Nationalization, Socialism, and the U.S. Banks

By Jim Genova

Associate Professor of History

The Ohio State University-Marion



In the midst of the unfolding global economic crisis politicians, pundits, and bankers have engaged in much hyperbolic discussion about the prospect that major banks in the U.S. may be “nationalized.” On 27 February the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it was converting its “preferred shares” in Citibank into “common shares” giving it a 36% ownership in one of the world’s largest financial institutions. This and other actions taken on the part of the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department since the crisis began to accelerate last Autumn has led hardened neo-liberal ideologues to exclaim that this is “creeping socialism.” The proclamations of many anchors across the business channels, Conservatives gathered in Washington on 28 February, and Republicans in Congress during the debate over the stimulus bill have elevated to the level of mainstream discourse a conversation over the meaning of the terms “nationalization” and “socialism,” even if the purpose of such right-wing defenders of unbridled global capitalism is to induce ideological confusion and a sense of panic.


On 25 February, members of the House Financial Services Committee asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to explain what he understood to be the definition of “nationalization.” In response, he said it is when “the government ‘seizes’ a company, ‘zeroes out the shareholders and begins to manage and run the bank.” He reassured the anxious Congressmen that “we don’t plan anything like that.”[1] Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner seconded Bernanke’s comments, describing nationalization as “the wrong strategy for the country and I don’t think it’s a necessary strategy.”[2] Sen. Charles Schumer, member of the Senate Banking Committee, also tried to reassure a nervous investor class stating that a “federal takeover of the banks should be avoided at all costs. No one intends, ever, to have the government running these banks or insurance companies for a long period of time.” His goal, somewhat more ambitious than that proposed by either Bernanke or Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is to have the government “come in, clean them out, take out the bad assets, put in new management.”[3] Despite such reassurances from those at the center of power, howls from the right and from brokers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and Chicago Mercantile Exchange continue to charge that the U.S. beginning under the Bush Administration and continuing at an accelerated pace is heading down the road to “socialism.”



None of the half-measures, abrupt shifts in policy, or tenuous interventions in the financial sector over the past year at least (Bear Stearns went under on 17 March 2008) have been effective at stemming the ever deepening global financial crisis. Banks continue to fail, large monopolistic financial institutions are reeling around the world, and the global economy is spiraling into perhaps its worst crisis ever. Events, as the recent contorted interventions to rescue Citibank have shown, are forcing the leaders of U.S. capitalism to make very difficult and, to them, unpalatable decisions. Neither former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (a supposed expert on the Great Depression of the 1930s) nor current Treasury head Tim Geithner (Governor of the New York Fed when Lehman Brothers went down in September 2008) appear to have to will to carry off what is historically necessary – the outright seizure of the major financial institutions of this country. This should not surprise us as they are “true believers” in the neo-liberal capitalist world order. For them, the current crisis is perplexing since it should not be happening at all. At the very least, the market should have shown the way out by now. This led former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to recently acknowledge before Congress that the theory to which he (along with Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner) ascribed was “deeply flawed.” No such statement of contrition has as of yet come forth from Bernanke and Geithner.


Ultimately, many analysts believe that the U.S. government will have no choice but to nationalize some of the largest financial firms, including Citibank, Bank of America, and some large regional banks.[4] Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz recently echoed calls from leading economists Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb to nationalize the U.S. banks telling German television network Deutsche Welle “the banks have failed. Nationalization is the only answer.”[5] Stiglitz has much experience at the center of global finance having served as a member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors (1993-1997) and as Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank (1997-2000). During those terms he witnessed the LTCM and East Asia currency crises (1996-1998) that some economists like Paul Krugman warned was a prelude to a global economic depression.[6] What has happened in the meantime is that trillions of dollars have been thrown down the bottomless chute of fundamentally insolvent institutions beyond hope of rescue.[7] Moreover, for all of this public money used to prop up badly run speculative private institutions not once has the government forced the management to resign (the recent move at Citibank showed the first signs of the Treasury making demands about the composition of corporate boards) nor has it called for any “claw back” provisions of the bonuses and extravagant pay for executives who ran their enterprises into the ground. Instead, public wealth is being transferred on a rapidly moving conveyor belt into the hands of unscrupulous and failed bankers. This is becoming one of the greatest thefts in world history. As Stiglitz told Deutche Welle, “separation of ownership from control is a recipe for disaster.”[8]


What is called for is an emergency solution not unlike that confronting Russia in the summer of 1917 when the Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin wrote The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It. In that pamphlet, Lenin described an unfolding crisis where the wheels of the Russian economy were grinding to a halt. Banks had ceased lending, railroads were shutting down, food supplies were dwindling, and unemployment was mounting. Lenin also noted that there was much public discussion among politicians and leaders of industry that something dramatic had to be done to salvage the situation. “Everybody says that. Everybody recognizes that. Everybody has agreed to that. And nothing is being done.”[9] Even more recently, Sweden’s experience in the early 1990s has been held up as analogous to the broad parameters of the current U.S. situation. There a housing boom in the late 1980s led to speculation on mortgage-backed debt that eventually ended badly leading to the government taking effective control of the largest banks. Sweden then forced the banks to create two institutions under one roof – a good bank and a bad bank. All of the “toxic assets” were concentrated in the bad banks, which gradually (over four years) sold them off.[10] The problem with using Sweden’s banking crisis as a model for understanding our own is that not only is Sweden’s economy a fraction of the size of that in the U.S. but its institutions are not at the epicenter of the global capitalist system. Institutions like CitiGroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and others are global monopolistic enterprises with branches, partners, and subsidiaries throughout the world. Moreover, they are the vehicles through which the leaders of U.S. government pass on their way to political power. Consequently, there is an incestuous relationship between the “too big to fail” banks and the officials in charge of their oversight. There was nothing analogous in Sweden’s case. Finally, the U.S. crisis does not stem entirely from a decline in home prices (the much vaunted bursting of the housing bubble). Rather, for decades there has been a mounting structural weakness in the U.S. economy and by extension global capitalism. That is the overwhelming dependence for the survival and expansion of the system on debt of all kinds – credit cards, mortgages, auto financing, leveraged stock trading, and greatly expanded issuing of public debt of many varieties. Since the early 1970s there has been a widening disconnect between the real wages of workers in the industrialized world and the accumulation of public and private debt.[11]


We are at a crossroads in the current crisis. Every leading politician, pundit, and financial analyst acknowledges that the situation requires urgent action. On financial, ethical, and political grounds it is imperative that the U.S. government nationalize the major financial institutions, place them under federal control, unify them into one central bank to provide for more efficient management, and completely dispatch the executive management of those firms that have been seized. Only through that device can the process of daily pumping billions upon billions into dead institutions be stopped. Only through such bold moves can the government gain the leverage it needs to control the credit markets, make interest rates meaningful, and aggressively restructure mortgages. Only through the decisive action of seizing, controlling, and re-directing the functioning of the banks to serve the immediate and long-term needs of the people can the rate of decline be slowed and some stability be restored to the financial sector of the economy.[12]


This should not be confused with socialism. Such labeling is an effort on the part of those ideologues still committed to the failed neo-liberal policies of the Washington Consensus dating to Reagan and Thatcher years of the early 1980s to derail any meaningful assistance to those workers, farmers, and middle class people who are suffering because of the greed of the capitalist elite. Moreover, it is the same callousness that those practitioners of gung-ho capitalism displayed in guiding IMF and World Bank policies on a path to crippling and impoverishing developing countries around the world through “Structural Adjustment Programs.” Lenin clearly delineated the difference between “state monopoly capitalism” and socialism, but argued that it was imperative in the period of impending catastrophe that responsible officials of any government take the decisive measures necessary to save people from mass unemployment, famine, and deep social dislocation. That the global economic crisis portends widespread political upheaval has been attested to by analysts and researchers who work in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.[13] In describing the 1917 crisis in Russia, Lenin wrote that nationalizing the banks would improve “the accessibility and the easy terms of credit, particularly for small owners [and] for the peasantry.” Further, the state would “be in a position to survey all the main monetary operations without concealing them, then to control them, then to regulate economic life, and finally to obtain millions and billions for large state operations.”[14] This addresses many of the most salient aspects of the crisis in the financial sector: transparency, accountability, assistance for those who actually need it, saving funds that will be needed for further stimulus, and it resolves the fatal disconnect Stiglitz identified in the current approach between having ownership without control. Beyond the current crisis, though, since the capitalist ideologues have raised the specter of socialism in the U.S., it is an opportunity for progressive forces to intervene in the public conversation and offer a real understanding of what socialism is while also highlighting the ultimate flaws of capitalism that can never be overcome or resolved from inside the system. This is an historic opportunity for the government to act on behalf of the people to mitigate the effects of a dying system and for progressives to make the case for socialism. The fate of millions of people around the world depends on the abilities of both to do what is historically necessary.




[1] Craig Torres and Bradley Keoun, “Bernanke Rejects ‘Anything Like’ Bank Nationalization,” Bloomberg.com 25 February 2009.

[2] Robert Schmidt, “Geithner Calls Nationalizing Banks ‘Wrong Strategy’ for Economy,” Bloomberg.com, 25 February 2009.

[3] Torres and Keoun, “Bernanke Rejects ‘Anything Like’ Bank Nationalization.”

[4] Matthew Richardson, “The Case for and against Bank Nationalisation,” VoxEU.org, 26 February 2009.

[5] Michael Knigge, “Stiglitz: Nationalized Banks are ‘Only Answer’,” Deutche Welle, 16 February 2009. Reprinted in the People’s Weekly World.

[6] Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics and The Crisis of 2008, New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.

[7] On 27 February Bloomberg Financial Group provided an assessment of the entire contribution made by the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department to prop up the financial system since the beginnings of the crisis in August 2007. Its conclusion was that to date $11.6 trillion has been either spent or taken on as liabilities in the process. This includes cash injections into the trading markets, the TARP and other emergency programs, loans to banks facilitating their takeover of other even worse off financial institutions, the seizures of AIG, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae, loans to the Auto Industry, and the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet to facilitate the commercial paper market that seized in September and October 2008.

[8] Knigge, “Stiglitz: Nationalized Banks are ‘Only Answer.””

[9] V. I. Lenin, The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It, New York; International Publishers, 1932, p. 5. The essay was written 23-27 September 1917.

[10] Edward Harrison, “Did Sweden Really Nationalize Its Banks?” online blog post, 25 February 2009.

[11] Federal Reserve Table 100.B Data for 1945-2005, published by AutoDogmatic.com.

[12] Binyamin Appelbaum, “What Is Nationalization? Depends Who You Ask,” Washington Post, 25 February 2009. See also Robert Griffiths, “Why Nationalization Isn’t Socialism,” Politicalaffairs.net, 3 November 2008, reproduced from the Morning Star.

[13] Nelson D. Schwartz, “Job Losses Pose a threat to Stability Worldwide,” New York Times, 15 February 2009.

[14] Lenin, The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It. Italics in the original.

A Question for Barack Obama

Where is the people's bailout?

Cassandra

Minnesota legislators bring forward "The People's Bailout"

This is the kind of legislation needed in Michigan and at the federal level.

Cassandra



Support S.F. 542 "The People's Bailout" by Minnesota DFL State Senator David Tomassoni

Support and follow this legislation:

https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/revisor/pages/search_status/status_detail.php?b=Senate&f=SF0542&ssn=0&y=2009

-----Original Message-----

From: Alan Maki [mailto:amaki000@centurytel.net]

Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 8:53 PM

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Subject: Re: People's Bailout (SF 542)

Re: SF 542; The People’s Bailout

Senator David Tomassoni;

First, let me commend you for having the courage to bring this legislation forward; I am sure the opposition will be enormous even from your DFL colleagues, not to mention from Republicans and Governor Pawlenty.

I hope you intend to call for roll call votes at each step of the process on (SF 542) The People’s Bailout so there is more accountability than we had on S.F. 607 to save the Ford Plant; legislation you so courageously brought forward in the Senate Committee on Business, Industry and Labor where your fellow DFL'ers so shamefully let you, and more importantly, Ford Workers and Minnesotans, down. We need to keep in mind in the struggle ahead over The People's Bailout--- S.F. 542, that it was in this same Senate Committee where you failed to get help from your DFL colleagues in moving S.F. 607 forward--- out of Committee and through the Minnesota State Legislature and onto the Governor's desk.

