured, although it has quickly seized the planet's imagination and attention, after being calculatedly ignored until thuggish cops in New York, Oakland and UC Davis made that impossible. Today, Occupy Wall Street's dogged activism has done more than its part to pull the emperor's clothes off of the world's morally bankrupt FIRE economy -- the aptly named acronym for the finance, insurance and real estate markets -- than activists from any other traditional party or organization.
And unlike the armchair warmongers who are wrecking Roosevelt's New Deal with a fascist, consumerist panopticon that has exploded the gap between the rich and the poor, the Occupy movement has actually taken bullets for this country's impressive past and uncertain future. Climate change's intensified winter could threaten its short-term existence in the months ahead, but only useful idiots think that the Occupy movement will go away just in time for the 2012 elections. Rarely in history has such a stunning opportunity armed with true believers promised to reshape the world, and chances are it will go one of two ways.
Its walk-the-walk progressives tired of Wall Street's corporate personhood and hostile takeover of American governance could either triumph, and help reinstitute the regulatory regimes that saved the U.S. from the Great Depression in the first. Or they could be brutally put down by the same powers-that-be which mostly killed off the similarly optimistic movements of the '60s and greatly contributed to our current dystopia. But no matter may come, Occupy's place in progressive history is secure.
Elizabeth Warren: Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul recently called her a "socialist," politely truncating the heckling jackass who called her a "socialist whore" during her recent speech in Massachusetts. But despite the empty insults, one thing is utterly clear: Elizabeth Warren is a sincere progressive threat to the status quo on Wall Street and in the Senate.
As of this writing, she's unbeatable by former nude model Scott Brown, who traded wisecracks with Warren about disrobing for money to make economic ends meet. Considering that she helped create the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and watched as the 2008 bank bailouts missed their economic goals, Warren is light-years ahead of Brown when it comes to turning the nation's economy around -- especially because she probably knows where all the banksters' bodies are buried. Watch Warren's politically progressive instincts hit the ground shortly after she wins the 2012 state election in Massachusetts, with or without a strategic alignment with Occupy Wall Street.
Bernie Sanders: Unlike Warren, Bernie Sanders actually is a self-described democratic socialist, although he's formally registered as an independent. But regardless of the political pigeonhole, he's a stalwart progressive champion for Vermont and the nation. He bravely closed out 2010 by delivering an eight-hour filibuster blistering the Obama administration's preservation of Bush-era tax cuts, publishing it in March 2011 under the title The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class. This summer, he outed 10 corporate tax cheats, from Bank of America to Valero Energy that have blatantly avoided paying their fair share.
Most recently, Sanders spearheaded an inquiry into the corporate influence of the State Department's handling of the environmentally disastrous Keystone XL pipeline, a fossil fools' errand whose implementation would essentially mean game over for Earth's hospitable climate, according to NASA's outspoken atmospheric physicist James Hansen. That triumphant stall kicked Keystone's toxic can down the road to 2012, where it can fully become the hot-button election issue it should be. For reasons like these, Sanders remains America's finest progressive of any political persuasion.
Judges Tom Nelson and Aleta Trauger: Nashville hasn't had much great news since the White Stripes' Jack White opened his own label Third Man Records there in 2009. But once the Occupy movement took hold in late October, progressive-minded judges started cropping up like pop hits. First, there was Night Court Judge Thomas Nelson, who refused to sign criminal trespassing warrants for Occupy Nashville protesters that called bullshit on a sneaky curfew instituted by Republican governor Bill Haslam, taking pains to note that it "is of particular consternation that the rules and curfew were enacted after a protest movement and occupation of Legislative Plaza had been tolerated for just over three weeks, with no notice that the group members were involved in criminal activity."
After that comparatively brave bit of correct legal interpretation, United States district judge Aleta Trauger granted the protestors' ACLU-backed temporary restraining order against Haslam and his officials, which rightly asserted that both the arrests and curfew violated their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly. The ruling could be a progressive legal precedent that sparks a nationwide rethink of the Occupy movement's political and legal freedoms.
Governor John Kitzhaber: Progressives understand more than everyone that citizen deliberation is an inextricable component of a fully functioning democracy. But few politicians besides Oregon governor John Kitzhaber have actually put that principle into practice, probably because most of them fear citizen deliberation more than they fear loss of office. Yet in July, Kitzhbaber signed into law a bill that institutionalizes the Citizens Initiative Review, which puts randomly chosen voters into a public hearing where they analyze ballot measures and submit their findings to the public as election-day aids.
It's a level of public service that the nation has mostly forgotten, lost as it has been in the civically bankrupt ideology of privatization. The National Science Foundation conducted an academic evaluation of the CIR, and found that its significant local popularity and sound politics was no fluke. Progressive activists looking for an instantly applicable and rewarding program for civic cooperation and analysis need look no further.
The Ohio Electorate: To be fair, they don't get points for sleeping at the wheel as a shock doctrinist like Republican governor John Kasich took power in 2010. But better late than never, Ohio seemed to say in early November, as it overturned Kasich's ridiculous law that restricted collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of public employees. It was an outright progressive victory that should have never happened, because Kasich should never have become governor in the first place.
Hopefully, Ohio learned an important civics lesson after thinking that it could nominate a years-long Fox News host and expect anything less than doomed austerity measures. Given that Kasich's current approval rating hovers in the low 30s, and that Ohioans who would vote for a different governor given the chance register in the mid-50s, it seems that Ohio's Kasich -- like Tennessee's Haslam (yeah, him again) -- is living on borrowed time in a state that might be ripe for a progressive takeover. Stay tuned.
Mass Mediators! Long before more widely distributed media champs like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow gave it significant air time, the Occupy movement, and every other news story that really matters, boasted extensive independent coverage from Democracy Now!, whose co-host and executive producer Amy Goodman remains America's most progressive investigative journalist. But eventually Olbermann, Maddow, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher joined the charge, further relegating the paid political advertisers at Fox and CNN to the dustbin of media history. Thanks to the nation's increasingly conscientious populism, those compromised dinosaurs are now being left behind as American viewers boast a growing bounty of talking heads who make for smart, mandatory viewing.
Whether they are straightforward analysts like Goodman and Maddow, or hyperreal pranksters like Colbert -- who in 2011 created his own SuperPAC to meticulously strip our labyrinthian political machinery's financial influence to the bone -- they've all saved television news from itself. If you're watching CNN or Fox for any reason at all -- and that includes dissecting its parrots for sport (you know who you are), you're wasting valuable progressive time, especially when there are so many other televisual voices worth your hard-earned hours.
Equal-Opprtunity Economists! The bad news is that you mostly can't throw a rock at a university economics department without hitting a steady stream of Wall Street sellouts. But the good news is that there are progressive geniuses out there, whose purposeful dissections of available and hidden data are pervasively disseminated in hopes of elevating our debased economic discourse. Chief among these champs is UC Berkeley's Robert Reich, whose prescient analyses of our Great Depression rerun -- as well as his proximity to its birth while serving in President Bill Clinton's deregulation-addicted administration -- are indispensably spread across mainstream and social media. He's followed by Columbia University's Joseph Stiglitz and the Nobel-winning Paul Krugman. All three have regular Twitter feeds, if you want consistent updates on their formidable counterattacks to the disaster capitalism that has enraptured the Obama administration, the mainstream media and the multinationals seemingly hell-bent on bleeding the global village to its last drop. Inscrutable economic strategists, and their stratagems, are now thankfully a thing of the past.
Nissan Leaf: True-school progressives ride bikes whenever possible. But until further notice, it's a serious pipe dream to picture a future where personal automobiles are extinct, even in our peak oil dystopia. The best progressives can hope for now is the electric car, currently best exemplified by the Nissan Leaf, which debuted late last year and, as of October of this year, has been certified by the Environmental Protection Agency as the most efficient vehicle of all time.
It's also notorious for threatening the nation's gas-tax hierarchy, if you ask Indiana governor Bill Haslam. (Why can't we shake this guy?) But despite that excellent offense, New York City is still using the Leaf to launch an electric taxi pilot program, Nissan is rolling out a charging network in Europe and the Leaf continues to dominate the electric car market, and the progressive imagination, in its first full year. While emissions figures remain murky on Toyota's more glamorous but less worthy hybrid Prius, there is no such confusion when it comes to the Leaf. From its zero tailpipe emissions to its all-electric vision, the Leaf is the automotive future until our bike-powered utopia arrives.
Ann Wright: The 99 percent could use more allies like retired Colonel Ann Wright, currently on trial for disrupting, along with 37 other protesters, the New York Air National Guard base, which routinely delivers death-from-above to Afghanistan via MQ-9 Reaper drones controlled by U.S.-based videogamers in the armed services. "Citizens have a responsibility to take actions when they see crimes committed," Wright unapologetically explained in early November. And she's lived that code with serious discipline, from filing a resignation with Colin Powell after the 2003 Iraq occupation and disrupting congressional hearings hosting Condoleezza Rice and David Petraeus to mercilessly setting Bill O'Reilly straight until he cut her mic.
Wright is a progressive paragon, which might seem weird, given her extensive military resume. But she puts the lie to the lore that progressives can't hail from all walks of life: Just because they served in Somalia and Afghanistan doesn't mean they're jingoists who won't board a Gaza flotilla or trespass at nuclear sites to change the world. In fact, it's usually the opposite: When military veterans like 2010's progressive champion Bradley Manning and Occupy Oakland's Scott Olsen respectively take on indefinite incarceration or tear gas canisters to the face for their beliefs, their causes become exponentially galvanized and patriotism is rightly redefined for the sane. Toast them all roundly on Thanksgiving, and then take some time to support all of the aforementioned progressives as they fight the good fight alongside us. Without them, we'd be much deeper in dystopia.
Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/27-4 ...
Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by the Boston Globe
The Uprising of 2012?
by Kara Miller
Around the world, this has been the year of uprisings - spurred in large part by financial concerns.
Athens, of course, has witnessed months of fiery protests. But the disaffected have also crowded the streets of Paris, London, Rome, and New York.
And economic woes extend far beyond the obvious.
As former New York Times war reporter - and current Truthdig columnist - Chris Hedges told me in August, the Arab Spring had a lot "to do with food prices. Commodity prices - especially wheat, which has increased in price by 100% in past eight months - has really made it difficult for families, especially poor families - and half of the population in Egypt lives on about two dollars a day - to feed themselves."
Hedges argued that skyrocketing prices helped foment dissatisfaction - and pushed people into the streets. "And that's why, if you looked closely," he said, "you saw within the crowds oftentimes, people actually carrying loaves of bread. And that's not going to go away."
Indeed, on the day before Thanksgiving, The Financial Times reported that more then 40% of food producers intend to hike consumer prices in the next few months, attempting to compensate for the rising cost of raw materials.
But the problem encompasses much more than food. Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia, wrote recently that the cost of education continues to outpace inflation - even as a four-year degree becomes a prerequisite for a comfortable, middle-class life. "Poor kids can't meet tuition," wrote Sachs, "and they drop out of college in droves. Yet with more cuts in state support for tuition and in federal Pell Grants, the situation is rapidly getting worse."
A few of the families that can't afford high tuitions protest. But most just feel angry, dispirited, and betrayed.
Still, as Sachs says, there is a strange, alternate narrative: "we have two economies, not one. The economy of rich Americans is booming. Salaries are high. Profits are soaring. Luxury brands and upscale restaurants are packed. There is no recession."
Hit up some of the more expensive restaurants in Boston, and you'll see $45 steaks and $60 bottles of wine liberally dotting packed tables.
The question, then - as prices for food, education, and health care continue to rise - is how long dissatisfaction can be contained.
"I drive by gated communities," the renowned geographer Jared Diamond wrote a few years ago, "guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools."
But financial insecurity can prove combustible. As Greece, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street have so powerfully demonstrated.
"If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people," Diamond says, with a nod to history, "gates will not keep the rioters out."
2011 may have seemed like a year of upheaval. But the real fireworks could be yet to come.
© 2011 Kara Miller
Kara Miller is an Assistant Professor of English, specializing in journalism, at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. She also serves as a guest panelist on WGBH-TV's "Beat the Press" and contributes to 89.7 FM WGBH (NPR). She received her Ph.D. from Tufts University.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/27-1 ...
Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by The Huffington Post
Washington Leaves Millions to Die
residents communicate with the public during wartime.
by Jeffrey D. Sachs
The wonder of our world is that scientific knowledge is now so powerful that we can save millions of children, mothers, and fathers from killer diseases each year at little cost. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria has mobilized that knowledge over the past decade to save more than 7 million lives and to protect the health of hundreds of millions more. Yet now the Global Fund is under mortal threat because of budget cuts approved by President Obama and the Congress.
