RobsRealNews

High-Wage America
How we can reclaim a middle-class society
BY ROBERT KUTTNER

THIS PROSPECT SPECIAL REPORT HAS DEMONSTRATED that America is needlessly
generating a disproportionate number of low-wage jobs, and that other paths are
possible.
Low-wage America is a nation of hard-working people struggling to make ends meet-and
a nation of politically disaffiliated and disempowered citizens. These two realities are
related. As Christopher Jencks suggests in his introduction, an America with a different
constellation of political forces could be an America with a different structure of wages
and career opportunities-as, indeed, our country has been in the not-too-distant past.
The story is therefore less about technological inevitabilities than politically determined
social arrangements.
This collection of articles should also lay to rest two related, powerful myths. The first is
that it's natural and desirable just to let many manufacturing and service jobs go to lower-
wage countries, and that American ingenuity will simply replace them with better jobs. In
truth, the trading system, like the domestic economic system, is based on a set of
politically determined rules. The current trading system serves investors over workers
and undermines a more egalitarian social compact at home and overseas. But the
present trade regime, like its domestic counterpart, is not the only possible system.
The second myth is that the widening wage inequality and proliferation of low-wage jobs
are primarily the result of a skills deficit, which has been intensified by increased demand
for "knowledge workers" in an era of corporate restructuring. The old, stable firm with its
paternalistic responsibility for workers has been replaced by shifting and contingent
loyalties. In the new economy, supposedly, what protects workers is their "employability"
-the skills, and capacity to learn new skills, that they can bring to a succession of
employers.
This story rings true for some workers in some industries. However, this special report
demonstrates that in diverse fields, workers with exemplary skills are being displaced
into lower-wage jobs; that many jobs combine advanced technologies with low-skill
work; and that advanced workers in America are increasingly in head-to head
competition with one another, and with equally competent, cheaper foreign workers.
Some of the most highly skilled workers of all, such as doctors, are experiencing salary
reductions and intensified work demands because of revisions "in.soclal arrangements
that have nothing whatever to do with skills or learning capacity.
Better education and training per se will not ensure that bad jobs are replaced with good
ones. Certainly America needs better systems of basic education and lifelong learning, for
civic reasons as well as economic ones. Broadly speaking, a well-educated workforce is
the source of an affluent society and an effective democracy. But the allocation of that
affluence is also a result of social arrangements that can be either friendly or hostile to
wage and salaried workers. So the distribution of earned income reflects not just
distribution of skills but of political power. Improving the human-capital side of the
employment equation will produce only frustrated, overeducated workers unless there is
a rendezvous with good jobs. The idealized progression of an America steadily shedding
bad jobs and adding good ones requires supportive policies; it will not just happen
spontaneously.

IF THE STORY IS NOT PRIMARILY ONE OF SKILLS DEFICITS, what is it then? The low-
wage job problem is mainly the consequence of a new social contract strikingly different
from that of the post-World War II boom. Without romanticizing that era, which mostly
excluded blacks and women from good jobs and careers, it's worth recalling that the
ground rules from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970S included stronger regulation of
industries and of labor markets, broader acceptance of trade unions, and more insulation
of the domestic economy from speculative international capital flows and low-wage
competition. Consequently, ordinary wage and salaried workers had more bargaining
power to command more of the total economic product. The earnings distribution
actually became slightly more equal between 1947 and 1973, a period also noted for
robust gross domestic product growth and relatively tight labor markets. So this more
highly regulated and socially just form of capitalism coexisted happily with an efficient
economy.
The period that followed removed each of these props. Labor regulation was weakened.
Industry began aggressively resisting unions. As business regained political power in the
1970s, both parties also dismantled economic regulation, with the net effect of reducing
worker bargaining power. For example, a regulated telephone or electric monopoly does
not compete by reducing wages; a deregulated one does. The era that began in the
1970S was also one of slower growth and accelerating import penetration, which also
undermined domestic wages. As the system stopped delivering for lower-wage workers,
they increasingly stopped participating in politics. By the time high rates of productivity
growth returned in the late 1990S, they did so in a radically transformed institutional and
political context.
In the current era, firms are largely free of regulatory constraints, and managers can
choose whatever path they desire. The deregulated environment has intensified com
petitive pressures to cut costs, which often turn out to be labor costs. The Russell Sage-
Rockefeller study identified a low-wage, cost-cutting paradigm in which firms minimize
the employment of permanent workers, rely on temps and contract hires, shift work to
lower-wage locations, and live with barely competent workers and high rates of turnover
as acceptable costs of doing business. But the study identified an alternative competitive
strategy in which employees are viewed as assets, training for career progression is seen
as a valuable investment, work processes are regularly reorganized (with worker input) to
increase productivity and innovation (again with worker involvement) is continuous. Note
that in both models, firms save costs by replacing human workers with machines, But
the former strategy yields more decently paying jobs