We need to keep in mind that Senator Jim Metzen, while being a DFL'er, is also a banker--- an officer with Key Community Bank known for its very dirty deeds against working people. It is up to you and the rest of us to push Senator Metzen to do his job as Chair of the all-important, heavily DFL dominated Committee on Business, Industry and Labor and twist the arms needing twisting to get The People's Bailout through the Committee... again, I stress the need for a roll call vote to assure Minnesotans have complete accountability--- unlike with S.F. 607 where you received no support from your DFL colleagues yet none of the other Democrats or Republicans would acknowledge their very dirty and shameful role in sending S.F. 607 down to defeat.

Why haven’t you included something along the lines of SF 607 to automatically apply to any business closing which has received any kind of local, state or federal subsidies, tax abatement or public assistance of any kind in your People’s Bailout? This would be particularly important in trying, again, to save the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant.

I am very leery that this is one more gimmick the DFL is using to make it appear the DFL is trying to do something when the intent is all show since the DFL did nothing to push SF 607 through the legislature; hopefully I am wrong about this since many, many Minnesotans will need such assistance.

Might I also suggest that you include rescinding “at-will hiring, at-will firing” legislation as part of The People’s Bailout since this would place Minnesota workers in line to benefit from the Employee Free Choice Act.

Also, might I suggest that you include a provision in this legislation that would establish the minimum wage in Minnesota to be in accordance with the calculations of the United States Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Statistics based upon the scientific facts pertaining to real cost of living factors and the minimum wage should be recalculated every time these cost of living factors are recalculated.

I agree with you that we can not spend our way out of this economic crisis and instead we need to work our way out of this mess which obviously requires all working people to be paid real living wages as a way to completely and thoroughly redistribute wealth in this country.

At the heart of this economic mess is the fact that wealth created by the working class has in fact been stolen in the form of huge profits by corporations not paying workers real living wages in accordance with cost of living factors; common sense tells us that depressions occur when working people cannot purchase back the goods they have produced which are required for human survival.



Common sense also dictates that we cannot allow the Ford Motor Company to start bringing Ford Rangers produced in Thailand into the United States instead of continuing production at the St. Paul Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant.

Hopefully you will include something in this legislation protecting the rights of Minnesota’s 30,000 workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry who are forced and compelled to work in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws… I am sure you understand with so many workers employed under these deplorable conditions these workers serve to drive down the standard of living of all workers in Minnesota. I am sure you are aware that casino workers, such as the thousands of workers employed at casinos like Mystic Lake Casino are forced to sign their names to statements that they know they will be terminated should they engage in union organizing. I think you should include something in this People’s Bailout directing the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development that casino workers fired for union organizing cannot be denied unemployment benefits as they presently are.

In order to protect the rights of all workers in Minnesota to unemployment compensation which you want to extend (and your proposal for such extension is not long enough in my opinion given the fact that this economic mess is going to be with us for many years--- perhaps you should include unemployment coverage from time of layoff/firing to time of re-employment); but, getting back to the rights of workers to receive unemployment benefits in the first place, you need to eliminate the right of employers to challenge a worker’s right to unemployment benefits without having to provide a reason for the challenge.

Combined with “at-will hiring, at-will firing” this places workers in a real bind… fired without reason and then subjecting workers to the further injustice of being denied unemployment compensation due to an employer’s challenge without that employer having to provide a reason… this process can drag on for many months leaving workers without any income or public assistance--- meager as public assistance is in Minnesota… not to mention leaving workers and their families without health care. But, it does little good to extend unemployment compensation if employers are allowed to challenge a worker’s right to compensation without reason or just cause.

Without massive mobilization of members from the unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO and Change To Win this legislation has no chance of passing as you fully know and understand.

Have you heard from labor’s registered lobbyists concerning this legislation?

What have you heard from the Chamber of Commerce and other organizations representing employers and the business community regarding this legislation?

When will the first reading of this People’s Bailout take place? I can’t find anything on the legislature’s on-line calendar.

Please keep me informed of any hearings on this legislation as I would like to testify in support of this legislation.

Don’t forget; request there be recorded roll call vote at each step in the process so Minnesotans have full accountability; this not only assures accountability, but will cause those business oriented DFL’ers in the Summit Hill Club to think twice should they decide they want to join with their Republican colleagues in opposing this legislation.

Might I suggest you develop a newsletter--- printed in hard copy and e-mail format--- pertaining solely to SF 542 (The People’s Bailout) to keep its supporters in and out of the legislature fully and completely informed; a newsletter which requests supporters to do specific tasks in bringing the full weight of Minnesota’s working class--- organized and unorganized--- into support for this important piece of legislation… we certainly don’t want a repeat of only a handful of proponents showing up like what happened with SF 607. We should do everything possible to make sure that Minnesota’s working class “owns” this legislation and that we work together to mobilizes huge turn outs of working people supporting this legislation at each and every stage in the legislative process.

In my opinion, we should be looking at organizing Minnesota’s workers to mobilize fully in support of this important piece of legislation, S.F. 542 The People's Bailout, you are bringing forward.

You are most certainly aware that your legislation can serve as a model in winning new needed reforms comprising an extension of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal; just as the struggles for Roosevelt’s New Deal received powerful, decisive support from Minnesota’s socialist Governors Floyd Olson, Elmer Benson and John Bernard and other Farmer-Labor Party elected officials along with Minnesota’s working class--- especially the “red” Finns of the Iron Range. Let “The People’s Bailout” become a rallying point for the working class movement, and become a model for Barack Obama and the United States Congress along with other states to emulate and follow through on.

I assume you have spoken with Congressman Jim Oberstar and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar about developing similar legislation in Congress.

Might I suggest you request an appearance on Amy Goodman’s television program--- “Democracy Now!” to promote national working class unity in support of The People's Bailout.

I hope you will suggest to the Minnesota AFL-CIO and Change To Win they bring all their affiliated unions into support for this legislation and these unions in turn fully mobilize their memberships to every extent possible.

Your final item regarding state employees is very weak given the intent of leading Republicans to push for things like using the powers of state government to abrogate union contracts. As you know, Barack Obama and Congress are already doing the same thing with autoworkers; whereas, in France the government is prohibiting the abrogation of union contracts and requiring those businesses receiving government bailouts not to cut employment. You might want to take a look at what the French government is doing to protect the rights and jobs of working people.

I would encourage you to look at what action can be taken to make the Minnesota government the employer of choice for road building, bridge repair and maintenance so more jobs are created rather than contractors and engineering firms reaping huge profits, keeping in mind the reason for New Deal make work projects being so successful was that the government was the employer--- not private industry and corporations… again, common sense dictates that when you cut out profits more can be paid out in wages for more workers thus, as you say, and I agree, we work our way out of this mess rather than trying to spend our way out of this most severe crisis.

In conclusion, I would encourage you to consider some type of resolution calling on President Obama to discontinue his wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as cutting all funding for Israel since it makes little sense to pump three-quarters of a trillion dollars into economic “stimulus” while continuing to squander the exact same amount on wars and militarization, which is like taking our human and natural resources and tossing them into one of those polluted, water-filled, abandoned mining pits on the Iron Range or into U.S. Steel’s “Clear Water Reservoir” in Mountain Iron.

Also, as much as I am for road-building and repair to create jobs… I can’t see spending millions of dollars building a road from Minnesota Highway 71 out into the Big Bog for a Canadian peat mining operation to truck away the profits… you might want to mention to Congressman Oberstar that Franklin Roosevelt spent hundreds of thousands of dollars putting the Civilian Conservation Corps to work trying to protect this very sensitive ecosystem; it just destroys our credibility advocating for public works programs when Oberstar has spent millions destroying the good work the CCC did in trying to protect and save the Big Bog. I find it rather ironic this peat mining boon-doggle is taking place right at the site of the Civilian Conservation Corps camp site in the Pine Island State Forest in the Big Bog.

S.F. No. 542, as introduced - 86th Legislative Session (2009-2010) Posted on Feb 06, 2009

1.1A bill for an act
1.2relating to economic development; extending MFIP assistance; modifying
1.3unemployment compensation; augmenting foreclosure provisions; establishing a
1.4jobs creation program; limiting certain layoffs; appropriating money;amending
1.5Minnesota Statutes 2008, sections 256J.42, by adding a subdivision; 268.035,
1.6subdivisions 4, 21a; 268.07, subdivision 1; 268.085, subdivision 15; 504B.151;
1.7proposing coding for new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapter 582.
1.8BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

1.9 Section 1. Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 256J.42, is amended by adding a
1.10subdivision to read:
1.11 Subd. 1a. Temporary 60-month time limit extension. For assistance units that
1.12have reached the 60-month time limit under subdivision 1 or assistance units that will
1.13reach the 60-month time limit under subdivision 1 before the sunset of this subdivision,
1.14MFIP benefits are extended to eligible assistance units until the sunset of this subdivision.
1.15This subdivision sunsets July 1, 2011.

1.16 Sec. 2. Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 268.035, subdivision 4, is amended to read:
1.17 Subd. 4. Base period. (a) "Base period," unless otherwise provided in this
1.18subdivision, means the last four completed calendar quarters before the effective date of
1.19an applicant's application for unemployment benefits if the application has an effective
1.20date occurring after the month following the last completed calendar quarter. The base
1.21period under this paragraph is as follows:
1.22
1.23
1.24 If the application for unemployment
benefits is effective on or between these
dates: The base period is the prior:
1.25 February 1 - March 31 January 1 - December 31
2.1 May 1 - June 30 April 1 - March 31
2.2 August 1 - September 30 July 1 - June 30
2.3 November 1 - December 31 October 1 - September 30
2.4 (1) (b) If an application for unemployment benefits has an effective date that is
2.5during the month following the last completed calendar quarter, then the base period is
2.6the first four of the last five completed calendar quarters before the effective date of an
2.7applicant's application for unemployment benefits. The base period under this paragraph
2.8is as set forth below follows:
2.9
2.10
2.11 If the application for unemployment
benefits is effective on or between these
dates: The base period is the prior:
2.12 January 1 - March January 31 October 1 - September 30
2.13 April 1 - June April 30 January 1 - December 31
2.14 July 1 - September 30 July 31 April 1 - March 31
2.15 October 1 - December October 31 July 1 - June 30
2.16 (2) (c) If the applicant has insufficient wage credits to establish a benefit account
2.17under clauses (1) and (3), and paragraph (a) or (b), but during the base period under
2.18clause (1) paragraph (a) or (b) an applicant received workers' compensation for temporary
2.19disability under chapter 176 or a similar federal law or similar law of another state, or
2.20if an applicant whose own serious illness caused a loss of work for which the applicant
2.21received compensation for loss of wages from some other source, the applicant may
2.22request an extended base period as follows:
2.23 (i) (1) if an applicant was compensated for a loss of work of seven to 13 weeks, the
2.24base period is the first four of the last six completed calendar quarters before the effective
2.25date of the application for unemployment benefits;
2.26 (ii) (2) if an applicant was compensated for a loss of work of 14 to 26 weeks, the
2.27base period is the first four of the last seven completed calendar quarters before the
2.28effective date of the application for unemployment benefits;
2.29 (iii) (3) if an applicant was compensated for a loss of work of 27 to 39 weeks,
2.30the base period is the first four of the last eight completed calendar quarters before the
2.31effective date of the application for unemployment benefits; and
2.32 (iv) (4) if an applicant was compensated for a loss of work of 40 to 52 weeks, the
2.33base period is the first four of the last nine completed calendar quarters before the effective
2.34date of the application for unemployment benefits;.
2.35 (3) if the applicant has insufficient wage credits to establish a benefit account under
2.36clause (1), an alternate base period of the last four completed calendar quarters before the
2.37date the applicant's application for unemployment benefits is effective will be used. This
3.1base period can be used only 30 calendar days or more after the end of the last completed
3.2quarter, when a wage detail report has been, or should have been, filed for that quarter
3.3under section 268.044; and
3.4 (4) (d) No base period under clause (1), (2), or (3) paragraph (a), (b), or (c) may
3.5include wage credits upon which a prior benefit account was established.
3.6(e) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), the base period calculated under paragraph (b)
3.7using the first four of the last five complete calendar quarters before the effective date of
3.8the applicant's application for unemployment benefits must be used for an applicant if the
3.9applicant has more wage credits under that base period than under the base period in
3.10paragraph (a).
3.11EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective for applications for unemployment
3.12benefits filed effective on or after July 1, 2009.