The Obama Administration had pledged $4 billion during 2011-13 to the Global Fund, or $1.33 billion per year. Now it is reneging on this pledge. For a government that spends $1.9 billion every single day on the military ($700 billion each year), Washington's unwillingness to follow through on $1.33 billion for a whole year to save millions of lives is a new depth of cynicism and recklessness.
As a result of US budget cutbacks, and me-too cutbacks by other countries, the Global Fund this week closed its doors on providing new funds to impoverished nations. It was supposed to accept proposals next month from the poorest countries for an 11th round of disease-control funds. Instead, it has scrapped any new funding until 2014 at the earliest, and will only fund the continuation of the coverage of existing programs. US officials will prevaricate, noting that the US spends this amount or that amount. History will treat such excuses with the scorn they deserve.
Millions of people are now at risk of death in the coming years as a result of Obama's lassitude and neglect. Hundreds of thousands of children who would have been saved will now die of mosquito bites. They will die because they live in poor tropical environments where a mosquito bite kills, and where their impoverishment makes it impossible for them to afford a $5 bed net, $1 diagnostic test, $1 dose of anti-malaria medicine, or access to a clinic. Countless others will die because they cannot get AIDS or TB treatments to stay alive.
If you think that money spent on the Global Fund is money down the drain, think again. The Global Fund was created a decade ago because the world needed to respond to the uncontrolled epidemics of AIDS, malaria, and TB. It has been a historic success, proving the skeptics wrong. The Global Fund keeps alive 3.2 million people on anti-retroviral treatment. It has financed 8.2 million courses of TB treatment and the distribution of 190 million insecticide-treated nets. You can read an overview here.
The Global Fund money has reached millions of people in need. When its programs have been hit by corruption, audits have paused the funding and reoriented the programs. The result of this practical approach is great success in many of the world's poorest places. Malaria has come down sharply, averting an estimated 400,000 deaths per year in Africa compared to the baseline path as of the year 2000. Yet there are still around 700,000 malaria deaths each year that can be prevented if the Global Fund has the means. Read here about the remarkable progress against malaria. Similar progress is being made against AIDS. Now that progress is at dire risk.
Reorienting less than 1 day's military budget to help save millions of lives (in conjunction with the efforts of other countries) is not only a great humanitarian step but also the most cost-effective step we can take for our own security. Countries like Yemen or Somalia are falling apart because they cannot meet their most basic needs. We send in drone missiles -- each one at the cost of at least 20,000 bed nets -- but we will find no real security until we help address the problems of disease, poverty, and hunger that destabilize these regions.
It is painful to recall the campaign promises made by Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton. Both promised that they would step up the fight to control AIDS, TB, and malaria. Empty words. President Obama's aides tell him that foreign assistance is bad domestic politics and he listens. On this issue even George W. Bush knew better.
The head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is not quiet. She is an aggressive and outspoken foe of foreign assistance, pretending to her constituents that cutting a $1 billion to the Global Fund is the way to balance the budget. Great, we're now 0.001 of the way there.
The United States Government, I noted earlier, is not alone in the collapse of morality, decency, and common sense. Each government that once contributed to the Global Fund takes refuge in the budget cuts by the US and the others. The apparent belief of the politicians is that there is safety in numbers if they all starve the Global Fund together.
We live in a country where the Federal Government doesn't think twice about the fate of impoverished and dying people. Such a government won't act to save your life or mine. Politicians so brazen and irresponsible need to be voted out of office. In the meantime, I will join the efforts around the world to find new means and new leaders to continue the struggle against the killer diseases. I hope that you will do so too.
© 2011 Jeffrey D. Sachs
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of "The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity."
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From http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/27-0 ...
Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by The Independent/UK
Rich Nations Accused of Climate-Change 'Bullying'
by Jonathan Owen
Britain and other rich countries are using aid money as a lever to bully developing countries over climate change, according to a new report by an anti-poverty pressure group.
With international climate change negotiations beginning in South Africa tomorrow, a report by the World Development Movement reveals that threats and bribery are often attached to aid packages.
The report also highlights how wealthy nations use secret meetings to produce last-minute deals - presenting poorer countries with a fait accompli, as happened in Copenhagen two years ago, when delegates had an hour to read the final document drawn up by 26 countries.
The negotiations in Durban are the last chance to set binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions before the Kyoto agreement expires next year.
Murray Worthy, of the World Development Movement, said: "The US, UK and EU are using the same strong-arm tactics to bribe developing countries that we saw at Copenhagen. Abandoning their previous commitments to provide finance to help developing countries deal with climate change, they are now saying finance will only be available to countries that agree to a new deal that effectively abandons the Kyoto treaty."
The report accuses countries such as America and Britain of using "unfair, undemocratic and even deceitful means to skew the climate change negotiations in their favour".
At Copenhagen, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was reported to have treated leaders of small island states as "naughty school children".
truly participatory economics-- the direction we should be moving in...
[re: below-- I've been reading Michael Albert's writings on participatory economics in Z magazine since the 90's-- and am absolutely thrilled that the young men and women of Occupy Albany are picking up the torch on this; join us if you can for this today-- no time like the present to seriously push for truly participatory economics!...Joel]
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From http://www.facebook.com/joel.tyner?ref=tn_tnmn#!/events/321835041176940/...
Occupy Albany: Teach-In on Participatory Economics
By Colin Donnaruma and Nick Partyka
When: Today
Time: 12:00pm until 1:30pm
Where: Academy Park
Most of us agree that capitalism is broken but many of us are unclear about what a positive democratic alternative would look like and how it would be organized. Colin Donnaruma and Nick Partyka, doctoral students in poltical economics at UAlbany, will facilitate a teach-in on participatory economics and non-hierarchical alternatives to market-based capitalism.
Come discuss and learn about democratic and cooperative ways to structure economic activity. All are welcome!!
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics...
A few workplaces have been established based on principles akin to parecon, particularly in Canada and the USA:
* South End Press, a book publisher in Boston, Massachusetts.
* G7 Welcoming Committee, an independent record label closely tied to the Winnipeg band Propagandhi.
* Z Magazine, a progressive/radical magazine.
* The Old Market Autonomous Zone, a three-story building in Winnipeg, Canada that houses organizations which have similar principles, including: Mondragon Bookstore (a vegan restaurant and anarchist bookstore), G7 Welcoming Committee Records (see entry above), the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre, Natural Cycle (a bike repair and courier company), Canadian Dimension (a radical magazine), DadaWorldData (a documentary film company), Junto Local 91 (a lending library), War on Music (a collectively run music retailer and vinyl-only record label), and the Canada-Palestine Support Network. Another parecon-inspired worker-run collective, Arbeiter Ring Publishing, named after the radical Jewish labour organization, was also based out of the A-Zone until 2002, and continues to operate in the city. The Emma Goldman Grassroots Centre is the A-Zone's second floor, where many activist groups share communal meeting and organizing space.
* The NewStandard, an online progressive hard news website published by the PeoplesNetWorks Collective, headquartered in Syracuse, New York. It ceased publication in April, 2007.
* OAT, the Organization for Autonomous Communications (previously TAO Communications).
* Ram Wools Yarn Co-op, Ram Wools Yarn Co-op (in Winnipeg Manitoba) Started off April 1, 2009 as a succession to a privately held company of 37 years.
* ParIT Workers Cooperative, ParIT Workers Co-op (in Winnipeg Manitoba) Is an IT firm committed to Parecon and the use of free software.
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http://www.zcommunications.org/participatory-economics-by-michael-albert-1-2
Participatory Economics
By Michael Albert
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Text of a speech delivered to a CNT Sponsored gathering in Barcelona, Spain.
Thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.
I hope we will have time for ample discussion as I very much look forward to hearing your insights on our topic which is participatory economic vision.
To begin, then, in the words of the great British economist John Maynard Keynes –
“[Capitalism] is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous -- and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.”
Let’s see if we can undue that perplexity.
First, briefly, what is capitalism's real problem?
Capitalism is theft.
The richest in the U.S., for example, have wealth unparalleled in history.
The poorest in the U.S., however, live under bridges inside cardboard shelters, or stop living at all.
The gap, in the U.S. and similarly here in Spain, is a social product, a theft.
Capitalism is alienation and anti-sociality.
Within capitalism the motives guiding decisions are pecuniary not personal.
The motives are selfish not social.
We seek individual advance at the expense of others. Not collective advance to mutual benefit.
The result is an anti-social environment in which nice guys finish last and economic logic seeks profit rather than social well being.
Capitalism is authoritarian.
Within capitalist workplaces those who labor at rote and tedious jobs have nearly zero say over conditions, output, and aims. Those who own the workplaces or who monopolize empowering positions have nearly all say.
Not even Stalin, for example, ever dreamed of people having to ask his permission to eat or to go to the bathroom, yet corporate owners routinely exercise such power.
Corporations bear the same resemblance to democracy that killing fields bear to peace.
Capitalism is inefficient.
Market profit seeking squanders the capacities of about 80% of the population by training them to endure boredom and to take orders, not to fulfill their greatest potentials.
Market profit seeking also wastes inordinate resources on producing items that aren’t beneficial, and enforcing work assignments that are coerced and therefore resisted.
Capitalism is racist and sexist.
Under market competition owners inevitably exploit racial and gender hierarchies produced in other parts of society.
If extra economic factors reduce the bargaining power of some actors while raising that of others, creating hierarchical expectations about who should rule and who should obey, capitalists will exploit the hierarchies.
Capitalism is violent.
The race for capitalist market domination produces nations at odds with other nations until those which accrue sufficient power are in position to exploit the resources and populations of those who lack defensive means.
The ultimate manifestation is imperialism, colonialism, and unholy war.
Capitalism is unsustainable.
The money grabbers accumulate and accumulate, regardless of human need and desire. They ignore or willfully obscure the impact of what they do not only on workers and consumers, but also on the environment.
The market propels short term calculations. It makes dumping waste to avoid costs an easy and competitively enforced avenue to gain. The results appear in sky and soil. They are mitigated only by social movements that compel wiser behavior.
Capitalism Sucks
I could of course recount for many hours the failings of capitalism, its morbid human implications both in theory and in hard statistics, as I am sure you all could too.
But I think there is no point in doing that here, or really, almost anywhere, anymore.
I think by this second decade of the twenty first century only a relatively few people are made so callous by their advantages, or are made so profoundly ignorant by their advanced educations, or are so manipulated by media and their own naiveté, or so coerced by their positions that they fail to see that capitalism is now a gigantic holocaust of injustice.
Everything is broken in virtually every respect, and everyone knows it.
As Keynes said, capitalism is not intelligent, is not beautiful, is not just, is not virtuous -- and is not even delivering the goods.
So what do we want instead?
Parecon
Participatory Economics, or parecon, which the replacement for capitalism that I advocate, is built on just four institutional commitments.
Parecon is therefore not a blueprint for a whole economy. It is a description of key features of just a few centrally important aspects of an economy.
Parecon is enough, and just enough, for us to know that with parecon future people will self manage their economic lives as they decide.
Workers and Consumers Councils
The first feature of participatory economics is nested workers and consumers councils of the sort we have seen arise most recently in places such as Argentina and Venezuela.
The added feature of parecon’s councils, however, is a very explicit commitment to self managed decision making.
People in a parecon influence decisions in proportion as they are in turn affected by them. If a decision will affect me more, I will have more say in it. If it will affect me less, I will have less say in it.
Sometimes self management entails one person one vote majority rule. Think of deciding the start time for the work day.
Sometimes self management could require a different tally, maybe two thirds or three quarters needed to win, or that only some segment of the whole populace votes. Think of decisions that mostly affect a work team, where only that team votes.
Sometimes for those who are deciding to best approximate perfect self management, consensus is needed. Think of a team deciding its schedule, giving everyone a veto because a bad schedule can so adversely affect each person.
There are even times, many times, when we all believe dictatorial decision making most accords with self management. I decide whose picture I place in my work area, of what color socks I wear, and I do it alone, by myself, like Stalin.
The point is, in a parecon, all such voting approaches and even particular ways of presenting, discussing, and debating before finally voting, are tactics we utilize to attain as closely as makes sense the appropriate self managing say for all involved actors.
So as our first commitment we have self managed workers and consumers councils.
Equitable Remuneration
The second central feature of parecon, is about equitable remuneration.
Other things equal, in a parecon we will earn more if we work longer, if we work harder, or if we work under more harsh or harmful conditions.
Remuneration will be for duration, intensity, and harshness endured. It will not be for property, power, or output.