SUPPOSE WE COULD RAISE POLITICAL participation and put the low-wage job problem
at the center of national debate. What would be the most effective levers of national
policy?
Unions. As several articles in this special section vividly show, unions can be forces not
just for better wages and working conditions but for skills training and career paths. The
resulting wage premium, often, is more than offset by the reduced turnover and
increased worker productivity. The viability of unions, in turn, is the product of worker
and employer attitudes, oflaws protecting the right to organize, and of the competitive
environment of the firm and the industry, A Las Vegas hotel can't ,relocate to Bangalore.
Increased labor costs of paying a living wage are passed along to tourists. Organize the
whole town and the unionized hotel suffers no competitive disadvantage. On the
contrary, the union hotel's better trained, paid and motivated staff attracts customers.
Las Vegas is thus fertile soil for organizing. Even so, the success there took extraordinary
leadership, strategy 0 and mobilization. Similar strategies have been pursued by the _
Service Employees International Union, whose Justice for ; Janitors campaign seeks to
organize the entire local building_ cleaning industry and then raise wages across the
board.
_ What's true of hotels and janitors should be generally _ true of retailing, health care and
education, all of which _ stay close to customers, too. Even so, aspects of retailing
(Internet sales), education (distance learning) and even, health care (remote reading of X-
rays by radiologists in India, back-office record keeping and billing in the Philippines) can
be located almost anywhere. As we've seen, call-center organizing is tougher than hotel
organizing because the work itself can so easily be moved. However, even in a global,
Internet economy, a goodly percentage of the workforce necessarily stays near its
customers. The biggest single boost to labor organizing would be to enforce the freedom
to join a union and bargain collectively that was ostensibly guaranteed in the Wagner Act
of 1935.
Economic Regulation, It is hard to imagine a full return t_ the regulation of the postwar
boom, with regulated, shared monopolies in telecommunications, airlines, hospitals,
electric power, broadcasting and several other core industries. Yet some of the
deregulation introduced in the 1970S and '80S overreached and has harmed both the
larger 'economy and the distribution of income and good jobs. More stringent financial
regulation and a crackdown on options abuses could narrow
the compensation spread between senior executives and ordinary workers. Tax penalties
could reduce the incentives of American firms to flee to tax havens and to walk away
from enterprises created with subsidies from local government. Tough pension
regulation would make retirement security part of the basic employment package. The
federal Davis-Bacon Act, requiring payment of "prevailing wages" in construction
contracts, has long used federal procurement to ensure decent earnings (and effective
unions) in the skilled trades. The government could similarly use its power as purchaser
to raise wages and create career paths in child care and nursing homes. Right-to-know
legislation could enlist consumers on the side of workers. Socialization of health-
insurance costs would save corporations money and increase workers' basic purchasing
power.
.

Labor Regulation. The federal minimum wage, at-$5.15 an hour, is far below the
purchasing power it once had (greater than $7 in today's dollars). Regulations could
reduce the incentive to shift to temps and contract workers by requiring that contingent
workers receive the same fringe benefits as permanent employees. Unemployment
insurance increases the bargaining power of all workers to hold out for better wages.
Like the minimum wage, unemployment insurance has been weakened-fewer months of
benefits, a lower ratio of benefits to wages and fewer workers covered. All of these
regulatory changes would help induce employers to offer better jobs. But, as noted, the
single most important regulatory reform would be modernization of the Wagner Act to
require recognition of a union when a majority of workers have signed union cards, and
to add serious punishments for employers who retaliate against pro-union workers
(something the law already prohibits but seldom punishes).

when a majority of workers have signed union cards, and to add serious punishments for
employers who retaliate against pro-union workers (something the law already prohibits
but seldom punishes).
Tight Labor Markets. In the late 1990S, the brief period of full employment yielded
dramatic gains for the lowest paid workers. In Europe, with its more highly regulated
labor markets and more generous social benefits, higher unemployment has less effect
on the wages of most employed workers. But in the United States, full employment is
relatively more important as a source of higher wages.
Active Labor-Market Policies. The United States has no comprehensive strategy for
systematically upgrading worker skills and creating partnerships that reward training and
technology. Rather, we have a profusion of disconnected local experiments. The more
that American. workers are exposed to low-wage competition from abroad,. the more
important it becomes to create a national competitive advantage based on skills and
technology. Workforce development, career ladders and technology partnerships add up
to what the Swedes have long called an "active labor-market policy. Sweden's relentless
and systematic upgrading of the technical virtuosity of its corporations and workers has
allowed it to survive as a small, high-wage nation with an open economy. An active labor
market is not a silver bullet; rather it is one tool among many that also include" wage
regulation, full employment and unionization.