3.13 Sec. 3. Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 268.035, subdivision 21a, is amended to read:
3.14 Subd. 21a. Reemployment assistance training. (a) An applicant is in
3.15"reemployment assistance training" when:
3.16 (1) a reasonable and opportunity for suitable employment for the applicant does not
3.17exist in the labor market area and it is necessary that the applicant receive additional
3.18training in order to obtain will assist the applicant in obtaining suitable employment;
3.19 (2) the curriculum, facilities, staff, and other essentials are adequate to achieve the
3.20training objective;
3.21 (3) the training is vocational in nature or short term academic training vocationally
3.22directed to an occupation or skill for which there are reasonable that will substantially
3.23enhance the employment opportunities available to the applicant in the applicant's labor
3.24market area;
3.25 (4) the training course is considered full time by the training provider; and
3.26 (5) the applicant is making satisfactory progress in the training.
3.27 (b) Full-time training provided through the dislocated worker program, the Trade
3.28Act of 1974, as amended, or the North American Free Trade Agreement is considered
3.29"reemployment assistance training," if that training course is in accordance with the
3.30requirements of that program.
3.31 (c) Apprenticeship training provided in order to meet the requirements of an
3.32apprenticeship program under chapter 178 is considered "reemployment assistance
3.33training."
3.34(d) An applicant is considered in reemployment assistance training only if the
3.35training course has actually started or is scheduled to start within 30 calendar days.
4.1EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective for determinations and appeal
4.2decisions issued on or after the day following final enactment.

4.3 Sec. 4. Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 268.07, subdivision 1, is amended to read:
4.4 Subdivision 1. Application for unemployment benefits; determination of benefit
4.5account. (a) An application for unemployment benefits may be filed in person, by mail,
4.6or by electronic transmission as the commissioner may require. The applicant must be
4.7unemployed at the time the application is filed and must provide all requested information
4.8in the manner required. The commissioner shall accept a valid individual taxpayer
4.9identification number from an applicant who is applying for benefits. If the applicant is
4.10not unemployed at the time of the application or fails to provide all requested information,
4.11the communication is not considered an application for unemployment benefits.
4.12 (b) The commissioner shall examine each application for unemployment benefits to
4.13determine the base period and the benefit year, and based upon all the covered employment
4.14in the base period the commissioner shall determine the weekly unemployment benefit
4.15amount available, if any, and the maximum amount of unemployment benefits available, if
4.16any. The determination is known as the determination of benefit account. A determination
4.17of benefit account must be sent to the applicant and all base period employers, by mail or
4.18electronic transmission.
4.19 (c) If a base period employer did not provide wage information for the applicant as
4.20provided for in section 268.044, or provided erroneous information, the commissioner
4.21may accept an applicant certification as to wage credits, based upon the applicant's records,
4.22and issue a determination of benefit account.
4.23 (d) The commissioner may, at any time within 24 months from the establishment of
4.24a benefit account, reconsider any determination of benefit account and make an amended
4.25determination if the commissioner finds that the determination was incorrect for any
4.26reason. An amended determination must be promptly sent to the applicant and all base
4.27period employers, by mail or electronic transmission.
4.28 (e) If an amended determination of benefit account reduces the weekly
4.29unemployment benefit amount or maximum amount of unemployment benefits available,
4.30any unemployment benefits that have been paid greater than the applicant was entitled
4.31is considered an overpayment of unemployment benefits. A determination or amended
4.32determination issued under this section that results in an overpayment of unemployment
4.33benefits must set out the amount of the overpayment and the requirement under section
4.34268.18, subdivision 1 , that the overpaid unemployment benefits must be repaid.

5.1 Sec. 5. Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 268.085, subdivision 15, is amended to read:
5.2 Subd. 15. Available for suitable employment defined. (a) "Available for suitable
5.3employment" means an applicant is ready and willing to accept suitable employment in
5.4the labor market area. The attachment to the work force must be genuine. An applicant
5.5may restrict availability to suitable employment, but there must be no other restrictions,
5.6either self-imposed or created by circumstances, temporary or permanent, that prevent
5.7accepting suitable employment.
5.8(b) Unless the applicant is in reemployment assistance training, to be considered
5.9"available for suitable employment," a student who has regularly scheduled classes must
5.10be willing to quit school discontinue classes to accept suitable employment when:
5.11(1) class attendance restricts the applicant from accepting suitable employment; and
5.12(2) the applicant is unable to change the scheduled class or make other arrangements
5.13that excuse the applicant from attending class.
5.14(c) An applicant who is absent from the labor market area for personal reasons, other
5.15than to search for work, is not "available for suitable employment."
5.16(d) An applicant who has restrictions on the hours of the day or days of the week
5.17that the applicant can or will work, that are not normal for the applicant's usual occupation
5.18or other suitable employment, is not "available for suitable employment." An applicant
5.19must be available for daytime employment, if suitable employment is performed during
5.20the daytime, even though the applicant previously worked the night shift.
5.21(e) An applicant must have transportation throughout the labor market area to be
5.22considered "available for suitable employment."
5.23EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective for determinations and appeal
5.24decisions issued on or after the day following final enactment.

5.25 Sec. 6. Minnesota Statutes 2008, section 504B.151, is amended to read:
5.26504B.151 RESTRICTION ON RESIDENTIAL LEASE TERMS FOR
5.27BUILDINGS IN FINANCIAL DISTRESS; REQUIRED NOTICE OF PENDING
5.28FORECLOSURE; RIGHTS OF TENANTS OF FORECLOSED PROPERTY.
5.29 Subdivision 1. Limitation on lease and notice to tenant. (a) Once a landlord
5.30has received notice of a contract for deed cancellation under section 559.21 or notice of
5.31a mortgage foreclosure sale under chapter 580 or 582, the landlord may only enter into
5.32(i) a periodic residential lease agreement with a term of not more than two months or
5.33the time remaining in the contract cancellation period or the mortgagor's redemption
6.1period, whichever is less or (ii) a fixed term residential tenancy not extending beyond the
6.2cancellation period or the landlord's period of redemption until:
6.3(1) the contract for deed has been reinstated or paid in full;
6.4(2) the mortgage default has been cured and the mortgage reinstated;
6.5(3) the mortgage has been satisfied;
6.6(4) the property has been redeemed from a foreclosure sale; or
6.7(5) a receiver has been appointed.
6.8(b) Before entering into a lease under this section and accepting any rent or security
6.9deposit from a tenant, the landlord must notify the prospective tenant in writing that the
6.10landlord has received notice of a contract for deed cancellation or notice of a mortgage
6.11foreclosure sale as appropriate, and the date on which the contract cancellation period or
6.12the mortgagor's redemption period ends. The landlord must also inform the prospective
6.13tenant of the tenant's right to continued utility services if the landlord defaults on utility
6.14payments during the foreclosure process.
6.15(c) This section does not apply to a manufactured home park as defined in section
6.16327C.01, subdivision 5 .
6.17 Subd. 2. Exception allowing a longer term lease. This section Subdivision 1
6.18does not apply if:
6.19(1) the holder or the mortgagee agrees not to terminate the tenant's lease other than
6.20for lease violations for at least one year from the commencement of the tenancy; and
6.21(2) the lease does not require the tenant to prepay rent for any month commencing
6.22after the end of the cancellation or redemption period, so that the rent payment would be
6.23due prior to the end of the cancellation or redemption period.
6.24For the purposes of this section, a holder means a contract for deed vendor or a
6.25holder of the sheriff's certificate of sale or any assignee of the contract for deed vendor or
6.26of the holder of the sheriff's certificate of sale.
6.27 Subd. 3. Transfer of tenancy by operation of law. (a) A tenant who enters into a
6.28lease under subdivision 2 is:
6.29(1) deemed by operation of law to become the tenant of the holder immediately upon
6.30the holder succeeding to the interest of the landlord under the lease; and
6.31(2) bound to the holder under all the provisions of the lease for either the balance of
6.32the lease term or for one year after the start of the tenancy, whichever occurs first.
6.33(b) A tenant who becomes the tenant of the holder under this subdivision is not
6.34obligated to pay rent to the holder until the holder mails, by first class mail to the tenant at
6.35the property address, written notice that the holder has succeeded to the interest of the
7.1landlord. A letter from the holder to the tenant to that effect is prima facie evidence that
7.2the holder has succeeded to the interest of the landlord.
7.3 Subd. 4. Holder not bound by certain acts. A holder succeeding to an interest in
7.4a lease lawfully entered into under subdivision 2 is not:
7.5(1) liable for any act or omission of any prior landlord;
7.6(2) subject to any offset or defense which the tenant had against any prior landlord; or
7.7(3) bound by any modification of the lease entered into under subdivision 2, unless
7.8the modification is made with the holder's consent.
7.9 Subd. 5. Rights of tenant of foreclosed property. (a) When a holder takes over a
7.10rental property as the result of a foreclosure:
7.11(1) a tenant is deemed by operation of law to become the tenant of the holder; and
7.12(2) all leases, verbal or written, and all terms and conditions of those agreements
7.13shall be transferred to the holder.
7.14(b) A holder shall:
7.15(1) maintain as rental property, property that was used as rental property by the
7.16landlord;
7.17(2) offer renewal leases to tenants of the foreclosed property; and
7.18(3) keep affordable rent levels in place.
7.19 Subd. 6. Eviction. Notwithstanding any other law to the contrary, a holder must not
7.20begin an eviction action against a tenant without cause.
7.21 Subd. 7. Termination of tenancy. Except for lease violations, a holder must not
7.22terminate the tenancy of a tenant of foreclosed property without cause.
7.23 Subd. 8. Periodic leases. A holder must offer a fixed-term lease option to a tenant
7.24with a periodic lease in place at the time the tenant becomes a tenant of the holder.
7.25 Subd. 9. Applicability. The provisions of subdivisions 5 to 8 apply to all tenants
7.26regardless of when a tenant entered into a rental agreement with the property owner or at
7.27what stage the foreclosure process was in when the rental agreement was entered.

7.28 Sec. 7. [582.33] FORECLOSURE MORATORIUM.
7.29 Subdivision 1. Emergency declared to exist. The legislature of the state of
7.30Minnesota declares that a public economic emergency exists in the state of Minnesota
7.31due to the increase in foreclosure rates. The legislature declares that these conditions
7.32have created a housing emergency that justifies legislation creating a moratorium on
7.33mortgage foreclosures.
7.34 Subd. 2. Court stay. In an action to foreclose a mortgage upon residential property
7.35under chapter 580 or 581, in which a judgment of foreclosure has not been entered by the
8.1effective date of this section, the district court having jurisdiction over the matter, upon
8.2motion of a defendant, shall order the action stayed for two years after the entry of the
8.3stay. The court may order that certain conditions relating to the property are met during
8.4the stay, including, but not limited to, possession of the property, payments by the person
8.5in possession, and preservation of the property.
8.6 Subd. 3. Application. This section applies only to mortgages executed before
8.7the effective date of this section.
8.8EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective the day following final enactment.