Parecon rejects the idea that someone should earn more by virtue of having a deed in his or her pocket. There is no moral warrant for profit nor is there any incentive warrant for it.
Parecon also rejects a thuggish economy in which one gets what one can take. This is characteristic of market exchange. It is the kind of remuneration that business school graduates celebrate. You get more if you have the power to take it.
Al Capone, the famous American Gangster, was once asked about his feelings toward the U.S.
He answered, "I love America. America is great. In American, you get what you can take."
So business school graduates and Al Capone agree, keep what you can take - but parecon rejects thuggish remuneration.
Most controversially, parecon also rejects that we should get back from the economy an amount equal to what we contributed to it by our own labor.
Many socialists favor this norm, but parecon rejects it. The reason for this rejection is that parecon understands that our output depends on many factors and rewarding output rewards each of those factors.
If we have better tools, we produce more. Should we get more income due to the luck of having better tools?
If we work in a more productive environment, or producing more valued items, we produce great value. Should we get more income due to the luck of working one place rather than another?
If we have innate qualities that increase our productivity, we produce more. Should we get more income due to having been born with a great voice, or great reflexes, or large size, or a fantastic talent for calculation?
Parecon says no to all three.
We should not get more for luck in tools, luck in our workplace, or luck in the genetic lottery.
Instead, we should get more only if we work longer, or harder, or at more onerous conditions, doing socially valued labor.
Parecon's remuneration makes moral sense and also induces productive labor as incentives should.
The usual complaint about pareconish equitable remuneration goes like this.
Doctors won't go to college and medical school and endure training if they aren't paid way more than coal miners digging in the ground and folks flipping burgers at MacDonalds.
Thus with parecon's remuneration scheme we will lose doctors and other creative, necessary workers, and will all suffer. The economists tell us this, students repeat it, virtually everyone takes it for granted.
In fact, however, the claim is utter nonsense. It is repeated so often that most people take it as gospel, but it is far from that.
Consider that if you think about it for just a couple of minutes, this is what it says.
Sam and Sara are just getting out of High School. Sara is heading to a coal mine, or MacDonalds. Sam is headed to college, then medical school, then to be an intern.
Sara, let's be generous, is going to earn $60,000 a year for the next 45 years, and retire. Sam is going to earn, once a doctor, $600,000 a year, until he retires.
So here is what the economists are telling us.
Sam needs to get that salary because if we pay him less he will not go to college, not go to medical school, not be an intern, and not be a rich doctor.
Apparently, the suffering of college compared to being in a coal mine for the same period, and of medical school compared to being in a coal mine for those years, and of interning compared to being in a coal mine, is so horrible, that the payment for the next few decades is needed as a kind of bribe.
I hope you can already see this is absurd.
In fact, if we asked Sam to choose between his doctoring path and the coal mine or MacDonalds path - and to do it in light of a lower salary offered for a doctor...and we then started dropping the proposed salary, and said, tell us, Sam, when you are ready to give up doctoring to switch because you are not being paid enough - the results are absolutely predictable.
I have done this experiment dozens of times, with pre med students, with doctors, with other students, all of whom not five minutes earlier told me pareconish remuneration was idiotic and would lead to no doctors, and I have always gotten the same result.
They say no to switching from medicine to coal or burgers at $500,000, $400,000...all the way down to $60,000 and then $50,000 and then they typically stop me. And they say, well, I don't know. How low can I go and still survive? And they are always laughing, addled at how obvious it is that their economist teachers were either lying or idiots.
The reality is, of course, that doctors make as much as they do because in capitalism they have the power to take that much. It has nothing to do with justice or incentives. It has everything to do with market competition and power based on a monopoly on skills and knowledge, which is very carefully maintained.
And in a parecon, even though paid instead only for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, of course we will all want to do things we are good at and can make a contribution at. This is not only moral, it generates economically correct incentives.
Balanced Job Complexes
For its third feature, participatory economics needs a new division of labor.
If a new economy were to remove private profit and install equitable remuneration and also incorporate self managing councils, but were to simultaneously retain the current corporate division of labor, its commitments would be inconsistent.
If you look at workplaces here, around the world, or for that matter in 20th century socialist economies, you will find a startling commonality. The way work is parceled out into jobs is very consistent.
One job has only empowering tasks. The next four jobs have only disempowering tasks. Another job has only empowering tasks. The next four have only disempowering tasks.
Having 20% of the workforce monopolize empowering work and 80% do only more obedient, rote, stultifying work is the corporate division of labor.
It ensures that the former group – who I want to call the coordinator class – including, by the way, doctors - rules over the latter group, the working class.
The coordinators have all the knowledge, social skills, confidence, and even energy needed for discussing and making decisions. The workers are robbed of knowledge, not allowed to advance their social skills, and exhausted.
Even with a formal commitment to self management, the coordinators enter each decision discussion in a workers council having set the agenda for the discussion, owning all the information relevant to the ensuing debate, alone possessing the habits of communication that will inform the debate, and alone possessing and exuding the confidence and energy to fully participate.
The workers, in contrast, having been bored and exhausted by the repetitive and disempowering work they do, will come to decision discussions only ill prepared and eager to get home.
The coordinators will therefore determine outcomes. In time they will begin to see themselves as superior. Disempowered workers will begin to avoid the meetings. The coordinators will then choose to remunerate themselves more, to streamline meetings and decision-making by excluding those below, and to orient economic decisions in their own ruling class interests.
I sat in a room in Argentina some years back with about fifty workers, each from a different occupied factory. I was to give a talk, but suggested we go around the room with people telling of their experiences, first.
These folks were just meeting each other, and initially very upbeat. They were, after all, all occupying and making successes out of factories taken over from the prior owner.
By the third person to report, the room was quiet and the upbeat mood had dissipated. By the fifth person, things were maudlin. There were tears in people's eyes by the seventh person, and I intervened and said I had heard enough to begin my talk, which I did.
Each worker had told a similar story. The last one put it roughly like this. "I never thought I would ever say anything like this, but maybe Margaret Thatcher was right."
"We took over our factory," she continued. "We equalized wages, save for differences in time worked. We instituted democracy and even elements of self management. Time passed. We made a success of the workplace, but now, I hate to say it, all the old crap is coming back. Our democracy is becoming sham. Incomes are diverging. Alienation is setting in. Maybe it is just impossible."
So I spoke about the effects of the corporate divisions of labor they had retained, and why that was the explanation for the coordinators accruing more power and eventually also more income.
Due to about four fifths doing working class jobs, and about one fifth doing coordinator class jobs, the latter dominated, and developed warped self perceptions and perceptions of others, too, and in time the old crap returned.
Having this knowledge was the difference between folks succumbing to cynicism and despair, and folks realizing that there was a way forward.
The large scale upshot of all this is that one kind of class that exists above workers is owners. Having a deed to property, capitalists own means of production. They hire and fire wage slaves. They seek profits.
But the startling point about the oberservations is that even with this owning class eliminated, classlessness is not necessarily attained.
Another group that is also defined by its position in the economy, not by ownership but by its position in the division of labor, can still wield virtually complete power, including aggrandizing itself above workers.
It follows, that to avoid coordinator class rule, which is exactly what exists in what is called market and centrally planned socialism, we must replace the corporate division of labor with a new approach to defining work roles that doesn't overwhelmingly empower some while overwhelmingly disempowering the rest.
Parecon calls this third institutional commitment balanced job complexes. Each of us in any society, will by definition be doing some collection of tasks. That is what a job is.
If the economy employs a corporate division of labor, our tasks will combine into a job that is either largely empowering due to including mainly empowering tasks, or is largely disempowering due to including mainly disempowering tasks.
In a participatory economy, instead, we combine tasks into jobs so that for each worker the overall empowerment effect of his or her job is like the overall empowerment effect of every other worker's job. Everyone has what we call an average balanced job complex.
In parecon, that is, we don’t have managers and assemblers, editors and secretaries, surgeons and nurses as we now do. The functions these actors now fulfill persist, but the labor of accomplishing the functions is divided up differently.
Of course some people still do surgery while most don’t. However, those who do take scalpel to brains also clean bed pans, or sweep floors, or assist with other hospital functions.
The total empowerment the current surgeon’s job affords is altered by remixing tasks in a parecon. She still does some surgery but she winds up with a balanced job complex including other tasks, like cleaning bed pans, in sum conveying the same total empowerment as the new job of the person who previously only cleaned up.
The domination of the coordinator class over all other workers is removed not by eliminating empowering tasks, nor by everyone doing the same things, both of which options are impossible.
Instead, we distribute empowering and rote tasks so that all economic actors participate in self managed decision making without advantage or disadvantage due to their economic roles. There are only people who work. There is no division of that large group into two classes.
Some say this approach will waste talents and as a result, fall short in delivering the goods. Their feeling is that we will lose some of the highly productive labors of doctors and lawyers and engineers, and so on, who will have to do a mix of work, including a fair share that is disempowering.
In truth, this viewpoint is either sloppy thinking, or is classist.
Yes, if Sam does surgery in capitalism 40 hours a week, and then in parecon does it only 20 hours a week, or 15, then we have indeed lost 20 or 25 hours of Sam's highly productive labors since Sam is spending that much time cleaning up.
And if this happens for all doctors, the total doctoring done by the old doctors has dropped by half, or more.
The critic smiles and proclaims that this approach will not deliver the goods.
This is sloppy thinking if the critic simply failed to notice that we altered society so that the 80% who previously were schooled to endure boredom and take orders, thereby crushing the creativity out of them, are in parecon instead schooled to fulfill all their talents and capacities - so that that huge new pool of people is available to provide additional folks doing surgery.
It is classist thinking, however, if the critic remembered this fact, but felt it was irrelevant because people in the 80% would be incapable of doing good surgery - or good lawyering, doctoring, managing, etc.
Why is that classist? Because it says that working people are intrinsically incapable, and not merely beaten down.
Now none of you need to be convinced this is nonsense, I hope, but you will find yourselves having to convince others of the point, often. So here are two techniques I find very effective.
First, I ask them to imagine that it is 1955 and we have taken all the surgeons in the U.S. and put them in a gigantic stadium. I say, look around and tell me if there is anything noteworthy.
They say, yes, of course, they are all men. And I point out that at the time, all of those men, and even a very large percentage of women, would have said that this was due to women being inherently incapable of doing good surgery.
I then add that now 51% of medical students in the U.S. are women, so that this virtually universal belief was not wisdom, but was sexism, and I point out that it is exactly the same thing to look around at working people now and see that they aren't surgeons and don't have other empowering work, and attribute this to their lack of capacity rather than to injustice.
The second way I try to overcome such prejudice is by telling a story about Argentina.
I was there, in a glass factory that had been occupied by its workforce when the capitalist gave up and wanted to sell it.
The coordinator class folks also left, figuring they were better off elsewhere. But the workers stayed. And months later, when I visited, the workers had the plant working, and indeed thriving.
I spoke with a woman who was doing the chief financial officer job, basically accounting, financial policy making, etc. She has been, before, working at an open furnace.
All day she would repeat a few movements, tedious, unskilled, deadly. Day after day she did it. Then, after the take over, she was assigned to do finances.
So I asked, what was the hardest thing to learn. She didn't want to answer - she was shy.
So I said, was it using computers? No. Using spread sheets on the computer? No. Learning accounting concepts? No.
I was running out of guesses, so I said, okay, please, tell me.
And she said, well the hardest thing was that first I had to learn to read.
Just think about that. From working class boredom, through learning to read, to running the finances, in a matter of months. So much for a lack of capacity.
Participatory Planning
Finally, we come to parecon's fourth institutional commitment.
Suppose we have lots of workplaces and communities all committed to having workers and consumers councils, to using self managed decision making procedures, to having balanced job complexes, and to remunerating for effort and sacrifice.
Suppose, in addition, we opt for central planning or for markets for allocation. Would this constitute, all together, a new and worthy vision?
No, it would not. Both central planning and markets, by their impositions on behavior and options, would destroy self management, balanced job complexes, and equitable remuneration.
With central planning the authoritarian logic of order giving and order taking would impose coordinator class rule.
With markets, the competitive dictates would not only violate equitable remuneration and self management, they too would impose coordinator rule.
These results are not only predictable, following out the logic of these modes of allocation - and if we had time for that we could show it - but they are and have been visible in real world situations, notably what have been labelled centrally planned and market socialist economies, which would have been better labelled, however, coordinatorist.
But then what replaces markets and central planning to round out the defining features of participatory economics?
Participatory planning is the fourth institutional commitment of parecon. It is essentially cooperative negotiation of inputs and outputs by the workers and consumers self managing councils.
There is no time to walk through what this looks like in any detail beyond saying that it has no center, no top, and no bottom.