GLOBAL TRADE IS THE TOUGHEST ISSUE, BOTH Conceptually and institutionally. The
simpleminded case against free trade is that it exports jobs. The glib and conventional
rejoinder is that increased global commerce allows capital, work and technology to flow
to wherever they will be most efficiently deployed. When lower-wage workers take jobs
formerly held by Americans, developing nations get higher living standards, and
Americans get cheaper products and the opportunity to move to better jobs. So
everyone wins, and critics are protectionist fools.
But there is also a complex case against global commerce as currently structured. The
issue is less the protection of existing jobs than the protection of a hard-won social
contract. Over the past century, Americans and citizens of other advanced countries
have struggled to overcome the anomalies and injustices of a market economy. A laissez-
faire system over-pollutes and under-invests in research, health, education, training and
other social goods that benefit economic development. Laissez-faire tolerates financial
manipulation and imbalances of demand that periodically result in depressions. A
relatively closed system permits both the politics and economics on which citizens can
build a mixed economy-a more efficient and just form of regulated capitalism. We are
voting citizens of the United States of America. There are no citizens of the World Trade
Organization (WTO).
The Economic Policy Institute recently reported that in the past eight recoveries, the
labor share of total income growth never fell below 55 percent of total income. In this
recovery, labor's share is just 29 percent. The gap between executive compensation and
worker compensation has never been wider, either. These are the results of an altered
social compact and shifts in political power that have both domestic and global
dynamics.
   Footloose capital can flee domestic regulation by relocating to nations with lax labor
laws, environmental protections, tax collections and social investments. Industry is very
alert to this reality and demands extraterritorial enforcement of the laws that protect its
interests. Intellectual-property rights, repatriation of profits), but it is delighted to shed
the laws that protect worker and citizen rights. Globalization absent social regulation, in
short, allows industry to return to the political economy of the robber-baron era-the
property rights without the labor and social rights.
Preventing global trade from punishing nations and firms with decent wages and social
benefits requires strategies for sustaining our own mixed economy and extending it
worldwide-as a condition of membership in the trading system. That, and not simple
protectionism, is the context in which demands arise for better wages, working
conditions and environmental standards in the Third World.
By the same token, there is no pure and simple definition of what constitutes free or fair
trade. If a government subsidizes domestic production, that is presumably "WTO illegal."
But what if it subsidizes labor costs by giving workers health benefits or an Earned
Income Tax 'Credit? What if it subsidizes industry by offering below market loans or the
fruits of government-subsidized basic research? What if regional subsidies to depressed
areas produce export winners? What if government subsidizes export industries by
failing to enforce its own labor laws, as Mexico and China palpably do? All governments
do :these things to varying degrees. But America tends to cut nations like China a great
deal of slack, partly because we need their help geopolitically and partly because the
current, business-dominated administration has no problem with U.S.-based firms
moving cheap production to China.
So the quest for pure free trade is an illusion. The rules are negotiable. We should be
restructuring the trading system so that it supports, rather than undermines, high wage
societies in each of its member countries.
None of these policies, alone, will return America to the high-wage path. But taken
together, they will produce an economy more productive and far more equal than we
now have. .