8.9 Sec. 8. SPECIAL STATE EMERGENCY UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION
8.10PROGRAM.
8.11 Subdivision 1. Purpose. Federal law currently provides for a federally funded
8.12extension of unemployment insurance benefits for applicants who have exhausted
8.13entitlement to regular Minnesota unemployment insurance benefits. But, because federal
8.14law contains a special requirement that an applicant has earned a certain amount of base
8.15period insured wages, a significant group of applicants who exhausted their regular
8.16Minnesota unemployment insurance benefits do not qualify for the federally funded
8.17extension. The purpose of this section is to provide a state-funded extension to that group.
8.18 Subd. 2. Eligibility. (a) Special state emergency unemployment insurance benefits
8.19are payable to an applicant who does not qualify for a federally funded extension
8.20of unemployment insurance benefits solely because the applicant does not meet the
8.21requirement under section 4001(d)(2)(a) of the federal Supplemental Appropriations
8.22Act of 2008 that an applicant have wage credits of not less than 40 times the applicant's
8.23weekly benefit amount.
8.24(b) Except as provided in paragraph (a), all requirements for federally funded
8.25extended unemployment benefits and all requirements of Minnesota Statutes, chapter
8.26268, must be met in order for the applicant to be eligible for special state emergency
8.27unemployment insurance benefits.
8.28(c) Special state emergency unemployment insurance benefits are payable in the
8.29same amounts, the same duration, and for the same time period as provided for under the
8.30federal Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008, and any later amendments, but shall
8.31be no less than 13 times the applicant's weekly special state emergency unemployment
8.32insurance benefit amount.
8.33 Subd. 3. Payment from trust fund. Special state emergency unemployment
8.34insurance benefits are payable from the Minnesota unemployment insurance trust fund.
8.35Special state emergency unemployment insurance benefits will not be used in computing
9.1the future unemployment insurance tax rate of a taxpaying employer nor will they be
9.2charged to the reimbursing account of government or nonprofit employers.
9.3 Subd. 4. Expiration. This section expires on June 30, 2010, and no benefits shall be
9.4paid under this section for a week beginning after that date.
9.5EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective the Sunday following final enactment
9.6and applies only to weeks of unemployment after that date.

9.7 Sec. 9. JOBS CREATION GRANT PROGRAM.
9.8 Subdivision 1. Establishment. The commissioner of employment and economic
9.9development shall develop and implement a jobs creation grant program to make grants
9.10available to cities and towns for public and private projects that will generate new jobs
9.11and produce a stronger state economy.
9.12 Subd. 2. Fund distribution. In distributing funds, the commissioner shall give
9.13priority consideration to projects that are available to begin immediately and to projects
9.14that promote environmental sustainability and a green economy.
9.15 Subd. 3. Funding. To the extent that the commissioner receives funds for this
9.16purpose in fiscal year 2009, funding for the jobs creation grant program shall be done
9.17through federal stimulus dollars. If federal stimulus dollars are not available, funds shall
9.18come from state sources.
9.19 Subd. 4. Appropriation. $....... is appropriated from the general fund to the
9.20commissioner of employment and economic development to develop and implement
9.21a jobs creation grant program. This appropriation is only available if federal stimulus
9.22dollars are not available. This appropriation is available until expended.
9.23EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective the day following final enactment.

9.24 Sec. 10. STATE EMPLOYEE LAYOFFS.
9.25For the 2010 and 2011 biennium, in order to prevent increased unemployment and to
9.26protect jobs, the legislature shall not mandate layoffs of state employees, including, but
9.27not limited to, employees of the University of Minnesota.
9.28EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective the day following final enactment.

Please direct all comments concerning issues or legislation
to your House Member or State Senator.
For Legislative Staff or for directions to the Capitol, visit the Contact Us page.
General questions or comments.
last updated: 01/30/2009



Again, thanking you for having the moral and political courage in standing up and fighting for the rights and livelihoods of Minnesota's working class, and for having the common sense and intelligence to know that we cannot spend our way out of this economic crisis; rather, understanding and explaining that for working people and the working class the way out of this crisis, and the way to a better future, will be found in working our way out of this crisis.

In full support of your leadership in bringing forward The People's Bailout--- Senate File 542...

For a living wage job, justice and equality along with a voice at work for each and every worker in Minnesota...

On behalf of Minnesota's 30,000 workers in the Indian Gaming Industry organizing and struggling to survive while employed in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages, without any rights under state or federal labor laws...

Sincerely,

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

Middle Class Task Force

Barack Obama's demonstrates his Ronald Reagan approach to economics as a friend of big business as he demeans the working class especially impoverished working people.

Here is what he had to say:

And I think I should note that when I talk about the middle class, I'm talking about folks who are currently on the middle class, but also people who aspire to be in the middle class. We're not forgetting the poor. They are going to be front and center, because they, too, share our American Dream. And we're going to make sure that they can get a piece of that American Dream if they're willing to work for it.

Where does Obama get off by saying:

And we're going to make sure that they can get a piece of that American Dream if they're willing to work for it.

Create a society where everyone has an opportunity to work instead of a society where a few people have a right to profit.

Barack Obama gets a pass on this:

if they're willing to work for it

A white president would be called anti-worker and a racist for making this kind of statement.

Barack Obama should be taken to task.

Where is the movement pushing for a full employment economy so we can shove these words down his throat?

Capitalism needs to go.

Obama talks about wealth trickling down to the poor from the middle class. Just a Ronald Reagan rehash. The middle class will be lucky to get away from Obama without major headaches. Nothing ever trickles down past the middle class.

Poverty will increase as this recession deepens. Obama has no plans nor intent to eliminate poverty.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm getting good at this. (Laughter and applause.)

Obama jokes while the working class suffers.

Cassandra






January 30, 2009, 12:39 PM
Transcript: The President's Remarks On The Middle Class Task Force


(CBS)The White House has sent out a transcript of President Obama and Vice President Biden's comments this morning announcing the creation of a Middle Class Task Force.

"This task force will bring together my economic advisors and members of my Cabinet to focus on policies that will really benefit the middle class, policies to create jobs that pay well and provide a chance to save, to create jobs in growing fields and train workers to fill them, to ensure that workplaces are safe and fair as well as flexible for employees juggling the demands of work and family," the president said.

Read his remarks and those of the vice president below.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you for joining us today. It is a privilege to be among this diverse group representing labor unions and not for profit organizations, advocates for our business community. And I am pleased to be here with our outstanding Vice President, Joe Biden. (Applause.) I see some of my colleagues -- got some senators here, we got a governor, at least one of them I see over here, members of Congress and a lot of good friends and Cabinet members. So this is an outstanding gathering.

Today we learned that our economy shrank in the last three months of 2008 by 3.8 percent. That's the worst contraction in close to three decades. This isn't just an economic concept, this is a continuing disaster for America's working families. As worrying as these numbers are, it's what they mean for the American people that really matters and that's so alarming: families making fewer purchases, businesses making fewer investments, employers sustaining fewer jobs.

The recession is deepening and the urgency of our economic crisis is growing. Yesterday we reached a new threshold: the highest number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits on record. Every day it seems there's another round of layoffs, another round of jobs lost and families' lives turned upside down. And we lost 2.6 million jobs last year, and another 2.8 million people who need and want full-time work had to settle for part-time employment. So this is a difficult moment.

But I believe if we act boldly and swiftly it can be an American moment, when we work through our differences together and overcome our divisions to face this crisis. While our GDP may have grown smaller, it's undiminished when it comes to our innovative spirit, our work ethic, our values and our resolve and resilience as Americans.

For two years I traveled across this country. I met thousands of people -- hard-working middle-class Americans who shared with me their hopes and their hardships. These are the men and the women who form the backbone of our economy. The most productive workers in the world. They do their jobs. They build the products and provide the services that drive America's prosperity.

And these are the folks who approached me on the campaign trail, in union halls, in church basements and coffee shops and VFW halls and shop floors, and they told me about jobs lost and homes foreclosed, hours cut, and benefits slashed -- the costs of life slowly slipping away and chipping away at the hopes of affording college or a new home or retirement. It's like the American Dream in reverse. These are the families who have by no fault of their own been hit hardest as the economy has worsened.

They need action -- now. They need us to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan -- a plan that will save or create more than 3 million jobs over the next few years and make investments that will serve our economy for years to come. We intend to double our capacity to generate renewable energy while redoubling our efforts to use energy more efficiently. We will rebuild crumbling roads and retrofit aging transit systems and renovate 10,000 schools for our children, and we'll bring health care into the 21st century by computerizing medical records, counting -- saving countless lives and billions of dollars.

I'm pleased that the House has acted with the urgency necessary in passing this plan. I hope we can strengthen it further in the Senate. What we can't do is drag our feet or delay much longer. The American people expect us to act, and that's exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States.

But passing my plan is not the end, it's just the beginning of what we have to do. We know we need to create jobs, but not just any jobs. We need to create jobs that sustain families and sustain dreams; jobs in new and growing industries; jobs that don't feel like a dead end, but a way forward and a way up; jobs that will foster a vibrant and growing middle class, because the strength of our economy can be measured directly by the strength of our middle class. And that's why I've created the Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, and why I've asked my Vice President, Joe Biden, to lead it.

There's no one who brings to bear the same combination of personal experience and substantive expertise. Joe has come a long way and has achieved a great deal, but he has never forgotten his roots as a working-class kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania. He has lived the American Dream, and lived and worked to make that dream a reality for others.

This task force will bring together my economic advisors and members of my Cabinet to focus on policies that will really benefit the middle class, policies to create jobs that pay well and provide a chance to save, to create jobs in growing fields and train workers to fill them, to ensure that workplaces are safe and fair as well as flexible for employees juggling the demands of work and family.

And I think I should note that when I talk about the middle class, I'm talking about folks who are currently on the middle class, but also people who aspire to be in the middle class. We're not forgetting the poor. They are going to be front and center, because they, too, share our American Dream. And we're going to make sure that they can get a piece of that American Dream if they're willing to work for it.

I also believe that we have to reverse many of the policies towards organized labor that we've seen these last eight years, policies with which I've sharply disagreed. I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem, to me it's part of the solution. (Applause.) We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests, because we know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. We know that strong, vibrant, growing unions can exist side by side with strong, vibrant and growing businesses. This isn't a either/or proposition between the interests of workers and the interests of shareholders. That's the old argument. The new argument is that the American economy is not and has never been a zero-sum game. When workers are prospering, they buy products that make businesses prosper. We can be competitive and lean and mean and still create a situation where workers are thriving in this country.

So I'm going to be signing three executive orders designed to ensure that federal contracts serve taxpayers efficiently and effectively. One of these orders is going to prevent taxpayer dollars from going to reimburse federal contractors who spend money trying to influence the formation of unions. We will also require that federal contractors inform their employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. Federal labor laws encourage collective bargaining, and employees should know their rights to avoid disruption of federal contracts.

And I'm issuing an order so that qualified employees will be able to keep their jobs even when a contract changes hands. We shouldn't deprive the government of these workers who have so much experience in making government work.

We need to keep our energy focused and our eyes fixed on the real measure of our prosperity -- the success of folks that Joe and I have met across this country who are working hard each and every day. I'm eager to see this task force in action. I'm eager to discuss its findings with Joe Biden. And working with the people in this room, I intend to get this economy on track, to create the jobs of the future, and to make sure that the American people can achieve their dreams not just for themselves but for their children.

So with that, let me introduce our chair of our Middle Class Task Force, my Vice President and the pride of Delaware -- (laughter) -- Joe Biden. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President, for that generous introduction. It's a pleasure to see all of you here today, as we announce this task force on our -- on the middle class.

Folks, I want to thank the outstanding individuals, many of whom are in this room: members of Congress, members of labor, members of business, interest groups that are here representing non-profits. I want to thank you all for being here today. It's good to see so many of my friends from -- our friends from organized labor, as well. Welcome back to the White House. (Laughter and applause.)

You know, one of the things that all of us in this room know is those very leaders, Mr. President, of organized labor have dedicated their lives to the thing that this task force is about -- making the lives of working people better. I would argue there would be no middle class were there not a organized labor movement that started 150 years ago.

And I'm proud that this administration, with your leadership, Mr. President, will be allied in that effort. And I want to thank you for convening and empowering this task force, Mr. President. In doing so, I think you send a very, very clear signal to everyone in this country who goes to work every day without expecting acclaim or big bonuses -- the people that President Teddy Roosevelt referred to as the "doers of deeds," the men and women who teach our children, who protect our neighborhoods, who build our homes, who staff our hospitals, work on the line -- all those people.

To this, the great American middle class, you have simply said, we're on your side again. And it's just -- it's that basic, from my perspective.