The dynamics of participatory planning reveal true social costs and benefits.
They provide appropriate incentives enabling equitable remuneration.
They convey motivations for actors to mutually aid and benefit one another via solidarity.
And they arrive at self managed decisions in an efficient manner.
Okay, so suppose we combine workers and consumers councils, self managed decision making, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning.
That is participatory economics, or parecon.
Our claim is that parecon is not only classless, and not only fosters solidarity, diversity, and equity – but to the extent possible and with no recurring biases, it apportions to each worker and consumer about each economic decision, an appropriate level of self managing influence.
Parecon doesn’t reduce productivity per worker hour but provides adequate and proper incentives for everyone to work well.
Parecon doesn’t bias toward longer hours but allows free choice of work versus leisure.
Parecon doesn’t pursue what is most profitable for a few regardless of impact on workers, the ecology, and often even consumers, but instead orients output toward what is truly beneficial in light of full social and environmental costs and benefits for all.
Parecon doesn’t waste the human talents of people now doing surgery, or composing music, or otherwise engaging in difficult and skilled labor by requiring that they do offsetting less empowering labor as well, but instead by that means surfaces a gargantuan reservoir of previously untapped talents throughout the populace.
Parecon apportions empowering and rote labor not only justly, but in accord with self management and classlessness.
Parecon doesn’t assume divine citizens. Instead, it creates a context in which to get ahead in their economic engagements even people who grow up entirely self seeking and anti-social must be concerned for the general social good and the well being of others.
In capitalism buyers seek to fleece sellers and vice versa. People are trained by the economy to be anti-social and to get ahead they must learn those lessons well. In capitalism, nice guys finish last – or in my own more pithy rendition, garbage rises.
In parecon, in contrast, solidarity among citizens is produced by economic life just as vehicles, homes, clothes, and musical instruments are. We all gain if the whole society benefits by larger overall output, or by increased productivity per hour, or by less onerous work conditions - or if we work harder or longer to gain the extra income.
We all have an interest in changes in the economy that improve society's overall average job complex - because we all share in its attributes.
Strategic Implications
Finally, what difference does advocating parecon make for our present behavior?
When Margaret Thatcher, the British reactionary Prime Minister, said “There is no alternative,” she accurately identified a central obstacle to masses of people actively seeking a better world.
If one sincerely believes there is no better future, then it follows that to reject a call to fight against poverty, alienation, and even war, is understandable.
If I were delivering the most powerful speech any of you had ever heard, a tear-jerking description of a scourge of humanity that undeniably diminishes all our lives and in the end kills almost of us, and at the end I said please, in the name of justice and your own well being, come join me in a movement against this horrible devastator of humans - aging – you would all laugh at me. You might even say, thinking I was a bit nuts, go get a life. Grow up. Face reality. You can’t fight aging, that’s a fool’s errand. And you might say it, dismissively, and with good reason.
And haven't we all encountered people talking to us like that?
Well, the truth is most people sincerely think capitalism is forever. Capitalism is like a law of nature.
And in their view, to fight against capitalism, or even against its symptoms, can indeed seem like a fool’s errand.
When we say come join us in a movement against capitalism, they hear us saying, come be an idiot - come fight for the impossible. And they tell us to grow up and get a life.
As an advocate of parecon I hope to provide an economic vision able to turn that feeling upside down, a vision able to replace cynicism with hope and reason.
I am not suggesting that you should have heard this talk and become a pareconist.
This talk doesn't provide enough detail, enough evidence, and nor have you had sufficient time to mull it over.
What I do hope is that you will be feeling, hey, what if parecon really does answer the claim that there is no alternative? What if it is a viable and worthy alternative to capitalism?
In that case, you might think to yourself - I would need to know about it, I would even need to advocate it. So, to find out - I need to explore it further.
When we all go to movies and see courageous souls of the past represented on the screen, fighting against slavery, or against the subordination of women, or against colonialism, or for peace and justice and against dictatorships, we rightly feel sympathy and admiration for their acts.
Abolitionists, suffragettes, labor organizers, anti apartheid activists, all seekers of freedom and dignity are heroes to us.
But if we admire standing up against injustice, shouldn't we ourselves stand up against injustice. If we admire seeking a better world, shouldn't we ourselves seek a better world.
If we admire rejecting exploitation, alienation, domination, and its violent maintenance, shouldn't we ourselves advocate and fight for an economic model and societal structure that will eliminate these horrors.
I believe participatory economics is such an economy and should be part of such a new society.
Thank you
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics ...
Participatory economics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Participatory economics, often abbreviated parecon, is an economic system proposed primarily by activist and political theorist Michael Albert and radical economist Robin Hahnel, among others. It uses participatory decision making as an economic mechanism to guide the production, consumption and allocation of resources in a given society. Proposed as an alternative to contemporary capitalist market economies and also an alternative to centrally planned socialism, it is described as "an anarchistic economic vision",[1] and it could be considered a form of socialism as under parecon, the means of production are owned in common.
The underlying values that parecon seeks to implement are equity, solidarity, diversity, workers' self-management and efficiency. (Efficiency here means accomplishing goals without wasting valued assets.) It proposes to attain these ends mainly through the following principles and institutions:
* workers' and consumers' councils utilizing self-managerial methods for making decisions,
* balanced job complexes,
* remuneration according to effort and sacrifice, and
* participatory planning.
Albert and Hahnel stress that parecon is only meant to address an alternative economic theory and must be accompanied by equally important alternative visions in the fields of politics, culture and kinship. The authors have also discussed elements of anarchism in the field of politics, polyculturalism in the field of culture, and feminism in the field of family and gender relations as being possible foundations for future alternative visions in these other spheres of society. Stephen R. Shalom has begun work on a participatory political vision he calls "par polity". Both systems together make up the political philosophy of Participism.
Contents
[edit] Decision-making principle
One of the primary propositions of parecon is that all persons should have a say in each decision proportionate to the degree to which they are affected by it. This decision-making principle is often referred to as self-management. In parecon, it constitutes a replacement for the mainstream economic conception of economic freedom, which Albert and Hahnel argue that by its very vagueness has allowed it to be abused by capitalist ideologues.
[edit] Democratic Work Life
Workers in a Participatory Economy would make decisions about what to do in the workplace according to the above decision making principle, where workers have say in proportion to how much they are affected by a decision. Workplace decisions might be through majority vote, requiring 50% majority. Sometimes a higher percentage, such as a 2/3 majority, or 80%, or even consensus might be needed. For instance, upgrades to a plant that would require a great deal of time and effort for all workers might need greater than 50% vote, as workers would be affected adversely by the decision. Another example is when a decision might have advantages but involves some risk, such as raising a heavy beam while building a bridge that might endanger some workers, but will make the bridge be built faster. Such a decision would seem to require consensus among the affected workers, giving any one worker veto power due to the danger.
Personal decisions of any one worker, such as where to place pictures on their desk, do not require a vote at all, as they affect only one individual.
[edit] Balanced job complexes
Some tasks and jobs are more comfortable than others, and some tasks and jobs are perceived as more empowering than others. So, to achieve an equitable division of labour, it is proposed that each individual do different tasks, which, taken together, bring an average comfort and an average level of empowerment. The main goals are to dissolve economic hierarchy and achieve one class of workers, and to empower all to make contributions to the workplace. Hahnel and Albert argue that without balanced job complexes, those with empowering jobs, such as accounting or management, would be able to formulate plans and ideas, while others, such as janitors, would not develop the capacity to do so, neither would they have the training. Without balanced job complexes, people without empowering jobs would most likely end up just ratifying the proposals of empowered workers, and would have little reason to be at a meeting.[2]
As an example of a balanced job complex, someone who works in a publishing house might have a mix of tasks including editing books (empowering), sweeping and cleaning (dis empowering) and even others like driving a truck to deliver books (somewhere in between). The time scale of when these tasks are performed is variable, one might do several different tasks in a week, or do a task like work on an oil rig for several months, then do more empowering work like astronomy for several months. A rough numeric rating system would be developed that would rate each task performed in the economy according to its estimated degree of empowerment.
[edit] Compensation for effort and sacrifice
Albert and Hahnel argue that it is inequitable and ineffective to compensate people on the basis of their birth or heredity, their property, or their innate intelligence. Therefore, the primary principle of participatory economics is to reward for effort and sacrifice.[3] For example, mining work — which is dangerous and uncomfortable — would be more highly paid than office work for the same amount of time, thus allowing the miner to work fewer hours for the same pay, and the burden of highly dangerous and strenuous jobs to be shared among the populace.
Additionally, participatory economics could provide a certain leeway for exemptions from the compensation for effort principle.[3] People with disabilities who are unable to work, children, the elderly, the infirm and workers who are legitimately in transitional circumstances, can be remunerated according to need. However, every able adult has the obligation to perform some socially useful work as a requirement for receiving reward, albeit in the context of a society providing free health care, education, skills training, and the freedom to choose between various democratically structured workplaces with jobs balanced for desirability and empowerment.
The starting point for the income of all workers in participatory economics is an equal share of the social product. From this point, incomes for personal expenditures and consumption rights for public goods can be expected to diverge by small degrees reflecting the choices that individual workers make in striking a balance between work and leisure time, and reflecting the level of danger and strenuousness of a job as assigned by their immediate peers.[3]
[edit] Allocation in a Participatory Economy
[edit] Consumers' and producers' councils
Albert and Hahnel proposed the creation and organization of consumer's and producers' councils to implement the decision making principle. Many individuals would participate in both types of councils. These would be similar to workers' councils. Consumers' councils act as decision-making bodies for consumption planning, and producers' councils - which are culminations of several workers' councils - act as decision-making bodies for production planning.
Geographically, consumers' councils would probably be nested within the same neighborhood councils, ward councils, city or regional councils and a country council used for political decision-making through parpolity - parecon's political counterpart. Decisions would be achieved either through consensus decision-making, majority votes or through other means compatible with the principle. The most appropriate method would be decided on by each council.
Local decisions like the construction of a playground might be made in the ward or city consumers' council, probably interacting with both city and countrywide producers' councils through rotating delegates. Countrywide decisions, like the construction of a high-speed mass transportation system, would be discussed by the country consumers' council, possibly interacting with a city producers' council in the city where the materials are produced, or countrywide or international producers' councils.
The producers' councils would probably correspond to workplace councils in each workplace and similar workplaces would group into nested councils on successively larger geographical and linguistic scales.
[edit] Facilitation Boards
Iteration Facilitation Boards (IFBs) act as management bodies for local consumers' and producers' councils and are the mechanism via which economic allocation is decided upon and ultimately implemented.
Facilitation boards first announce a set of indicative prices which workers and consumers use, individually and through their councils at each level, when deciding on their production and consumption proposals. Proposals could be done either collectively through a local consumer council, or individually on a computer; or any combination of the two. When the proposals are all in, the IFBs aggregate all the production and consumption proposals for the different categories of goods and services – inputs into all the production processes as well as consumer goods – to see if proposed supply and demand are equal. If they are not equal for every good and service the IFB revises the set of indicative prices and the process is repeated through successive rounds until a consistent set of production and consumption proposals is arrived at.
The facilitation boards then implement these final proposals by setting new prices and organizing production plans. In the event of unforeseen circumstances occurring in between planning procedures, the IFBs would adjust prices or production quotas accordingly within established guidelines.
[edit] Participatory Planning
The participatory planning procedure would be a regular (probably either annual, bi-annual or quarterly) event where citizens participate to determine which and how many goods to produce. Prices for goods and services before the onset of the planning procedure would have been determined by the previous planning procedure, modified by facilitation boards as unforeseen circumstances changed production quotas. After the participatory planning procedure is completed, prices will get new base values, likely to be changed again by the boards as unforeseen circumstances develop.
These prices would represent the estimated marginal social opportunity cost for all goods and services. During the planning procedure, not only do the prices reflect proposed supply and demand, but also the social and ecological cost of producing the good. For instance a product that produces pollution in its manufacture, or is especially dangerous for workers to produce, would have its price automatically inflated to discourage excess consumption.
Using new prices estimated by the facilitation boards as a guide, citizens would respond with their personal consumption proposals, and participate in the formulation of collective consumption proposals at the neighborhood, ward, municipal, provincial and national levels. Personal consumption proposals would be a prediction by each citizen of what goods and services they plan to consume the next year. For instance a couple expecting a new baby would request the appropriate goods, and a citizen who enjoys exotic fruit would put in her demand to make sure it is received. Collective consumption proposals would be created by citizens making proposals for a wider geographical area (e.g. a new recreation center at the community level or a new power plant at the provincial level) that are received by a facilitation board.
The facilitation board would work with the citizen(s) that originated the proposal to work it into a manageable proposition. Around the time of the planning procedure, interested parties within the region affected by the collective consumption proposal would be able to view the collective consumption proposals and vote them up or down. This could be done at large meetings or via computer. At the same time, worker's councils and producers councils would respond with production proposals outlining the outputs they propose to produce and the inputs they believe are required to produce them. Individual workers would indicate their proposed hours of work, and workers will be able to propose upgrades and innovations for their workplace, aided by a facilitation board.
Facilitation boards would then calculate excess proposed supply and demand based on the proposals, adjusting the indicative price for each final good or service according to its impact on society and the environment so that the social opportunity cost is reflected. Using the new indicative prices, consumer and workers' councils would revise and resubmit their proposals, as some goods would be more expensive, and others less expensive. Proposals deemed excessive by other parties would become very expensive, creating a disincentive to pursue them.
Iterations would continue according to some predefined method which is likely to converge within an acceptable time delay. For instance, proposals would only be changeable by a minimum percentage for the second round, and a lesser percentage for the third round, and so on, forcing convergence of a feasible plan.
The facilitation boards should function according to a maximum level of radical transparency and only have very limited powers of mediation, subject to the discretion of the participating councils. The real decisions regarding the formulation and implementation of the plan are to be made in the consumers' and producers' councils.
[edit] Money in a participatory economy
Main article: Labour voucher
"Money" in a parecon would be more akin to a bookkeeping system than traditional currency. Money as it now exists would be abolished and instead replaced with a personal voucher system which would be non-transferable between consumers, and would be only usable at a store to purchase goods.
Electronic "credits" would be awarded to workers for their work, as a means of saying that this worker benefited society with their work. The more effort and sacrifice, the more credits are awarded. Credits would then be used to buy goods and services. Once used to purchase something, a credit would be deducted from the consumer's total; it "disappears" and does not go into a till or bank, it is simply deducted from the consumer's total. There would be no banks in the capitalist sense. Individuals would have to work more to get more credits. In this way, there would be no flow of money and no way to "make money off of money" as in a capitalist economy. People would be able to borrow credits if approved by an appropriate board, but no interest would be charged.
The non-transferability of parecon credits would make it impossible to bribe or even beg for money.[4] and would thus make monetary theft impossible. People would still be free to barter their individual goods with each other, e.g. exchange a couch for a stereo, but any attempt to create an exchangeable currency would likely be discouraged, as this might lead to attempts to reinstate money and capitalism. Credits might be shareable amongst family members, depending on how the parecon is set up. A lost or stolen "credit" card would not be usable by another person, as presumably there would be means to verify the identity of a citizen at shopping centers.
Albert and Hahnel did not clarify how a currency of this form would be used in international trading with non-parecon countries. If a capitalist country refuses to be paid for their bought goods in this way, it is likely that a parecon nation would use money for international trading, but keep its unique credit currency for internal purposes.
[edit] Critique of markets
A primary reason why advocates of participatory economics perceive markets to be unjust and inefficient is that only the interests of buyer and seller are considered in a typical market transaction, while others who are affected by the transaction have no voice in it. For instance, the sale of highly addictive drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, is in the interest of the seller and (at least in the short term) in the interest of the buyer, but others outside the transaction end up bearing costs in the form of social problems and medical treatment.
When vehicles using fossil fuels, are manufactured, distributed and sold, others outside the transaction end up bearing costs in the form of pollution, and resource depletion. This may be considered under economics as a common pool good. The market price of such vehicles and drugs does not include these additional costs, which are referred to as externalities. The implications of significant external effects invalidate market efficiency regardless of the economic calculations of market actors because in such cases prices will not accurately reflect opportunity costs.
In contrast to parecon, mainstream economics suggests that the problem of externalities can in large part be addressed by the use of Pigovian taxes — extra taxes on goods that have externalities. If the taxes are set so that the after-tax cost of the good is equal to the social cost of the good, the direct cost of production plus cost of externalities, then quantities produced will tend toward a socially optimal level, according to economic theory. Hahnel observes, "more and more economists outside the mainstream are challenging this assumption, and a growing number of skeptics now dare to suggest that externalities are prevalent, and often substantial. Or, as E.K. Hunt put it externalities are the rule rather than the exception, and therefore markets often work as if they were guided by a "malevolent invisible foot" that keeps kicking us to produce more of some things, and less of others than is socially efficient."[16]
Albert and Hahnel favour Pigovian taxes as long as a market economy is in place, which sometimes appear as green taxes, over other solutions to environmental problems such as command and control, or the issuance of marketable permits. However, Hahnel, who teaches ecological economics at American University, argues that in a market economy it would be predictable that businesses would try to avoid the "polluter pays principle" by shifting the burden of the costs for their polluting activities to consumers. In terms of incentives he argues this might be considered a positive development because it would penalize consumers for "dirty" consumption. However it also has regressive implications since tax incidence studies show that ultimately it would be poor people who would bear a great deal of the burden of many pollution taxes. "In other words, many pollution taxes would be highly regressive and therefore aggravate economic injustice."[17]
Therefore, he recommends that pollution taxes be linked to cuts in regressive taxes such as social security taxes. In the end Hahnel argues that Pigovian taxes, along with associated corrective measures advanced by market economists, fall far short of adequately or fairly addressing externalities. He argues such methods are incapable of attaining accurate assessments of social costs:
"Markets corrected by pollution taxes only lead to the efficient amount of pollution and satisfy the polluter pays principle if the taxes are set equal to the magnitude of the damage victims suffer. But because markets are not incentive compatible for polluters and pollution victims, markets provide no reliable way to estimate the magnitudes of efficient taxes for pollutants. Ambiguity over who has the property right, polluters or pollution victims, free rider problems among multiple victims, and the transaction costs of forming and maintaining an effective coalition of pollution victims, each of whom is affected to a small but unequal degree, all combine to render market systems incapable of eliciting accurate information from pollution victims about the damages they suffer, or acting upon that information even if it were known.[18]
[edit] Critique of private ownership and corporations
Advocates of parecon say the basis of capitalism is the concept of private ownership, which confers upon every owner the right to do with their property as they please, even though decisions relating to some property may have unwanted effects on other people.
This concept extends to private property belonging to corporations. In the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a stepwise juridical revolution made corporations into "juridical persons" with the rights of citizens under the concept of corporate personhood.
At the same time, every corporation has its own set of owners who have the right to do as they please with it, because people outside a corporation do not have any right to interfere with its activities while it abides by the law. Although market economists note that all consumers can influence corporations through their own market interactions, or through buying and selling of their goods, services, or even shares, advocates of parecon are unsatisfied with this as this influence has a limited extension, and organization of collective consumer action is difficult in a market economy. Pareconists believe that the state is unlikely to interfere in the market for the benefit of the public, and advocates interpret economic history as demonstrating that it is more often the other way around, through means of plutocracy.[citation needed]
Being huge agglomerations of economic power, large corporations tend to interfere with the decision-making of states by lobbying for legislation and policy that suits their interests or, in many cases, by bribery, or by financing huge propaganda campaigns for the success of some political candidate who would support the corporation's interests. An example included the corporate slogan "what is good for General Motors is good for America." In some cases, there have been plans for corporate-backed coups, such as the Business Plot. However, Milton Friedman believes that such corporate lobbying is only possible in states that allow for significant state interference within the economy.
Promoters of parecon hold that the pursuit of private profit and power by these kinds of corporations is not in the interest of the majority of citizens.
[edit] Comparison with other socialist movements
Although participatory economics is not in itself intended to provide a general political system, clearly its practical implementation would depend on an accompanying political system. Advocates of parecon say the intention is that the four main ingredients of parecon be implemented with a minimum of hierarchy and a maximum of transparency in all discussions and decision making. This model is designed to eliminate secrecy in economic decision making, and instead encourage friendly cooperation and mutual support. This avoidance of power hierarchies puts parecon in the anarchist political tradition. Stephen Shalom has produced a political system meant to complement parecon, called Parpolity
Although parecon falls under left-wing political tradition, it is designed to avoid the creation of powerful intellectual elites or the rule of a bureaucracy, which is perceived as the major problem of the economies of the communist states of the 20th century. Parecon advocates recognize that monopolization of empowering labor, in addition to private ownership, can be a source of class division. Thus, a three-class view of the economy (capitalists, coordinators, and workers) is stressed, in contrast to the traditional two-class view of Marxism. The coordinator class, emphasized in Parecon, refers to those who have a monopoly on empowering skills and knowledge, and corresponds to the doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, and other professionals in present economies. Parecon advocates argue that, historically, Marxism ignored the ability of coordinators to become a new ruling class in a post-capitalist society[19].
The archetypal workplace democracy model, the Wobbly Shop was pioneered by the Industrial Workers of the World, in which the self-managing norms of grassroots democracy were applied.
While many types of production and consumption may become more localised under participatory economics, the model does not exclude economies of scale.
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From http://www.facebook.com/joel.tyner?ref=tn_tnmn#!/events/321835041176940/...
Occupy Albany: Teach-In on Participatory Economics
By Colin Donnaruma and Nick Partyka
When: Today
Time: 12:00pm until 1:30pm
Where: Academy Park
Most of us agree that capitalism is broken but many of us are unclear about what a positive democratic alternative would look like and how it would be organized. Colin Donnaruma and Nick Partyka, doctoral students in poltical economics at UAlbany, will facilitate a teach-in on participatory economics and non-hierarchical alternatives to market-based capitalism.
Come discuss and learn about democratic and cooperative ways to structure economic activity. All are welcome!!
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics...
A few workplaces have been established based on principles akin to parecon, particularly in Canada and the USA:
* South End Press, a book publisher in Boston, Massachusetts.
* G7 Welcoming Committee, an independent record label closely tied to the Winnipeg band Propagandhi.
* Z Magazine, a progressive/radical magazine.
* The Old Market Autonomous Zone, a three-story building in Winnipeg, Canada that houses organizations which have similar principles, including: Mondragon Bookstore (a vegan restaurant and anarchist bookstore), G7 Welcoming Committee Records (see entry above), the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre, Natural Cycle (a bike repair and courier company), Canadian Dimension (a radical magazine), DadaWorldData (a documentary film company), Junto Local 91 (a lending library), War on Music (a collectively run music retailer and vinyl-only record label), and the Canada-Palestine Support Network. Another parecon-inspired worker-run collective, Arbeiter Ring Publishing, named after the radical Jewish labour organization, was also based out of the A-Zone until 2002, and continues to operate in the city. The Emma Goldman Grassroots Centre is the A-Zone's second floor, where many activist groups share communal meeting and organizing space.
* The NewStandard, an online progressive hard news website published by the PeoplesNetWorks Collective, headquartered in Syracuse, New York. It ceased publication in April, 2007.
* OAT, the Organization for Autonomous Communications (previously TAO Communications).
* Ram Wools Yarn Co-op, Ram Wools Yarn Co-op (in Winnipeg Manitoba) Started off April 1, 2009 as a succession to a privately held company of 37 years.
* ParIT Workers Cooperative, ParIT Workers Co-op (in Winnipeg Manitoba) Is an IT firm committed to Parecon and the use of free software.
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http://www.zcommunications.org/participatory-economics-by-michael-albert-1-2
Participatory Economics
By Michael Albert
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Text of a speech delivered to a CNT Sponsored gathering in Barcelona, Spain.
Thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.
I hope we will have time for ample discussion as I very much look forward to hearing your insights on our topic which is participatory economic vision.
To begin, then, in the words of the great British economist John Maynard Keynes –
“[Capitalism] is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous -- and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.”
Let’s see if we can undue that perplexity.
First, briefly, what is capitalism's real problem?
Capitalism is theft.
The richest in the U.S., for example, have wealth unparalleled in history.
The poorest in the U.S., however, live under bridges inside cardboard shelters, or stop living at all.
The gap, in the U.S. and similarly here in Spain, is a social product, a theft.
Capitalism is alienation and anti-sociality.
Within capitalism the motives guiding decisions are pecuniary not personal.
The motives are selfish not social.
We seek individual advance at the expense of others. Not collective advance to mutual benefit.
The result is an anti-social environment in which nice guys finish last and economic logic seeks profit rather than social well being.
Capitalism is authoritarian.
Within capitalist workplaces those who labor at rote and tedious jobs have nearly zero say over conditions, output, and aims. Those who own the workplaces or who monopolize empowering positions have nearly all say.
Not even Stalin, for example, ever dreamed of people having to ask his permission to eat or to go to the bathroom, yet corporate owners routinely exercise such power.
Corporations bear the same resemblance to democracy that killing fields bear to peace.