And so for too many years we've had a White House that has failed to put the American middle class at the front and center of our economic policies. And even when our economy -- even when our economy was growing, there was a -- and it was very solid ground on which to build -- the middle class found itself slipping. Productivity went up almost 20 percent between 2000 and 2007, yet income for working families fell by $2,000 a year. And now with our economy struggling, the pain is significantly worse. Trillions of dollars in home equity, retirement savings, college savings, gone. And every day, more and more Americans are losing their jobs. And for many people, the work of a lifetime has literally disappeared. It's cruel, but it's also -- it's threatening to sap the spirit of the country.

Mr. President, you said it best in your inaugural address, in my view. You said -- and I quote -- "A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous." Quite simply, a strong middle class, in our view, equals a strong America.

Clearly, our most urgent task is to stabilize the economy, which the President is well on his way to putting in place the building blocks to do that and to put us on the path to recovery. But on top of this urgent task, though, we have an important long-term task, as well. We need to make sure that the benefits of a strengthening economy, which we're looking forward to, reach the people responsible for generating that strength. That's why President Obama has asked me to lead this task force, to bring together those Cabinet members who have the greatest impact on the well-being of the middle class in our country, as well as seek the opinion and ideas of others in society as to how we can best accomplish these notions.

We'll be looking at everything from access to college at the Department of Education, to business development at the Department of Commerce, to child care and elder care with Health and Human -- excuse me, Health and Human Services, to restoring the balance in the workplace with the Department of Labor, and restoring labor's place with the Department of Labor.

And so this task force I think reflects a critical insight by President Obama that we have to bring together the knowledge, the talent and the skill from the people across the whole range of government to best tackle these problems, and as I said, and invite the private sector to offer the best ideas available to help us do that.

With this task force, we have a single, highly visible group with one single goal: to raise the living standards of the people who are the backbone of this country -- the middle class. Because when they, in fact -- their standard is raised, the poor do better. Every -- and by the way, the wealthy do better, as well. Everyone does better.

So today, with the signing of the President's executive orders, which he's about to sign, we begin the work of the task force. And I want to announce that our executive director will be Dr. Jared Bernstein, a man who has dedicated a substantial portion of his professional career and his writing and studying to the economic issues that most impact on the lives of middle class families.

We're also launching a website today. The website will be astrongmiddleclass.gov. Now, this website won't just be a source of information. Hopefully it will be a place for conversation, as well. We invite Americans to interact with us in the ideas
that they have. It will be a place where people can find out not only what we're doing, but also share their ideas and experiences with us. We'll also be listening to people's stories, as we hold meetings all across the country and during the life of this task force as we prepare a final report.

And our first task force meeting will be held in -- on February 27th in Philadelphia. The focus of that meeting will be green jobs -- those jobs that pay well, can't be outsourced, and will help us move toward a cleaner, more self-sufficient energy future. Each month to follow, we will focus on a different concern in a different part of the country: how to make retirement more secure; child and elder care, how to make it affordable; improving workplace safety; getting the cost of college within reach of the vast majority of the American people; help weary parents juggle family and work; and create the jobs for the future.

At the end of the day, it will be our responsibility to offer to the President and to the nation clear and specific steps that we need to take to meet these and other concerns. This task force, I might add, which coming out of the Vice President's Office will be a bit unique, will be fully transparent -- totally transparent. (Laughter.) We are going to consult. We are going to consult -- (applause.) We are going to consult openly -- openly and publically without side groups, who can help us develop the most far-reaching, imaginative solutions to help us solve these problems and create the outcome we're looking for.

And we'll put all the material from our meetings and any report we produce up on the website. None of this will happen behind closed doors. We want the American people engaged. We want them engaged in the outset.

There are some people who say -- that are somewhat down on the future economic prosperities -- prospects of the country, who say that we've entered an age when only a few people can prosper and everyone else has to fall behind. We do not accept that proposition. There has never been, and that has never ever been a part of America's story, at any part in our history. And the President and I are determined that it will not be any part of America's story today.

The American story is one of expanding opportunity and shared prosperity. It's a story about the future; it's never about the past. It's a story in which we put the middle class families that are the heart of the nation at the heart of our efforts, because it drives everything else. Where I grew up, as the President referenced, not only in Scranton but in Wilmington, Delaware, like many, many of you, there are an awful lot of proud women and men who still reside in those neighborhoods. They don't want the government to solve their problem. But at a minimum, they wanted the government to understand their problem -- to understand their problem, be cognizant of the problem. They just wanted leaders who not only understood their problem, but leaders who would offer them policies that gave them nothing more than a chance, nothing more than a chance to make it.

And I'm not exaggerating when I say that. I'm not -- you all know that, that's all they want, is a chance. They wanted leaders like you, Mr. President. They wanted leaders like those who are gathered here in this room. And they have wanted and want today a White House who's ready to say that the measure of our success will be whether the middle class once again shares in the economic success and prosperity of the nation.

And so, Mr. President, I thank you for giving me this responsibility. I look forward to working with the folks in this room and many others. And I also look forward, Mr. President, to you signing these executive orders as the first order of business. (Applause.)

(The executive orders were signed.)

THE PRESIDENT: I'm getting good at this. (Laughter and applause.)

Democrats: Stimulus plan no quick fix for economy

All these stimulus plans are is one big slush fund for bankers and big business to get their greedy fingers into public funds. These are scams that will make things worse.




Democrats: Stimulus plan no quick fix for economy


Jan 25, 3:21 PM (ET)

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

(AP) In this photo provided by CBS, Vice President Joe Biden appears on CBS's "Face the Nation" in... Full Image

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House warned Sunday that the country could face a long and painful financial recovery, even with major government intervention to stimulate the economy and save financial institutions.

"We're off and running, but it's going to get worse before it gets better," said Vice President Joe Biden, taking the lead on a theme echoed by other Democratic officials on the Sunday talk shows.

At the end of the Obama administration's first week, the party in power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue sought to lower expectations for a quick fix despite legislation expected to pass by next month that would pump billions of dollars into the economy. Democrats also opened the door for even more government aid to struggling banks beyond the $700 billion bailout already in the pipeline.

Congress has given President Barack Obama permission to spend the second $350 billion of a Wall Street bailout package even though lawmakers have criticized the Bush administration for the way it spent the first half. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she is open to additional government rescue money for banks and financial institutions. But she said taxpayers must get an ownership stake in return.

(AP) In this photograph provided by "Meet the Press," Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner appears on "Meet... Full Image

Biden said Obama's choice for Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, will recommend whether more money is needed for the banks. Geithner could be confirmed by the Senate as early as Monday.

Congress is working on an $825 billion economic recovery package that dedicates about two-thirds to new government spending and the rest to tax cuts. Separate proposals making their way through the House and Senate would combine tax cuts for individuals and businesses, help for cash-strapped state governments, aid for the poor and unemployed, and direct spending by the federal government.

The goal is to infuse money directly into the economy in the hope of bringing the nation out of recession, while creating 3 million to 4 million jobs. It would be largest economic recovery package ever enacted; the White House says the scope rivals the construction of the interstate highway system after World War II.

Its success or failure could define the first years of Obama's term. On Sunday, Democrats sought to temper expectations, at least in the short term.

"These problems weren't made in a day or a week or a month or even a year, and they're not going to get solved that fast," said Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to Obama. "So even as we move to be as rapid as we can in jolting the economy and giving it the push forward it needs, we also have to be mindful of having the right kind of plan that will carry us forward over time."

(AP) In this photograph provided by "Meet the Press," Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner appears on "Meet... Full Image

Republicans want the recovery package tilted more toward tax cuts and have questioned whether government spending programs will revive the economy in the short-term.

"I just think there's a lot of slow-moving government spending in this program that won't work," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said. "We can't borrow and spend our way back to prosperity."

The administration has pledged to spend three-quarters of the proposed money in the first 18 months after it is approved.

Obama met with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders at the White House last week to listen to Republican concerns about the package. Obama plans to meet with more Republican lawmakers this week, though Boehner said there is little support among House Republicans for the package in its current form.

A House vote is expected Wednesday. Democrats, if united, have a large enough majority to pass it without GOP backing. But Obama is seeking bipartisan support on this critical early test of his presidency. Senate Republicans could block the package but they would have to be united to do so.

(AP) In this photograph provided by "Meet the Press," National Economic Council Director Lawrence... Full Image

Summers said Obama has inherited the worst economy since World War II, coupled with a federal budget deficit of more than a $1 trillion and soaring costs for entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The nation lost a total 2.6 million jobs last year as the housing market contracted and financial markets collapsed.

The government he said, can afford to spend more than $1 trillion to boost the economy and save financial institutions. But he warned that fiscal discipline will be necessary once the economy recovers.

Summers said Obama would end President George W. Bush's tax cuts on those who make more than $250,000. Pelosi has said she wants to repeal the tax cuts well before they expire at the end of 2010.

Obama might be willing to simply let them expire, Summers said, though he was noncommittal. He did say Obama will fight any effort to extend the tax cuts beyond their expiration date.

"The president has made clear that the question of timing is one we're going to have to reach as we see how the economy unfolds," Summers said. "But they're not going to be with us for long."

Republicans argue that the government shouldn't raise taxes on anyone during tough economic times.

Biden appeared on CBS'"Face the Nation," Pelosi was on ABC's "This Week," and Summers and Boehner spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Howard Zinn and Michael Parenti: where the left stands divided today

This was received compliments of Alan Maki.

Cassandra

http://www.dissiden tvoice.org/ 2008/12/% e2%80%9cclass- is-a-dirty- word%e2%80% 9d/

“Class is a Dirty Word”

by Jason Miller / December 26th, 2008

Class is a dirty word in that it gets close to the truth about who governs and for whose benefit.

– Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti is an internationally known award-winning author and lecturer. He is one of the nation’s leading progressive political analysts. His highly informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad.

In the land of those who think they’re free and the home of savage capitalism, class is indeed a dirty word. Remember, we’re a nation of Joe the Plumbers. If we just work hard enough and fend off those socialist vampires who want to suck us dry by redistributing our hard-earned wealth, we can all be financial successes. And if you’re a faux-progressive presidential candidate—like Obama, you’re doomed to political perdition unless you sign a blood oath disavowing your ties to socialism.

Yet there are a few political analysts and academics who dare to blaspheme against capitalism, which is the “God” this benighted land truly worships—despite the disgustingly hypocritical veneer of faux Christianity. Remember that Michael Parenti has one of the filthiest mouths you’ll ever hear. He dares to repeatedly spew profane diatribes against capitalism, the sacrosanct basis for our precious American Way of Life. Parenti has the chutzpah to derisively attack our system, which we all know is the best that’s ever been (or will be), by asserting that there are divisions amongst US Americans based on socioeconomic standing. And worst of all? He uses the “C” word! Somebody needs to give his mouth a good cleansing with a bar of Dial!

Parenti recently answered a few questions Jason Miller threw his way. Let’s see how much further he traveled on the road to perdition…

Jason Miller: You’re one of the best kept secrets of the “American Left” (ridiculously marginalized and small in number as we are). Why is it that despite your brilliant critiques, particularly of bourgeois revisionist history, you remain relatively obscure even amongst the more radical segment of the US population?

Michael Parenti: It’s really not all that bad. People do describe me as “widely acclaimed” and “internationally known” etc. and I do reach varied audiences in North America and abroad with my writings, lectures, and interviews. But it is true that there are sectarian or small minded elements on the left – including some very prominent figures – who are quiet practitioners of McCarthyism in that they exclude or try to isolate anyone who (a) places a strong emphasis on the realities of class power (b) occasionally uses a Marxist analysis or (c) finds some things of value in existing socialist societies that are worthy of being preserved, such as human services, guaranteed right to a job, free education, free medical care, affordable housing for all, etc. These societies, now mostly defunct, have been deemed by most of the left as worthy of nothing but a constant unremitting denunciation.

JM: Do you think the bourgeoisie has begun demonizing environmentalists and animal rights advocates because they perceive us to be a legitimate threat to the system, is the Green Scare simply another aspect of the divide and conquer tactic, do animal and Earth exploiters wield that much power within the system, is it a combination of these, or something more?

MP: The purveyors of free-market global capitalism believe that they have a right to plunder the remaining natural resources of this planet as they choose. Anyone who challenges their agenda is to be subjected to whatever misrepresentation and calumny that serves the free market corporate agenda.

JM: How has the capitalist class in the US been so successful at convincing the masses that we live in a “classless society” and etching a cultural standard in granite that it is taboo to discuss class issues?

MP: Through control of the universe of discourse, including the media, the professions, the universities, the publishing industry, many of the churches, the consumer society, the job market, and even the very socialization of our children and the prefiguring of our own perceptions, the ruling interests are able to exercise a prevailing ideological control that excludes any reasoned critique of the dominant paradigm. Class is a dirty word in that it gets close to the truth about who governs and for whose benefit.

JM: What are your thoughts on Obama and what change we may see under his presidency?

MP: I greeted Obama’s electoral victory with very little enthusiasm but much relief that the lying slime-bag right-wing John McCain was defeated. I think Obama will be another Bill Clinton, perhaps not as bad. Some people see his accession to the White House as a great historic victory for African Americans and for democracy. But I am not all that impressed. When the victory is extended into social democratic policies that have a salutary effect on millions of struggling impoverished African-Americans and other working poor, then I’ll start dancing in the streets.

JM: Prior to Obama’s election, a number of radical thinkers posited that the US was in a pre-revolutionary stage. What impact do you think the Obama administration will have on the potential of consciousness, anger, and social unrest reaching critical mass amongst the working class in the US in the near future? Or better yet, are you even optimistic that the American people will catch fire and revolt against our wretchedly rapacious and imperialistic system?

MP: I do not think we are entering a pre-revolutionary stage. However political struggle can be a surprising phenomenon emerging with great democratic force and sudden movement in the most unexpected ways. We are approaching an economic crisis of momentous scope. The radical reactions may not be all that progressive and rational. The unfortunate thing about corporate capitalism is that it is often advantaged by the very wretched conditions it itself creates. I am hoping that the social groups that have been activated by Obama’s campaign will not go to sleep and will not let up the pressure for progressive change.

JM: What do you say to critics who assert that socialism is a utopian dream in the abstract and a nightmare in reality?

MP: Your question is a paraphrase of the one I posed in my book, Democracy for the Few. “Is socialism not just a dream in theory and a nightmare in practice?” In response I pointed out that the features which make life livable in capitalist society are mostly socialistic in practice, including human services, infrastructure development, environmental protections, and even many technological advances that are funded or even created by government sources.

JM: With Castro hanging in there and now Chavez, Morales, Correa, and Ortega in place, to what extent do you think socialism will continue to expand and flourish in Latin America?

MP: It is not likely that the reforms in Latin America will really lead to socialism but at least to some gains for the most desperately oppressed.

JM: Some argue that there is a “third way” that represents a better alternative to capitalism than socialism. Your thoughts?

MP: Maybe they are referring to the social democracy that is found in some Western European countries that provide decent human services and better regulation of corporate doings. But even these social democracies are under attack and face rollback. Look at what has happened to Britain.

Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He is Cyrano's Journal Online's associate editor. He welcomes constructive correspondence at JMiller@bestcyrano. org or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner. Read other articles by Jason, or visit Jason's website.

This article was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 8:00am and is filed under Capitalism, Interview. ShareThis

Howard Zinn on the Amy Goodman show:

“No, I was really gratified when Obama called for “Let’s tax the

rich more, and let’s tax the poor and middle class less.” And they

said, “That’s socialism.” And I thought, “Whoa! I’m happy to hear

that. Finally, socialism is getting a good name.” You know, socialism has

been given bad names, you know, Stalin and all those socialists, so-called

socialists. They weren’t really socialist, but, you know, they called

themselves socialist. But they weren’t really, you see. And so, socialism

got a bad name. It used to have a really good name. Here in the United

States, the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet

Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name. Millions of people

in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist

members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know,

there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean,

you know, socialism—who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller,

Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism

had a good name. It needs to be restored.”

January 02, 2009

Howard Zinn on “War and Social Justice”

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/2/placeholder_howard_zinn

Real Video Stream

http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2009/jan/video/dnB20090102a.

rm&proto=rtsp

Real Audio Stream

http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2009/jan/audio/dn20090102.ra

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Howard Zinn is one of this country’s most celebrated historians. His

classic work A People’s History of the United States changed the way we

look at history in America. First published a quarter of a century ago, the

book has sold over a million copies and is a phenomenon in the world of

publishing—selling more copies each successive year. After serving as a

bombardier in World War II, Howard Zinn went on to become a lifelong

dissident and peace activist. He was active in the civil rights movement

and many of the struggles for social justice over the past forty years. He

taught at Spelman College, the historically black college for women, and

was fired for insubordination for standing up for the students. He was

recently invited back to give the commencement address. Howard Zinn has

written numerous books and is professor emeritus at Boston University. He

recently spoke at Binghamton University a few days after the 2008

presidential election. His speech was called “War and Social Justice.”

[includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: Howard Zinn is one of this country’s most celebrated

historians. His classic work, A People’s History of the United States,

changed the way we look at history in America. First published a quarter of

a century ago, the book has sold over a million copies and is a phenomenon

in the world of publishing, selling more copies each successive year.

After serving as a bombardier pilot in World War II, Howard Zinn went on to

become a lifelong dissident and peace activist. He was active in the civil

rights movement and many of the struggles for social justice over the past

half-century. He taught at Spelman College, the historically black college

for women in Atlanta, and was fired for insubordination for standing up for

the women.

Howard Zinn has written numerous books. He’s Professor Emeritus at Boston

University. He recently spoke at Binghamton University, Upstate New York, a

few days after the 2008 presidential election. His speech was called “War

and Social Justice.”

HOWARD ZINN: Why is all the political rhetoric limited? Why is the

set of solutions given to social and economic issues so cramped and so

short of what is needed, so short of what the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights demands? And, yes, Obama, who obviously is more attuned to the

needs of people than his opponent, you know, Obama, who is more

far-sighted, more thoughtful, more imaginative, why has he been limited in

what he is saying? Why hasn’t he come out for what is called a

single-payer system in healthcare?

Why—you see, you all know what the single-payer system is. It’s a

sort of awkward term for it, maybe. It doesn’t explain what it means. But

a single-payer health system means—well, it will be sort of run like

Social Security. It’ll be a government system. It won’t depend on

intermediaries, on middle people, on insurance companies. You won’t have

to fill out forms and pay—you know, and figure out whether you have a

preexisting medical condition. You won’t have to go through that

rigamarole, that rigamarole which has kept 40 million people out of having

health insurance. No, something happens, you just go to a doctor, you go to

a hospital, you’re taken care of, period. The government will pay for it.

Yeah, the government will pay for it. That’s what governments are for.

Governments, you know—they do that for the military. Did you know

that? That’s what the military has. The military has free insurance. I

was once in the military. I got pneumonia, which is easier to get in the

military. I got pneumonia. I didn’t have to fool around with deciding

what health plan I’m in and what—you know. No, I was totally taken care

of. I didn’t have to think about money. Just—you know, there are a

million members of the armed forces who have that. But when you ask that

the government do this for everybody else, they cry, “That’s

socialism!” Well, if that’s socialism, it must mean socialism is good.

You know.

No, I was really gratified when Obama called for “Let’s tax the

rich more, and let’s tax the poor and middle class less.” And they

said, “That’s socialism.” And I thought, “Whoa! I’m happy to hear

that. Finally, socialism is getting a good name.” You know, socialism has

been given bad names, you know, Stalin and all those socialists, so-called

socialists. They weren’t really socialist, but, you know, they called

themselves socialist. But they weren’t really, you see. And so, socialism

got a bad name. It used to have a really good name. Here in the United

States, the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet

Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name. Millions of people

in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist

members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know,

there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean,

you know, socialism—who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller,

Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism

had a good name. It needs to be restored.

And so—but Obama, with all of his, well, good will, intelligence,

all those qualities that he has, and so on—and, you know, you feel that

he has a certain instinct for people in trouble. But still, you know, he

wouldn’t come out for a single-payer health system, that is, for what I

would call health security, to go along with Social Security, you see,

wouldn’t come out for that; wouldn’t come out for the government

creating jobs for millions of people, because that’s what really is

needed now. You see, when people are—the newspapers this morning report

highest unemployment in decades, right? The government needs to create

jobs. Private enterprise is not going to create jobs. Private enterprise

fails, the so-called free market system fails, fails again and again. When

the Depression hit in the 1930s, Roosevelt and the New Deal created jobs

for millions of people. And, oh, there were people on the—you know, out

there on the fringe who yelled “Socialism!” Didn’t matter. People

needed it. If people need something badly, and somebody does something for

them, you can throw all the names you want at them, it won’t matter, you

see? But that was needed in this campaign. Yes.

Instead of Obama and McCain joining together—I know some of you may

be annoyed that I’m being critical of Obama, but that’s my job. You

know, I like him. I’m for him. I want him to do well. I’m happy he won.

I’m delighted he won. But I’m a citizen. I have to speak my mind. OK?

Yeah. And, you know—but when I saw Obama and McCain sort of both together

supporting the $700 billion bailout, I thought, “Uh-oh. No, no. Please

don’t do that. Please, Obama, step aside from that. Do what—I’m sure

something in your instincts must tell you that there’s something wrong

with giving $700 billion to the same financial institutions which ruined

us, which got us into this mess, something wrong with that, you see.” And

it’s not even politically viable. That is, you can’t even say, “Oh,

I’m doing it because people will then vote for me.” No. It was very

obvious when the $700 billion bailout was announced that the majority of

people in the country were opposed to it. Instinctively, they said,

“Something is wrong with this. Why give it to them? We need it.”

That’s when the government—you know, Obama should have been

saying, “No, let’s take that $700 billion, let’s give it to people

who can’t pay their mortgages. Let’s create jobs, you know.” You

know, instead of pouring $700 billion into the top and hoping that it will

trickle down to the bottom, no, go right to the bottom, where people need

it and get—so, yes, that was a disappointment. So, yeah, I’m trying to

indicate what we’ll have to do now and to fulfill what Obama himself has

promised: change, real change. You can’t have—you can say “change,”

but if you keep doing the old policies, it’s not change, right?

So what stands in the way of Obama and the Democratic Party, and what

stands in the way of them really going all out for a social and economic

program that will fulfill the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights? Well, I can think of two things that stand in the way. Maybe there

are more, but I can only think of two things at a time. And, well, one of

them is simply the great, powerful economic interests that don’t want

real economic change. Really, they don’t. The powerful—I mean, you take

in healthcare, there are powerful interests involved in the present

healthcare system. People are making lots of money from the healthcare

system as it is, making so much money, and that’s why the costs of the

healthcare system in the United States are double what the healthcare costs

are—the percentage, you know, of money devoted to healthcare—percentage

is double, administrative costs in the United States, compared to countries

that have the single-payer system, because there are people there who are

siphoning off this money, who are making money. You know, they’re health

plans. They’re insurance companies. They’re health executives and CEOs,

so that there are—yeah, there are interests, economic interests that are

in the way of real economic change.

And Obama so far has not challenged those economic interests.

Roosevelt did challenge those economic interests, boldly, right frontally.

He called them economic royalists. He wasn’t worried that people would

say, “Oh, you’re appealing to class conflict,” you know, the kind of

thing they pull out all the time, as if there isn’t, hasn’t always been

class conflict, just something new, you know. Class conflict. “You’re

creating class conflict. We’ve never had class conflict. We’ve always

all been one happy family.” You know, no. And so, yeah, there are these

interests standing in the way, and, you know, unfortunately, the Democratic

Party is tied to many of those interests. Democratic Party is, you know,

tied to a lot of corporate interests. I mean, look at the people on

Obama’s—the people who are on Obama’s economics team, and they’re

Goldman Sachs people, and they’re former—you know, people like that,

you know? That’s not—they don’t represent change. They represent the

old-style Democratic stay-put leadership that’s not good.

So, the other factor that stands in the way of a real bold economic

and social program is the war. The war, the thing that has, you know, a

$600 billion military budget. Now, how can you call for the government to

take over the healthcare system? How can you call for the government to

give jobs to millions of people? How can you do all that? How can you offer

free education, free higher education, which is what we should have really?