Capitalism is inefficient.
Market profit seeking squanders the capacities of about 80% of the population by training them to endure boredom and to take orders, not to fulfill their greatest potentials.
Market profit seeking also wastes inordinate resources on producing items that aren’t beneficial, and enforcing work assignments that are coerced and therefore resisted.
Capitalism is racist and sexist.
Under market competition owners inevitably exploit racial and gender hierarchies produced in other parts of society.
If extra economic factors reduce the bargaining power of some actors while raising that of others, creating hierarchical expectations about who should rule and who should obey, capitalists will exploit the hierarchies.
Capitalism is violent.
The race for capitalist market domination produces nations at odds with other nations until those which accrue sufficient power are in position to exploit the resources and populations of those who lack defensive means.
The ultimate manifestation is imperialism, colonialism, and unholy war.
Capitalism is unsustainable.
The money grabbers accumulate and accumulate, regardless of human need and desire. They ignore or willfully obscure the impact of what they do not only on workers and consumers, but also on the environment.
The market propels short term calculations. It makes dumping waste to avoid costs an easy and competitively enforced avenue to gain. The results appear in sky and soil. They are mitigated only by social movements that compel wiser behavior.
Capitalism Sucks
I could of course recount for many hours the failings of capitalism, its morbid human implications both in theory and in hard statistics, as I am sure you all could too.
But I think there is no point in doing that here, or really, almost anywhere, anymore.
I think by this second decade of the twenty first century only a relatively few people are made so callous by their advantages, or are made so profoundly ignorant by their advanced educations, or are so manipulated by media and their own naiveté, or so coerced by their positions that they fail to see that capitalism is now a gigantic holocaust of injustice.
Everything is broken in virtually every respect, and everyone knows it.
As Keynes said, capitalism is not intelligent, is not beautiful, is not just, is not virtuous -- and is not even delivering the goods.
So what do we want instead?
Parecon
Participatory Economics, or parecon, which the replacement for capitalism that I advocate, is built on just four institutional commitments.
Parecon is therefore not a blueprint for a whole economy. It is a description of key features of just a few centrally important aspects of an economy.
Parecon is enough, and just enough, for us to know that with parecon future people will self manage their economic lives as they decide.
Workers and Consumers Councils
The first feature of participatory economics is nested workers and consumers councils of the sort we have seen arise most recently in places such as Argentina and Venezuela.
The added feature of parecon’s councils, however, is a very explicit commitment to self managed decision making.
People in a parecon influence decisions in proportion as they are in turn affected by them. If a decision will affect me more, I will have more say in it. If it will affect me less, I will have less say in it.
Sometimes self management entails one person one vote majority rule. Think of deciding the start time for the work day.
Sometimes self management could require a different tally, maybe two thirds or three quarters needed to win, or that only some segment of the whole populace votes. Think of decisions that mostly affect a work team, where only that team votes.
Sometimes for those who are deciding to best approximate perfect self management, consensus is needed. Think of a team deciding its schedule, giving everyone a veto because a bad schedule can so adversely affect each person.
There are even times, many times, when we all believe dictatorial decision making most accords with self management. I decide whose picture I place in my work area, of what color socks I wear, and I do it alone, by myself, like Stalin.
The point is, in a parecon, all such voting approaches and even particular ways of presenting, discussing, and debating before finally voting, are tactics we utilize to attain as closely as makes sense the appropriate self managing say for all involved actors.
So as our first commitment we have self managed workers and consumers councils.
Equitable Remuneration
The second central feature of parecon, is about equitable remuneration.
Other things equal, in a parecon we will earn more if we work longer, if we work harder, or if we work under more harsh or harmful conditions.
Remuneration will be for duration, intensity, and harshness endured. It will not be for property, power, or output.
Parecon rejects the idea that someone should earn more by virtue of having a deed in his or her pocket. There is no moral warrant for profit nor is there any incentive warrant for it.
Parecon also rejects a thuggish economy in which one gets what one can take. This is characteristic of market exchange. It is the kind of remuneration that business school graduates celebrate. You get more if you have the power to take it.
Al Capone, the famous American Gangster, was once asked about his feelings toward the U.S.
He answered, "I love America. America is great. In American, you get what you can take."
So business school graduates and Al Capone agree, keep what you can take - but parecon rejects thuggish remuneration.
Most controversially, parecon also rejects that we should get back from the economy an amount equal to what we contributed to it by our own labor.
Many socialists favor this norm, but parecon rejects it. The reason for this rejection is that parecon understands that our output depends on many factors and rewarding output rewards each of those factors.
If we have better tools, we produce more. Should we get more income due to the luck of having better tools?
If we work in a more productive environment, or producing more valued items, we produce great value. Should we get more income due to the luck of working one place rather than another?
If we have innate qualities that increase our productivity, we produce more. Should we get more income due to having been born with a great voice, or great reflexes, or large size, or a fantastic talent for calculation?
Parecon says no to all three.
We should not get more for luck in tools, luck in our workplace, or luck in the genetic lottery.
Instead, we should get more only if we work longer, or harder, or at more onerous conditions, doing socially valued labor.
Parecon's remuneration makes moral sense and also induces productive labor as incentives should.
The usual complaint about pareconish equitable remuneration goes like this.
Doctors won't go to college and medical school and endure training if they aren't paid way more than coal miners digging in the ground and folks flipping burgers at MacDonalds.
Thus with parecon's remuneration scheme we will lose doctors and other creative, necessary workers, and will all suffer. The economists tell us this, students repeat it, virtually everyone takes it for granted.
In fact, however, the claim is utter nonsense. It is repeated so often that most people take it as gospel, but it is far from that.
Consider that if you think about it for just a couple of minutes, this is what it says.
Sam and Sara are just getting out of High School. Sara is heading to a coal mine, or MacDonalds. Sam is headed to college, then medical school, then to be an intern.
Sara, let's be generous, is going to earn $60,000 a year for the next 45 years, and retire. Sam is going to earn, once a doctor, $600,000 a year, until he retires.
So here is what the economists are telling us.
Sam needs to get that salary because if we pay him less he will not go to college, not go to medical school, not be an intern, and not be a rich doctor.
Apparently, the suffering of college compared to being in a coal mine for the same period, and of medical school compared to being in a coal mine for those years, and of interning compared to being in a coal mine, is so horrible, that the payment for the next few decades is needed as a kind of bribe.
I hope you can already see this is absurd.
In fact, if we asked Sam to choose between his doctoring path and the coal mine or MacDonalds path - and to do it in light of a lower salary offered for a doctor...and we then started dropping the proposed salary, and said, tell us, Sam, when you are ready to give up doctoring to switch because you are not being paid enough - the results are absolutely predictable.
I have done this experiment dozens of times, with pre med students, with doctors, with other students, all of whom not five minutes earlier told me pareconish remuneration was idiotic and would lead to no doctors, and I have always gotten the same result.
They say no to switching from medicine to coal or burgers at $500,000, $400,000...all the way down to $60,000 and then $50,000 and then they typically stop me. And they say, well, I don't know. How low can I go and still survive? And they are always laughing, addled at how obvious it is that their economist teachers were either lying or idiots.
The reality is, of course, that doctors make as much as they do because in capitalism they have the power to take that much. It has nothing to do with justice or incentives. It has everything to do with market competition and power based on a monopoly on skills and knowledge, which is very carefully maintained.
And in a parecon, even though paid instead only for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, of course we will all want to do things we are good at and can make a contribution at. This is not only moral, it generates economically correct incentives.
Balanced Job Complexes
For its third feature, participatory economics needs a new division of labor.
If a new economy were to remove private profit and install equitable remuneration and also incorporate self managing councils, but were to simultaneously retain the current corporate division of labor, its commitments would be inconsistent.
If you look at workplaces here, around the world, or for that matter in 20th century socialist economies, you will find a startling commonality. The way work is parceled out into jobs is very consistent.
One job has only empowering tasks. The next four jobs have only disempowering tasks. Another job has only empowering tasks. The next four have only disempowering tasks.
Having 20% of the workforce monopolize empowering work and 80% do only more obedient, rote, stultifying work is the corporate division of labor.
It ensures that the former group – who I want to call the coordinator class – including, by the way, doctors - rules over the latter group, the working class.
The coordinators have all the knowledge, social skills, confidence, and even energy needed for discussing and making decisions. The workers are robbed of knowledge, not allowed to advance their social skills, and exhausted.
Even with a formal commitment to self management, the coordinators enter each decision discussion in a workers council having set the agenda for the discussion, owning all the information relevant to the ensuing debate, alone possessing the habits of communication that will inform the debate, and alone possessing and exuding the confidence and energy to fully participate.
The workers, in contrast, having been bored and exhausted by the repetitive and disempowering work they do, will come to decision discussions only ill prepared and eager to get home.
The coordinators will therefore determine outcomes. In time they will begin to see themselves as superior. Disempowered workers will begin to avoid the meetings. The coordinators will then choose to remunerate themselves more, to streamline meetings and decision-making by excluding those below, and to orient economic decisions in their own ruling class interests.
I sat in a room in Argentina some years back with about fifty workers, each from a different occupied factory. I was to give a talk, but suggested we go around the room with people telling of their experiences, first.
These folks were just meeting each other, and initially very upbeat. They were, after all, all occupying and making successes out of factories taken over from the prior owner.
By the third person to report, the room was quiet and the upbeat mood had dissipated. By the fifth person, things were maudlin. There were tears in people's eyes by the seventh person, and I intervened and said I had heard enough to begin my talk, which I did.
Each worker had told a similar story. The last one put it roughly like this. "I never thought I would ever say anything like this, but maybe Margaret Thatcher was right."
"We took over our factory," she continued. "We equalized wages, save for differences in time worked. We instituted democracy and even elements of self management. Time passed. We made a success of the workplace, but now, I hate to say it, all the old crap is coming back. Our democracy is becoming sham. Incomes are diverging. Alienation is setting in. Maybe it is just impossible."
So I spoke about the effects of the corporate divisions of labor they had retained, and why that was the explanation for the coordinators accruing more power and eventually also more income.
Due to about four fifths doing working class jobs, and about one fifth doing coordinator class jobs, the latter dominated, and developed warped self perceptions and perceptions of others, too, and in time the old crap returned.
Having this knowledge was the difference between folks succumbing to cynicism and despair, and folks realizing that there was a way forward.
The large scale upshot of all this is that one kind of class that exists above workers is owners. Having a deed to property, capitalists own means of production. They hire and fire wage slaves. They seek profits.
But the startling point about the oberservations is that even with this owning class eliminated, classlessness is not necessarily attained.
Another group that is also defined by its position in the economy, not by ownership but by its position in the division of labor, can still wield virtually complete power, including aggrandizing itself above workers.
It follows, that to avoid coordinator class rule, which is exactly what exists in what is called market and centrally planned socialism, we must replace the corporate division of labor with a new approach to defining work roles that doesn't overwhelmingly empower some while overwhelmingly disempowering the rest.
Parecon calls this third institutional commitment balanced job complexes. Each of us in any society, will by definition be doing some collection of tasks. That is what a job is.
If the economy employs a corporate division of labor, our tasks will combine into a job that is either largely empowering due to including mainly empowering tasks, or is largely disempowering due to including mainly disempowering tasks.
In a participatory economy, instead, we combine tasks into jobs so that for each worker the overall empowerment effect of his or her job is like the overall empowerment effect of every other worker's job. Everyone has what we call an average balanced job complex.
In parecon, that is, we don’t have managers and assemblers, editors and secretaries, surgeons and nurses as we now do. The functions these actors now fulfill persist, but the labor of accomplishing the functions is divided up differently.
Of course some people still do surgery while most don’t. However, those who do take scalpel to brains also clean bed pans, or sweep floors, or assist with other hospital functions.
The total empowerment the current surgeon’s job affords is altered by remixing tasks in a parecon. She still does some surgery but she winds up with a balanced job complex including other tasks, like cleaning bed pans, in sum conveying the same total empowerment as the new job of the person who previously only cleaned up.
The domination of the coordinator class over all other workers is removed not by eliminating empowering tasks, nor by everyone doing the same things, both of which options are impossible.
Instead, we distribute empowering and rote tasks so that all economic actors participate in self managed decision making without advantage or disadvantage due to their economic roles. There are only people who work. There is no division of that large group into two classes.
Some say this approach will waste talents and as a result, fall short in delivering the goods. Their feeling is that we will lose some of the highly productive labors of doctors and lawyers and engineers, and so on, who will have to do a mix of work, including a fair share that is disempowering.
In truth, this viewpoint is either sloppy thinking, or is classist.