We should have free higher education. Or how can you—you know. No, you

know, how can you double teachers’ salaries? How can you do all these

things, which will do away with poverty in the United States? It all costs

money.

And so, where’s that money going to come from? Well, it can come

from two sources. One is the tax structure. And here, Obama [has] been

moving in the right direction. When he talked about not giving the rich tax

breaks and giving tax breaks to the poor—in the right direction, but not

far enough, because the top one percent of—the richest one percent of the

country has gained several trillions of dollars in the last twenty, thirty

years as a result of the tax system, which has favored them. And, you know,

you have a tax system where 200 of the richest corporations pay no taxes.

You know that? You can’t do that. You don’t have their accountants. You

don’t have their legal teams, and so on and so forth. You don’t have

their loopholes.

The war, $600 billion, we need that. We need that money. But in order

to say that, in order to say, “Well, one, we’re going to increase taxes

on the super rich,” much more than Obama has proposed—and believe me,

it won’t make those people poor. They’ll still be rich. They just

won’t be super rich. I don’t care if there’s some rich people around.

But, you know, no, we don’t need super rich, not when that money is

needed to take care of little kids in pre-school, and there’s no money

for pre-school. No, we need a radical change in the tax structure, which

will immediately free huge amounts of money to do the things that need to

be done, and then we have to get the money from the military budget. Well,

how do you get money from the military budget? Don’t we need $600 billion

for a military budget? Don’t we have to fight two wars? No. We don’t

have to fight any wars. You know.

And this is where Obama and the Democratic Party have been hesitant,

you know, to talk about. But we’re not hesitant to talk about it. The

citizens should not be hesitant to talk about it. If the citizens are

hesitant to talk about it, they would just reinforce the Democratic

leadership and Obama in their hesitations. No, we have to speak what we

believe is the truth. I think the truth is we should not be at war. We

should not be at war at all. I mean, these wars are absurd. They’re

horrible also. They’re horrible, and they’re absurd. You know, from a

human, human point of view, they’re horrible. You know, the deaths and

the mangled limbs and the blindness and the three million people in Iraq

losing their homes, having to leave their homes, three million

people—imagine?—having to look elsewhere to live because of our

occupation, because of our war for democracy, our war for liberty, our war

for whatever it is we’re supposed to be fighting for.

No, we don’t need—we need a president who will say—yeah, I’m

giving advice to Obama. I know he’s listening. But, you know, if enough

people speak up, he will listen, right? If enough people speak up, he will

listen. You know, there’s much more of a chance of him listening, right,

than those other people. They’re not listening. They wouldn’t listen.

Obama could possibly listen, if we, all of us—and the thing to say is, we

have to change our whole attitude as a nation towards war, militarism,

violence. We have to declare that we are not going to engage in aggressive

wars. We are going to renounce the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. “Oh,

we have to go to”—you know, “We have to go to war on this little

pitiful country, because this little pitiful country might someday”—do

what? Attack us? I mean, Iraq might attack us? “Well, they’re

developing a nuclear weapon”—one, which they may have in five or ten

years. That’s what all the experts said, even the experts on the

government side. You know, they may develop one nuclear weapon in

five—wow! The United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons. Nobody says,

“How about us?” you see. But, you know, well, you know all about that.

Weapons of mass destruct, etc., etc. No reason for us to wage aggressive

wars. We have to renounce war as an instrument of foreign policy.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Howard Zinn. He’s speaking at Binghamton

University, Upstate New York. If you’d like a copy of today’s

broadcast, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. Back to his

speech in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return now to the legendary historian Howard Zinn. This was

his first speech after the 2008 election. He was speaking on November 8th

at Binghamton University, Upstate New York. He called his speech “War and

Social Justice.”

HOWARD ZINN: A hundred different countries, we have military bases.

That doesn’t look like a peace-loving country. And besides—I mean,

first of all, of course, it’s very expensive. We save a lot of money. Do

we really need those—what do we need those bases for? I can’t figure

out what we need those bases for. And, you know, so we have to—yeah, we

have to give that up, and we have to declare ourselves a peaceful nation.

We will no longer be a military superpower. “Oh, that’s terrible!”

There are people who think we must be a military superpower. We don’t

have to be a military superpower. We don’t have to be a military power at

all, you see? We can be a humanitarian superpower. We can—yeah. We’ll

still be powerful. We’ll still be rich. But we can use that power and

that wealth to help people all over the world. I mean, instead of sending

helicopters to bomb people, send helicopters when they face a hurricane or

an earthquake and they desperately need helicopters. You know, you know.

So, yeah, there’s a lot of money available once you seriously

fundamentally change the foreign policy of the United States.

Now, Obama has been hesitant to do that. And it has something to do

with a certain mindset, because it doesn’t have anything to do really

with politics, that is, with more votes. I don’t think—do you think

most Americans know that we have bases in a hundred countries? I’ll bet

you if you took a poll and asked among the American people, “How many

countries do you think we have bases in?” “No, I don’t know exactly

what the answer is. What I would guess, you know, there’d be like five,

ten.” But I think most people would be surprised. In other words, there

isn’t a public demanding that we have bases in a hundred countries, so

there’s no political advantage to that. Well, of course, there’s

economic advantage to corporations that supply those bases and build those

bases and make profit from those bases, you know.

But in order to—and I do believe that the American people would

welcome a president who said, “We are not going to wage aggressive war

anymore.” The American people are not war-minded people. They become

war-minded when a president gets up there and creates an atmosphere of

hysteria and fear, you know, and says, “Well, we must go to war.” Then

people, without thinking about it, without thinking, you know, “Why are

we bombing Afghanistan?” “Because, oh, Osama bin Laden is there.”

“Uh, where?” Well, they don’t really know, so we’ll bomb the

country. You know, if we bomb the country, maybe we’ll get him. You see?

Sure, in the process, thousands of Afghans will die, right? But—so,

people didn’t have time to stop and think, think. But the American people

are not war-minded people. They would welcome, I believe, a turn away from

war. So there’s no real political advantage to that.

But it has to do with a mindset, a certain mindset that—well, that

a lot of Americans have and that Obama, obviously, and the Democratic

leadership, Pelosi and Harry Reid and the others, that they all still have.

And when you talk about a mindset that they have, which stands in the way

of the declaring against war, you’re reminded that during the

campaign—I don’t know if you remember this—that at one point Obama

said—and, you know, there were many times in the campaign where he said

really good things, if he had only followed up on them, you see, and if he

only follows up on them now. But at one point in the campaign, he said,

“It’s not just a matter of getting out of Iraq. It’s a matter of

changing the mindset that got us into Iraq.” You see? That was a very

important statement. Unfortunately, he has not followed through by changing

his mindset, you see? He knows somewhere in—well, then he expressed it,

that we have to change our mindset, but he hasn’t done it. Why? I don’t

know. Is it because there are too many people around him and too many

forces around him, and etc., etc., that…? But, no, that mindset is still

there. So I want to talk about what that mindset is, what the elements of

that mindset are.

And I have to look at my watch, not that it matters, not that I care,

but, you know, I feel conscience-stricken over keeping you here just to

hear the truth.

Here are some of the elements of the mindset that stand in the way,

in the way for Obama, in the way for the Democratic Party, in the way for

many Americans, in the way for us. One of the elements in our mindset is

the idea, somehow, that the United States is exceptional. In the world of

social science, in, you know, that discipline called social science,

there’s actually a phrase for it. It’s called American exceptionalism.

And what it means is the idea that the United States is unique in the

world, you know, that we are different, that we—not just different,

we’re better. Right? We are better than other people. You know, our

society is better than other societies. This is a very dangerous thing to

think. When you become so arrogant that you think you are better and

different than other countries in the world, then that gives you a carte

blanche to do nasty things. You can do nasty things, because you’re

better. You’re justified in doing those things, because, yeah,

you’re—we’re different. So we have to divest ourselves of the idea

that, you know, we are somehow better and, you know, we are the “City on

the Hill,” which is what the first governor of Massachusetts, John

Winthrop, said. “We are the”—Reagan also said that. Well, Reagan said

lots of things, you know that. But we are—you know, we’re—you know,

everybody looks to—no, we’re an empire, like other empires.

There was a British empire. There was a Russian empire. There was a

German empire and a Japanese empire and a French and a Belgian empire, the

Dutch empire and the Spanish empire. And now there’s the American empire.

And our empire—and when we look at those empires, we say, “Oh,

imperialism! But our empire, no.” There was one sort of scholar who wrote

in the New York Times, he said, “We are an empire lite.” Lite? Tell

that to the people of Iraq. Tell that to the people in Afghanistan. You

know, we are an empire lite? No, we are heavy.

And yes—well, all you have to do is look at our history, and

you’ll see, no, our history does not show a beneficent country doing good

all over the world. Our history shows expansion. Our history shows

expansion. It shows us—well, yeah, it shows us moving into—doubling our

territory with the Louisiana Purchase, which I remember on our school maps

looked very benign. “Oh, there’s that, all that empty land, and now we

have it.” It wasn’t empty! There were people living there. There were

Indian tribes. Hundreds of Indian tribes were living there, you see? And if

it’s going to be ours, we’ve got to get rid of them. And we did. No.

And then, you know, we instigated a war with Mexico in 1848, 1846 to 1848,

and at the end of the war we take almost half of Mexico, you know. And why?

Well, we wanted that land. That’s very simple. We want things. There’s

a drive of nations that have the power and the capacity to bully other

nations, a tendency to expand into those—the areas that those other

nations have. We see it all over the world. And the United States has done

that again and again. And, you know, then we expanded into the Caribbean.

Then we expanded out into the Pacific with Hawaii and the Philippines, and

yeah. And, of course, you know, in the twentieth century, expanding our

influence in Europe and Asia and now in the Middle East, everywhere. An

expansionist country, an imperialist power.

For what? To do good things for these other people? Or is it because

we coveted—when I say “we,” I don’t mean to include you and me. But

I’ve gotten—you know, they’ve gotten us so used to identifying with

the government. You know, like we say “we,” like the janitor at General

Motors says “we.” No. No, the CEO of General Motors and the janitor are

not “we.”

So, no, we’re not—we’re not—exceptionalism is one part of the

mindset we have to get rid of. We have to see ourselves honestly for what

we are. We’re an empire like other empires. We’re as aggressive and

brutal and violent as the Belgians were in the Congo, as the British were

in India, and all these other empires. Yeah, we’re just like them. We

have to face it. And when you face that, you sober up a little, and then

you don’t think you can just go all over the world and say, “Ah,

we’re doing this for liberty and democracy,” because then, if you know

your history, you know how many times that was said. “Oh, we’re going

into the Philippines to bring civilization and Christianity to the

Filipinos.” “We’re going to bring civilization to the Mexicans,”

etc., etc. No. You’ll understand that. Yeah, that’s one element in this

mindset.

And then, of course, when you say this, when you say these things,

when you go back into that history, when you try to give an honest

recounting of what we have been—not “we,” really—what the

government, the government, has done, our government has done. The people

haven’t done it. People—we’re just people. The government does these

things, and then they try to include us, involve us in their criminal

conspiracy. You know, we didn’t do this. But they’re dragooning us into

this.

But when you start criticizing, when you start making an honest

assessment of what we have done in the world, they say you’re being

unpatriotic. Well, you have to—that’s another part of the mindset you

have to get rid of, because if you don’t, then you think you have to wear

a flag in your lapel or you think you have to always have American flags

around you, and you have to show, by your love for all this meaningless

paraphernalia, that you are patriotic. Well, that’s, you know—oh,

there, too, an honest presidential candidate would not be afraid to say,

“You know, patriotism is not a matter of wearing a flag in your lapel,

not a matter of this or not—patriotism is not supporting the government.

Patriotism is supporting the principles that the government is supposed to

stand for.” You know, so we need to redefine these things which we have

come—which have been thrown at us and which we’ve imbibed without

thinking, not thinking, “Oh, what really is patriotism?” If we start

really thinking about what it is, then we will reject these cries that

you’re not patriotic, and we’ll say, “Patriotism is not supporting

the government.” When the government does bad things, the most patriotic

thing you can do is to criticize the government, because that’s the

Declaration of Independence. That’s our basic democratic charter. The

Declaration of Independence says governments are set up by the people

to—they’re artificial creations. They’re set up to ensure certain

rights, the equal right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. So when

governments become destructive of those ends, the Declaration said, “it

is the Right of the People to alter or abolish” the government. That’s

our basic democratic charter. People have forgotten what it is. It’s OK

to alter or abolish the government when the government violates its trust.