Yes, if Sam does surgery in capitalism 40 hours a week, and then in parecon does it only 20 hours a week, or 15, then we have indeed lost 20 or 25 hours of Sam's highly productive labors since Sam is spending that much time cleaning up.
And if this happens for all doctors, the total doctoring done by the old doctors has dropped by half, or more.
The critic smiles and proclaims that this approach will not deliver the goods.
This is sloppy thinking if the critic simply failed to notice that we altered society so that the 80% who previously were schooled to endure boredom and take orders, thereby crushing the creativity out of them, are in parecon instead schooled to fulfill all their talents and capacities - so that that huge new pool of people is available to provide additional folks doing surgery.
It is classist thinking, however, if the critic remembered this fact, but felt it was irrelevant because people in the 80% would be incapable of doing good surgery - or good lawyering, doctoring, managing, etc.
Why is that classist? Because it says that working people are intrinsically incapable, and not merely beaten down.
Now none of you need to be convinced this is nonsense, I hope, but you will find yourselves having to convince others of the point, often. So here are two techniques I find very effective.
First, I ask them to imagine that it is 1955 and we have taken all the surgeons in the U.S. and put them in a gigantic stadium. I say, look around and tell me if there is anything noteworthy.
They say, yes, of course, they are all men. And I point out that at the time, all of those men, and even a very large percentage of women, would have said that this was due to women being inherently incapable of doing good surgery.
I then add that now 51% of medical students in the U.S. are women, so that this virtually universal belief was not wisdom, but was sexism, and I point out that it is exactly the same thing to look around at working people now and see that they aren't surgeons and don't have other empowering work, and attribute this to their lack of capacity rather than to injustice.
The second way I try to overcome such prejudice is by telling a story about Argentina.
I was there, in a glass factory that had been occupied by its workforce when the capitalist gave up and wanted to sell it.
The coordinator class folks also left, figuring they were better off elsewhere. But the workers stayed. And months later, when I visited, the workers had the plant working, and indeed thriving.
I spoke with a woman who was doing the chief financial officer job, basically accounting, financial policy making, etc. She has been, before, working at an open furnace.
All day she would repeat a few movements, tedious, unskilled, deadly. Day after day she did it. Then, after the take over, she was assigned to do finances.
So I asked, what was the hardest thing to learn. She didn't want to answer - she was shy.
So I said, was it using computers? No. Using spread sheets on the computer? No. Learning accounting concepts? No.
I was running out of guesses, so I said, okay, please, tell me.
And she said, well the hardest thing was that first I had to learn to read.
Just think about that. From working class boredom, through learning to read, to running the finances, in a matter of months. So much for a lack of capacity.
Participatory Planning
Finally, we come to parecon's fourth institutional commitment.
Suppose we have lots of workplaces and communities all committed to having workers and consumers councils, to using self managed decision making procedures, to having balanced job complexes, and to remunerating for effort and sacrifice.
Suppose, in addition, we opt for central planning or for markets for allocation. Would this constitute, all together, a new and worthy vision?
No, it would not. Both central planning and markets, by their impositions on behavior and options, would destroy self management, balanced job complexes, and equitable remuneration.
With central planning the authoritarian logic of order giving and order taking would impose coordinator class rule.
With markets, the competitive dictates would not only violate equitable remuneration and self management, they too would impose coordinator rule.
These results are not only predictable, following out the logic of these modes of allocation - and if we had time for that we could show it - but they are and have been visible in real world situations, notably what have been labelled centrally planned and market socialist economies, which would have been better labelled, however, coordinatorist.
But then what replaces markets and central planning to round out the defining features of participatory economics?
Participatory planning is the fourth institutional commitment of parecon. It is essentially cooperative negotiation of inputs and outputs by the workers and consumers self managing councils.
There is no time to walk through what this looks like in any detail beyond saying that it has no center, no top, and no bottom.
The dynamics of participatory planning reveal true social costs and benefits.
They provide appropriate incentives enabling equitable remuneration.
They convey motivations for actors to mutually aid and benefit one another via solidarity.
And they arrive at self managed decisions in an efficient manner.
Okay, so suppose we combine workers and consumers councils, self managed decision making, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning.
That is participatory economics, or parecon.
Our claim is that parecon is not only classless, and not only fosters solidarity, diversity, and equity – but to the extent possible and with no recurring biases, it apportions to each worker and consumer about each economic decision, an appropriate level of self managing influence.
Parecon doesn’t reduce productivity per worker hour but provides adequate and proper incentives for everyone to work well.
Parecon doesn’t bias toward longer hours but allows free choice of work versus leisure.
Parecon doesn’t pursue what is most profitable for a few regardless of impact on workers, the ecology, and often even consumers, but instead orients output toward what is truly beneficial in light of full social and environmental costs and benefits for all.
Parecon doesn’t waste the human talents of people now doing surgery, or composing music, or otherwise engaging in difficult and skilled labor by requiring that they do offsetting less empowering labor as well, but instead by that means surfaces a gargantuan reservoir of previously untapped talents throughout the populace.
Parecon apportions empowering and rote labor not only justly, but in accord with self management and classlessness.
Parecon doesn’t assume divine citizens. Instead, it creates a context in which to get ahead in their economic engagements even people who grow up entirely self seeking and anti-social must be concerned for the general social good and the well being of others.
In capitalism buyers seek to fleece sellers and vice versa. People are trained by the economy to be anti-social and to get ahead they must learn those lessons well. In capitalism, nice guys finish last – or in my own more pithy rendition, garbage rises.
In parecon, in contrast, solidarity among citizens is produced by economic life just as vehicles, homes, clothes, and musical instruments are. We all gain if the whole society benefits by larger overall output, or by increased productivity per hour, or by less onerous work conditions - or if we work harder or longer to gain the extra income.
We all have an interest in changes in the economy that improve society's overall average job complex - because we all share in its attributes.
Strategic Implications
Finally, what difference does advocating parecon make for our present behavior?
When Margaret Thatcher, the British reactionary Prime Minister, said “There is no alternative,” she accurately identified a central obstacle to masses of people actively seeking a better world.
If one sincerely believes there is no better future, then it follows that to reject a call to fight against poverty, alienation, and even war, is understandable.
If I were delivering the most powerful speech any of you had ever heard, a tear-jerking description of a scourge of humanity that undeniably diminishes all our lives and in the end kills almost of us, and at the end I said please, in the name of justice and your own well being, come join me in a movement against this horrible devastator of humans - aging – you would all laugh at me. You might even say, thinking I was a bit nuts, go get a life. Grow up. Face reality. You can’t fight aging, that’s a fool’s errand. And you might say it, dismissively, and with good reason.
And haven't we all encountered people talking to us like that?
Well, the truth is most people sincerely think capitalism is forever. Capitalism is like a law of nature.
And in their view, to fight against capitalism, or even against its symptoms, can indeed seem like a fool’s errand.
When we say come join us in a movement against capitalism, they hear us saying, come be an idiot - come fight for the impossible. And they tell us to grow up and get a life.
As an advocate of parecon I hope to provide an economic vision able to turn that feeling upside down, a vision able to replace cynicism with hope and reason.
I am not suggesting that you should have heard this talk and become a pareconist.
This talk doesn't provide enough detail, enough evidence, and nor have you had sufficient time to mull it over.
What I do hope is that you will be feeling, hey, what if parecon really does answer the claim that there is no alternative? What if it is a viable and worthy alternative to capitalism?
In that case, you might think to yourself - I would need to know about it, I would even need to advocate it. So, to find out - I need to explore it further.
When we all go to movies and see courageous souls of the past represented on the screen, fighting against slavery, or against the subordination of women, or against colonialism, or for peace and justice and against dictatorships, we rightly feel sympathy and admiration for their acts.
Abolitionists, suffragettes, labor organizers, anti apartheid activists, all seekers of freedom and dignity are heroes to us.
But if we admire standing up against injustice, shouldn't we ourselves stand up against injustice. If we admire seeking a better world, shouldn't we ourselves seek a better world.
If we admire rejecting exploitation, alienation, domination, and its violent maintenance, shouldn't we ourselves advocate and fight for an economic model and societal structure that will eliminate these horrors.
I believe participatory economics is such an economy and should be part of such a new society.
Thank you
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From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics ...
Participatory economics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Participatory economics, often abbreviated parecon, is an economic system proposed primarily by activist and political theorist Michael Albert and radical economist Robin Hahnel, among others. It uses participatory decision making as an economic mechanism to guide the production, consumption and allocation of resources in a given society. Proposed as an alternative to contemporary capitalist market economies and also an alternative to centrally planned socialism, it is described as "an anarchistic economic vision",[1] and it could be considered a form of socialism as under parecon, the means of production are owned in common.
The underlying values that parecon seeks to implement are equity, solidarity, diversity, workers' self-management and efficiency. (Efficiency here means accomplishing goals without wasting valued assets.) It proposes to attain these ends mainly through the following principles and institutions:
* workers' and consumers' councils utilizing self-managerial methods for making decisions,
* balanced job complexes,
* remuneration according to effort and sacrifice, and
* participatory planning.
Albert and Hahnel stress that parecon is only meant to address an alternative economic theory and must be accompanied by equally important alternative visions in the fields of politics, culture and kinship. The authors have also discussed elements of anarchism in the field of politics, polyculturalism in the field of culture, and feminism in the field of family and gender relations as being possible foundations for future alternative visions in these other spheres of society. Stephen R. Shalom has begun work on a participatory political vision he calls "par polity". Both systems together make up the political philosophy of Participism.
Contents
[edit] Decision-making principle
One of the primary propositions of parecon is that all persons should have a say in each decision proportionate to the degree to which they are affected by it. This decision-making principle is often referred to as self-management. In parecon, it constitutes a replacement for the mainstream economic conception of economic freedom, which Albert and Hahnel argue that by its very vagueness has allowed it to be abused by capitalist ideologues.
[edit] Democratic Work Life
Workers in a Participatory Economy would make decisions about what to do in the workplace according to the above decision making principle, where workers have say in proportion to how much they are affected by a decision. Workplace decisions might be through majority vote, requiring 50% majority. Sometimes a higher percentage, such as a 2/3 majority, or 80%, or even consensus might be needed. For instance, upgrades to a plant that would require a great deal of time and effort for all workers might need greater than 50% vote, as workers would be affected adversely by the decision. Another example is when a decision might have advantages but involves some risk, such as raising a heavy beam while building a bridge that might endanger some workers, but will make the bridge be built faster. Such a decision would seem to require consensus among the affected workers, giving any one worker veto power due to the danger.
Personal decisions of any one worker, such as where to place pictures on their desk, do not require a vote at all, as they affect only one individual.
[edit] Balanced job complexes
Some tasks and jobs are more comfortable than others, and some tasks and jobs are perceived as more empowering than others. So, to achieve an equitable division of labour, it is proposed that each individual do different tasks, which, taken together, bring an average comfort and an average level of empowerment. The main goals are to dissolve economic hierarchy and achieve one class of workers, and to empower all to make contributions to the workplace. Hahnel and Albert argue that without balanced job complexes, those with empowering jobs, such as accounting or management, would be able to formulate plans and ideas, while others, such as janitors, would not develop the capacity to do so, neither would they have the training. Without balanced job complexes, people without empowering jobs would most likely end up just ratifying the proposals of empowered workers, and would have little reason to be at a meeting.[2]
As an example of a balanced job complex, someone who works in a publishing house might have a mix of tasks including editing books (empowering), sweeping and cleaning (dis empowering) and even others like driving a truck to deliver books (somewhere in between). The time scale of when these tasks are performed is variable, one might do several different tasks in a week, or do a task like work on an oil rig for several months, then do more empowering work like astronomy for several months. A rough numeric rating system would be developed that would rate each task performed in the economy according to its estimated degree of empowerment.
[edit] Compensation for effort and sacrifice
Albert and Hahnel argue that it is inequitable and ineffective to compensate people on the basis of their birth or heredity, their property, or their innate intelligence. Therefore, the primary principle of participatory economics is to reward for effort and sacrifice.[3] For example, mining work — which is dangerous and uncomfortable — would be more highly paid than office work for the same amount of time, thus allowing the miner to work fewer hours for the same pay, and the burden of highly dangerous and strenuous jobs to be shared among the populace.
Additionally, participatory economics could provide a certain leeway for exemptions from the compensation for effort principle.[3] People with disabilities who are unable to work, children, the elderly, the infirm and workers who are legitimately in transitional circumstances, can be remunerated according to need. However, every able adult has the obligation to perform some socially useful work as a requirement for receiving reward, albeit in the context of a society providing free health care, education, skills training, and the freedom to choose between various democratically structured workplaces with jobs balanced for desirability and empowerment.