And then you are being patriotic. I mean, the government violates its

trust, the government is being unpatriotic.

Yeah, so we have to think about these words and phrases that are

thrown at us without giving us a time to think. And, you know, we have to

redefine these words, like “national security.” What is national

security? Lawyers say, “Well, this is for national security.” Well,

that takes care of it. No, it doesn’t take care of it. This national

security means different things to different people. Ah, there’s some

people—for some people, national security means having military bases all

over the world. For other people, national security means having

healthcare, having jobs. You know, that’s security. And so, yeah, we need

to sort of redefine these things.

We need to redefine “terrorism.” Otherwise, the government can

throw these words at us: “Oh, we’re fighting against terrorism.” Oh,

well, then I guess we have to do this. Wait a while, what do you mean by

“terrorism”? Well, we sort of have an idea what terrorism means.

Terrorism means that you kill innocent people for some belief that you

have. Yeah, you know, sure, blowing up on 9/11, yeah, that was terrorist.

But if that’s the definition of “terrorism,” killing innocent people

for some belief you have, then war is terrorism.

AMY GOODMAN: Howard Zinn, the legendary historian, author of A People’s

History of the United States and much more, he was speaking at Binghamton

University. If you’d like a copy of today’s broadcast, you can go to

our website at democracynow.org. We’ll come back to the conclusion of his

address in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to historian Howard Zinn’s first speech after the

2008 election. The author of A People’s History of the United States

discusses the election, war, peace, and what this country symbolizes to the

rest of the world.

HOWARD ZINN: We have to stop thinking that solutions to problems are

military solutions, that you can solve problems with violence. You can’t

really. You don’t really solve problems with violence. We have to change

our definitions of “heroism.” Heroism in American culture, so far,

really—when people think of heroism, they think of military heroes. They

think of the people whose statues are all over the country, you know, and

they think of medals and battles. And yeah, these are military heroes. And

that’s why Obama goes along with that definition of military—of

“hero,” by referring to John McCain, you know, as a military hero,

always feeling that he must do that. I never felt he must do that. John

McCain, to my mind—and I know that this is a tough thing to accept and

may make some of the people angry—John McCain was tortured and bore up

under torture and was a victim of torture and imprisonment, and, you know,

it takes fortitude to that. He’s not a military hero. Before he was

imprisoned, he dropped bombs on innocent people. You know, he—yeah, he

did what the other members of the Air Force did. They dropped bombs on

peasant villages and killed a lot of innocent people. I don’t consider

that heroism. So, we have to redefine. To me, the great heroes are the

people who have spoken out against war. Those are the heroes, you know.

And so, well, I think—yeah, I think we have to change, change our

mindset. We have to understand certain things that we haven’t maybe

thought about enough. I think one of the things we haven’t thought about

enough—because this is basic, and this is crucial—we haven’t

realized, or at least not expressed it consciously, that the government’s

interests are not the same as our interests. Really. And so, when they talk

about the national interest, they’re creating what Kurt Vonnegut used to

call a “granfalloon.” A granfalloon was, so, a meaningless abstraction

and when you put together that don’t belong together, you see a

“national security”—no—and “national interest.” No, there’s

no one national interest. There’s the interest of the president of the

United States, and then there’s the interest of the young person he sends

to war. They’re different interests, you see? There is the interest of

Exxon and Halliburton, and there’s the interest of the worker, the

nurse’s aide, the teacher, the factory worker. Those are different

interests. Once you recognize that you and the government have different

interests, that’s a very important step forward in your thinking, because

if you think you have a common interest with the government, well, then it

means that if the government says you must do this and you must do that,

and it’s a good idea to go to war here, well, the government is looking

out for my interest. No, the government is not looking out for your

interest. The government has its own interests, and they’re not the

interests of the people. Not just true in the United States, it’s true

everywhere in the world. Governments generally do not represent the

interests of their people. See? That’s why governments keep getting

overthrown, because people at a certain point realize, “Hey! No, the

government is not serving my interest.”

That’s also why governments lie. Why do governments lie? You must

know that governments lie—not just our government; governments, in

general, lie. Why do they lie? They have to lie, because their interests

are different than the interests of ordinary people. If they told the

truth, they would be out of office. So you have to recognize, you know,

that the difference, difference in interest.

And the—well, I have to say something about war, a little more than

I have said, and what I say about them, because I’ve been emphasizing the

importance of renouncing war and not being a war-making nation, and because

it will not be enough to get us out of Iraq. One of these days, we’ll get

out of Iraq. We have to get out of Iraq. We don’t belong there. And

we’re going to have to get out of there. Sooner or later, we’re going

to have to get out of there. But we don’t want to have to—we don’t

want to get out of Iraq and then have to get out of somewhere else. We

don’t have to get out of Iraq but keep troops in Afghanistan, as

unfortunately, you know, Obama said, troops in Afghanistan. No, no

more—not just Iraq. We have to get into a mindset about renouncing war,

period, and which is a big step.

And my ideas about war, my thoughts about war, the sort of the

conclusions that I’ve come to about war, they really come from two

sources. One, from my study of history. Of course, not everybody who

studies history comes to the same conclusions. But, you know, you have to

listen to various people who study history and decide what makes more

sense, right? I’ve looked at various histories. I’ve concluded that my

history makes more sense. And I’ve always been an objective student of

these things, yes. But my—yeah, my ideas about war come from two sources.

One of them is studying history, the history of wars, the history of

governments, the history of empires. That history helps a lot in

straightening out your thinking.

And the other is my own experience in war. You know, I was in World

War II. I was a Air Force bombardier. I dropped bombs on various cities in

Europe. That doesn’t make me an expert. Lots of people were in wars, and

they all come out with different opinions. Well, so all I can do is give

you my opinion based on my thinking after having been in a war. I was an

enthusiastic enlistee in the Air Force. I wanted to be in the war, war

against fascism, the “good war,” right? But at the end of the war, as I

looked around and surveyed the world and thought about what I had done and

thought about—and learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and learned about

Dresden and learned about Hamburg and learned things I didn’t even

realize while I was bombing, because when you’re involved in a military

operation, you don’t think. You just—you’re an automaton, really. You

may be a well-educated and technically competent automaton, but that’s

what you—you aren’t really—you’re not questioning, not questioning

why. “Why are they sending me to bomb this little town? When the war is

almost over, there’s no reason for dropping bombs on several thousand

people.” No, you don’t think.

Well, I began to think after the war and began to think that—and I

was thinking now about the good war, the best war, and I was thinking,

“Oh.” And then I began to see, no, this good war is not simply good.

This best of wars, no. And if that’s true of this war, imagine what is

true of all the other obviously ugly wars about which you can’t even use

the word “good.”

So, yeah, and I began to realize certain things, that war corrupts

everybody, corrupts everybody who engages in it. You start off, they’re

the bad guys. You make an interesting psychological jump. The jump is this:

since they’re the bad guys, you must be the good guys. No, they may very

well be the bad guys. They may be fascists and dictators and bad, really

bad guys. That doesn’t mean you’re good, you know? And when I began to

look at it that way, I realized that wars are fought by evils on both

sides. You know, one is a little more evil than the other. But even though

you start in a war with sort of good intentions—we’re going to defeat

fascism, we’re going to do this—you end up being corrupted, you end up

being violent, you end up killing a lot of innocent people, because

you’ve decided from the beginning that you’re right, and then you

don’t have to ask questions anymore. That’s an interesting

psychological thing that you—trick that you play. Well, you start

out—you make a decision at the very beginning. The decision is: they’re

wrong, I’m right. Once you have made that decision, you don’t have to

think anymore. Then anything you do goes. Anything you do is OK, because

you made the decision early on that they’re bad, you’re good. Then you

can kill several hundred thousand people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then

you can kill 100,000 people in Dresden. It doesn’t matter. You’re not

thinking about it. Yeah, war corrupts everybody who engages in it.

So what else can I say about war? Lots of things. But I took out my

watch presumably because I care. And I don’t. But I—you know, people

will present you with humanitarian awards. Oh, this is for a good cause.

The thing about war is the outcome is unpredictable. The immediate thing

you do is predictable. The immediate thing you do is horrible, because war

is horrible. And if somebody promises you that, “Well, this is horrible,

like we have to bomb these hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. This

is horrible, but it’s leading to a good thing,” truth is, you never

know what this is leading to. You never know the outcome. You never know

what the future is. You know that the present is evil, and you’re asked

to commit this evil for some possible future good. Doesn’t make sense,

especially since if you look at the history of wars, you find out that

those so-called future goods don’t materialize. You know, the future good

of World War II was, “Oh, now we’re rid of fascism. Now we’re going

to have a good world, a peaceful world. Now the UN Charter, the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights. 50 million people died in World War II, but

now it’s going to be OK.” Well, you’ve lived these years since World

War II. Has it been OK? Can you say that those 50 million lives

were—yeah, it had to be done because—because of what? No, the

wars—violence in general is a quick fix. It may give you a feeling that

you’ve accomplished something, but it’s unpredictable in its ends. And

because it’s corrupting, the ends are usually bad.

So, OK, I won’t say anything more about war. And, you know, of

course, it wastes people. It wastes wealth. It’s an enormous, enormous

waste.

And so, what is there to do? We need to educate ourselves and other

people. We need to educate ourselves in history. History is very important.

That’s why I went into a little history, because, you know, if you

don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were

born yesterday, then any leader can tell you anything, you have no way of

checking up on it. History is very important. I don’t mean formal

history, what you learn in a classroom. No, history, if you’re learning,

go to the library. Go—yeah, go to the library and read, read, learn,

learn history. Yeah, so we have an educational job to do with history.

We have an educational job to do about our relationship to

government, you know, and to realize that disobedience is essential to

democracy, you see. And it’s important to understand democracy is not the

three branches of government. It’s not what they told us in junior high

school. “Oh, this is democracy. We have three branches of government,

kiddos, the legislative, the executive, judicial. We have checks and

balances that balance one another out. If somebody does something bad, it

will be checked by”—wow! What a neat system! Nothing can go wrong.

Well, now, those structures are not democracy. Democracy is the people.

Democracy is social movements. That’s what democracy is. And what history

tells us is that when injustices have been remedied, they have not been

remedied by the three branches of government. They’ve been remedied by

great social movements, which then push and force and pressure and threaten

the three branches of government until they finally do something. Really,

that’s democracy.

And no, we mustn’t be pessimistic. We mustn’t be cynical. We

mustn’t think we’re powerless. We’re not powerless. That’s where

history comes in. If you look at history, you see people felt powerless and

felt powerless and felt powerless, until they organized, and they got

together, and they persisted, and they didn’t give up, and they built

social movements. Whether it was the anti-slavery movement or the black

movement of the 1960s or the antiwar movement in Vietnam or the women’s

movement, they started small and apparently helpless; they became powerful

enough to have an effect on the nation and on national policy. We’re not

powerless. We just have to be persistent and patient, not patient in the

passive sense, but patient in the active sense of having a kind of faith

that if all of us do little things—well, if all of us do little things,

at some point there will be a critical mass created. Those little things

will add up. That’s what has happened historically. People were

disconsolate, and people thought they couldn’t end, but they kept doing,

doing, doing, and then something important happened.

And I’ll leave you with just one more thought, that if you do that,

if you join some group, if you join whatever the group is, a group that’s

working on, you know, gender equality or racism or immigrant rights or the

environment or the war, whatever group you join or whatever little action

you take, you know, it will make you feel better. It will make you feel

better. And I’m not saying we should do all these things just to make

ourselves feel better, but it’s good to know that life becomes more

interesting and rewarding when you become involved with other people in

some great social cause. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Legendary historian Howard Zinn, speaking at Binghamton

University, Upstate New York, just after the election, on November 8th.

Howard Zinn is author of, among many other books, A People’s History of

the United States.

Alan L. Maki

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