The starting point for the income of all workers in participatory economics is an equal share of the social product. From this point, incomes for personal expenditures and consumption rights for public goods can be expected to diverge by small degrees reflecting the choices that individual workers make in striking a balance between work and leisure time, and reflecting the level of danger and strenuousness of a job as assigned by their immediate peers.[3]
[edit] Allocation in a Participatory Economy
[edit] Consumers' and producers' councils
Albert and Hahnel proposed the creation and organization of consumer's and producers' councils to implement the decision making principle. Many individuals would participate in both types of councils. These would be similar to workers' councils. Consumers' councils act as decision-making bodies for consumption planning, and producers' councils - which are culminations of several workers' councils - act as decision-making bodies for production planning.
Geographically, consumers' councils would probably be nested within the same neighborhood councils, ward councils, city or regional councils and a country council used for political decision-making through parpolity - parecon's political counterpart. Decisions would be achieved either through consensus decision-making, majority votes or through other means compatible with the principle. The most appropriate method would be decided on by each council.
Local decisions like the construction of a playground might be made in the ward or city consumers' council, probably interacting with both city and countrywide producers' councils through rotating delegates. Countrywide decisions, like the construction of a high-speed mass transportation system, would be discussed by the country consumers' council, possibly interacting with a city producers' council in the city where the materials are produced, or countrywide or international producers' councils.
The producers' councils would probably correspond to workplace councils in each workplace and similar workplaces would group into nested councils on successively larger geographical and linguistic scales.
[edit] Facilitation Boards
Iteration Facilitation Boards (IFBs) act as management bodies for local consumers' and producers' councils and are the mechanism via which economic allocation is decided upon and ultimately implemented.
Facilitation boards first announce a set of indicative prices which workers and consumers use, individually and through their councils at each level, when deciding on their production and consumption proposals. Proposals could be done either collectively through a local consumer council, or individually on a computer; or any combination of the two. When the proposals are all in, the IFBs aggregate all the production and consumption proposals for the different categories of goods and services – inputs into all the production processes as well as consumer goods – to see if proposed supply and demand are equal. If they are not equal for every good and service the IFB revises the set of indicative prices and the process is repeated through successive rounds until a consistent set of production and consumption proposals is arrived at.
The facilitation boards then implement these final proposals by setting new prices and organizing production plans. In the event of unforeseen circumstances occurring in between planning procedures, the IFBs would adjust prices or production quotas accordingly within established guidelines.
[edit] Participatory Planning
The participatory planning procedure would be a regular (probably either annual, bi-annual or quarterly) event where citizens participate to determine which and how many goods to produce. Prices for goods and services before the onset of the planning procedure would have been determined by the previous planning procedure, modified by facilitation boards as unforeseen circumstances changed production quotas. After the participatory planning procedure is completed, prices will get new base values, likely to be changed again by the boards as unforeseen circumstances develop.
These prices would represent the estimated marginal social opportunity cost for all goods and services. During the planning procedure, not only do the prices reflect proposed supply and demand, but also the social and ecological cost of producing the good. For instance a product that produces pollution in its manufacture, or is especially dangerous for workers to produce, would have its price automatically inflated to discourage excess consumption.
Using new prices estimated by the facilitation boards as a guide, citizens would respond with their personal consumption proposals, and participate in the formulation of collective consumption proposals at the neighborhood, ward, municipal, provincial and national levels. Personal consumption proposals would be a prediction by each citizen of what goods and services they plan to consume the next year. For instance a couple expecting a new baby would request the appropriate goods, and a citizen who enjoys exotic fruit would put in her demand to make sure it is received. Collective consumption proposals would be created by citizens making proposals for a wider geographical area (e.g. a new recreation center at the community level or a new power plant at the provincial level) that are received by a facilitation board.
The facilitation board would work with the citizen(s) that originated the proposal to work it into a manageable proposition. Around the time of the planning procedure, interested parties within the region affected by the collective consumption proposal would be able to view the collective consumption proposals and vote them up or down. This could be done at large meetings or via computer. At the same time, worker's councils and producers councils would respond with production proposals outlining the outputs they propose to produce and the inputs they believe are required to produce them. Individual workers would indicate their proposed hours of work, and workers will be able to propose upgrades and innovations for their workplace, aided by a facilitation board.
Facilitation boards would then calculate excess proposed supply and demand based on the proposals, adjusting the indicative price for each final good or service according to its impact on society and the environment so that the social opportunity cost is reflected. Using the new indicative prices, consumer and workers' councils would revise and resubmit their proposals, as some goods would be more expensive, and others less expensive. Proposals deemed excessive by other parties would become very expensive, creating a disincentive to pursue them.
Iterations would continue according to some predefined method which is likely to converge within an acceptable time delay. For instance, proposals would only be changeable by a minimum percentage for the second round, and a lesser percentage for the third round, and so on, forcing convergence of a feasible plan.
The facilitation boards should function according to a maximum level of radical transparency and only have very limited powers of mediation, subject to the discretion of the participating councils. The real decisions regarding the formulation and implementation of the plan are to be made in the consumers' and producers' councils.
[edit] Money in a participatory economy
Main article: Labour voucher
"Money" in a parecon would be more akin to a bookkeeping system than traditional currency. Money as it now exists would be abolished and instead replaced with a personal voucher system which would be non-transferable between consumers, and would be only usable at a store to purchase goods.
Electronic "credits" would be awarded to workers for their work, as a means of saying that this worker benefited society with their work. The more effort and sacrifice, the more credits are awarded. Credits would then be used to buy goods and services. Once used to purchase something, a credit would be deducted from the consumer's total; it "disappears" and does not go into a till or bank, it is simply deducted from the consumer's total. There would be no banks in the capitalist sense. Individuals would have to work more to get more credits. In this way, there would be no flow of money and no way to "make money off of money" as in a capitalist economy. People would be able to borrow credits if approved by an appropriate board, but no interest would be charged.
The non-transferability of parecon credits would make it impossible to bribe or even beg for money.[4] and would thus make monetary theft impossible. People would still be free to barter their individual goods with each other, e.g. exchange a couch for a stereo, but any attempt to create an exchangeable currency would likely be discouraged, as this might lead to attempts to reinstate money and capitalism. Credits might be shareable amongst family members, depending on how the parecon is set up. A lost or stolen "credit" card would not be usable by another person, as presumably there would be means to verify the identity of a citizen at shopping centers.
Albert and Hahnel did not clarify how a currency of this form would be used in international trading with non-parecon countries. If a capitalist country refuses to be paid for their bought goods in this way, it is likely that a parecon nation would use money for international trading, but keep its unique credit currency for internal purposes.
[edit] Critique of markets
A primary reason why advocates of participatory economics perceive markets to be unjust and inefficient is that only the interests of buyer and seller are considered in a typical market transaction, while others who are affected by the transaction have no voice in it. For instance, the sale of highly addictive drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, is in the interest of the seller and (at least in the short term) in the interest of the buyer, but others outside the transaction end up bearing costs in the form of social problems and medical treatment.
When vehicles using fossil fuels, are manufactured, distributed and sold, others outside the transaction end up bearing costs in the form of pollution, and resource depletion. This may be considered under economics as a common pool good. The market price of such vehicles and drugs does not include these additional costs, which are referred to as externalities. The implications of significant external effects invalidate market efficiency regardless of the economic calculations of market actors because in such cases prices will not accurately reflect opportunity costs.
In contrast to parecon, mainstream economics suggests that the problem of externalities can in large part be addressed by the use of Pigovian taxes — extra taxes on goods that have externalities. If the taxes are set so that the after-tax cost of the good is equal to the social cost of the good, the direct cost of production plus cost of externalities, then quantities produced will tend toward a socially optimal level, according to economic theory. Hahnel observes, "more and more economists outside the mainstream are challenging this assumption, and a growing number of skeptics now dare to suggest that externalities are prevalent, and often substantial. Or, as E.K. Hunt put it externalities are the rule rather than the exception, and therefore markets often work as if they were guided by a "malevolent invisible foot" that keeps kicking us to produce more of some things, and less of others than is socially efficient."[16]
Albert and Hahnel favour Pigovian taxes as long as a market economy is in place, which sometimes appear as green taxes, over other solutions to environmental problems such as command and control, or the issuance of marketable permits. However, Hahnel, who teaches ecological economics at American University, argues that in a market economy it would be predictable that businesses would try to avoid the "polluter pays principle" by shifting the burden of the costs for their polluting activities to consumers. In terms of incentives he argues this might be considered a positive development because it would penalize consumers for "dirty" consumption. However it also has regressive implications since tax incidence studies show that ultimately it would be poor people who would bear a great deal of the burden of many pollution taxes. "In other words, many pollution taxes would be highly regressive and therefore aggravate economic injustice."[17]
Therefore, he recommends that pollution taxes be linked to cuts in regressive taxes such as social security taxes. In the end Hahnel argues that Pigovian taxes, along with associated corrective measures advanced by market economists, fall far short of adequately or fairly addressing externalities. He argues such methods are incapable of attaining accurate assessments of social costs:
"Markets corrected by pollution taxes only lead to the efficient amount of pollution and satisfy the polluter pays principle if the taxes are set equal to the magnitude of the damage victims suffer. But because markets are not incentive compatible for polluters and pollution victims, markets provide no reliable way to estimate the magnitudes of efficient taxes for pollutants. Ambiguity over who has the property right, polluters or pollution victims, free rider problems among multiple victims, and the transaction costs of forming and maintaining an effective coalition of pollution victims, each of whom is affected to a small but unequal degree, all combine to render market systems incapable of eliciting accurate information from pollution victims about the damages they suffer, or acting upon that information even if it were known.[18]
[edit] Critique of private ownership and corporations
Advocates of parecon say the basis of capitalism is the concept of private ownership, which confers upon every owner the right to do with their property as they please, even though decisions relating to some property may have unwanted effects on other people.
This concept extends to private property belonging to corporations. In the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a stepwise juridical revolution made corporations into "juridical persons" with the rights of citizens under the concept of corporate personhood.
At the same time, every corporation has its own set of owners who have the right to do as they please with it, because people outside a corporation do not have any right to interfere with its activities while it abides by the law. Although market economists note that all consumers can influence corporations through their own market interactions, or through buying and selling of their goods, services, or even shares, advocates of parecon are unsatisfied with this as this influence has a limited extension, and organization of collective consumer action is difficult in a market economy. Pareconists believe that the state is unlikely to interfere in the market for the benefit of the public, and advocates interpret economic history as demonstrating that it is more often the other way around, through means of plutocracy.[citation needed]
Being huge agglomerations of economic power, large corporations tend to interfere with the decision-making of states by lobbying for legislation and policy that suits their interests or, in many cases, by bribery, or by financing huge propaganda campaigns for the success of some political candidate who would support the corporation's interests. An example included the corporate slogan "what is good for General Motors is good for America." In some cases, there have been plans for corporate-backed coups, such as the Business Plot. However, Milton Friedman believes that such corporate lobbying is only possible in states that allow for significant state interference within the economy.
Promoters of parecon hold that the pursuit of private profit and power by these kinds of corporations is not in the interest of the majority of citizens.
[edit] Comparison with other socialist movements
Although participatory economics is not in itself intended to provide a general political system, clearly its practical implementation would depend on an accompanying political system. Advocates of parecon say the intention is that the four main ingredients of parecon be implemented with a minimum of hierarchy and a maximum of transparency in all discussions and decision making. This model is designed to eliminate secrecy in economic decision making, and instead encourage friendly cooperation and mutual support. This avoidance of power hierarchies puts parecon in the anarchist political tradition. Stephen Shalom has produced a political system meant to complement parecon, called Parpolity
Although parecon falls under left-wing political tradition, it is designed to avoid the creation of powerful intellectual elites or the rule of a bureaucracy, which is perceived as the major problem of the economies of the communist states of the 20th century. Parecon advocates recognize that monopolization of empowering labor, in addition to private ownership, can be a source of class division. Thus, a three-class view of the economy (capitalists, coordinators, and workers) is stressed, in contrast to the traditional two-class view of Marxism. The coordinator class, emphasized in Parecon, refers to those who have a monopoly on empowering skills and knowledge, and corresponds to the doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, and other professionals in present economies. Parecon advocates argue that, historically, Marxism ignored the ability of coordinators to become a new ruling class in a post-capitalist society[19].
The archetypal workplace democracy model, the Wobbly Shop was pioneered by the Industrial Workers of the World, in which the self-managing norms of grassroots democracy were applied.
While many types of production and consumption may become more localised under participatory economics, the model does not exclude economies of scale.
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