THE LASTWORD
Where_ Are the Rational Greedy Bastards?
BY ROBERT B. REICH

Why is big business so enthusiastic about another Bush term? Yes, corporations have gotten a few fat tax
breaks and regulatory rollbacks, and more face time with the president than do White House security guards.
But on the issues that count: the current administration and its allies are undermining the foundations of
American business. Consider the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office now says it will total more than $420
billion this year, with no end in sight. George W. Bush promises to halve it over the next four years. Wall Street
knows that's rubbish, which is partly why the stock market is stuck in neutral. There's just no human way he can
cut the deficit and also deliver on his promises to make his tax cuts permanent and adjust the alternative
minimum tax, while at the same time chasing terrorists, paying for the new Medicare drug benefit, maintaining
agribusiness' subsidies, and financing all the other things hardwired into the Bush budgets. Privately, CEOs
and Wall Street bankers fret about the mounting red ink. They remember what happened to the economy under
previous Republicans, and they know supply-side economics is bunk masquerading as a free lunch.
Or take Bush's go-it-alone nationalism. Most big businesses are global. They depend on worldwide networks of
consumers, suppliers, and investors, so they need international goodwill. But under Bush, the United States
has become the global village's town bully. Bush has thumbed his nose at long-standing allies and turned his
back on every international organization and treaty that stands in his way. The CEO of an American-based
clothing giant told me that his firm is "playing down" its U.S. parentage "in light of public opinion" where it does
business abroad. CEOs and Wall Streeters also see the steady decline of support for free trade around the
world, another casualty of the current unilateralism. And they see the slide in foreign investment. Foreigners
are investing less in America because global investors are worried about the direction this nation is heading
under W.
And then there are the right-wing evangelicals. Today their fanaticism is directed at the entertainment
industry,      Makers of contraceptives, and stem cell researchers, but will they stop there? Their next targets
could be the advertising         industry, makers of cosmetics, perfume, and alluring clothes.
After all, American business packages sex in many forms. And not just sex: A large portion of our gross national
product is based on appeals to what might be called the baser instincts. American business is the giant engine
of modernism.It embodies innovation and experimentation. It celebrates appetite and pleasure. Right-wing
fundamentalism in America could easily take the form of a backlash against pleasure-filling capitalism, as has
fundamentalism elsewhere.Given all this, why are so many CEOs and Wall Street bankers enthusiastic about
Bush? One investment banker with Democratic leanings offered me the only explanation he could think of. "It's
greed," he said, simply. "They love the tax cuts. They just want to keep more of their money." And what of all
the long-term dangers I've enumerated? "They don't think long-term," was his snap response.
But not even this explanation seems totally convincing. After all, America's , tycoons did far better under Bill
Clinton than they’ve done under George II. Their salaries soared and stock options ballooned.         The end
wasn't fun, of course, but that was because the market had reached unsustainable heights. But during the
Clinton years, stocks still tripled in value. After four years of George W. Bush, the Dow has barely moved. A
rationally self-interested greedy bastard who never thought about the future would far prefer the Clinton years
to another four years of Bush, even with Bush's tax cuts. John Kerry promises to continue Clinton's economic
policies, so the greedy bastard should line up behind Kerry.
The answer has more to do with ideology than with rational thought. The Bush administration is filled with CEOs
who speak the language of big business. They're at home with spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations,
They make "hard" decisions. They stick to their guns. The deficit may be out of control, the world may have
turned against us, right-wing religious fanatics may be beating at their doors, their own stock portfolios may be
disappointing. But their friends are in the White House, and, it seems that's all they really care about.

The widow of the Mel Carnahan, the democratic nominee for the senate from Missouri, beat John Ashcroft, in
his bid for the US Senate in November 2000. A few weeks before the election, forseeing Ashcrofts defeat and
unable to rig the voting machines, elements of the CIA tampered with Carnahans plane so it would crash. They
never thought his widow could beat Ashcroft. An unexpected turnout of black voters put Carnahans widow on
top. This occured in spite of conservatives use of every ploy imaginable to keep black voters away from the
polls. Before the next race they did the same thing to Paul Welstones plane making sure his wife was on board.
After Wellstones assasination the Republicans siezed the senate and made the good christian they killed for,
John Ashcroft, Attorney General. My conspiracy theory is that since Ronald Reagan the country has been
taken over from some right wing fanatics from the University of Chicago who will literally do anything to force
their ideology on the world.

This briefly describes the healthcare system that is needed. If the profiteers try to prevent such a plan from
being implemented they will have to be shot.

Cure a Sick Healthcare System
Universal coverage under National Health Insurance

LIKE CAPISTRANO'S SWALLOWS, THE Democrats always return to health reform. Unfortunately,
this year they're showing little more brain power than the birds.
Don't get us wrong, we're no fans of President George Bush's health agenda: Ship tens of billions of federal
dollars to a panoply of health care firms privatize Medicare and dangle skimpy tax credits in front of the 44
million uninsured. But Kerry seems intent on refilling a failed prescription for reform: by proposing to give
hundreds of billions to private insurers in exchange for measly coverage for some of the uninsured. Our
healthcare system is so sick that even people with good insurance are feeling the fever. Premiums for
employers and their workers are rising 12 percent, even 18 percent per year. Employers have downsized
coverage by super-sizing copayments and deductibles. Insurance often proves illusory when it's most needed-
payment denials, visit limits, loopholes and policy cancellations leave millions stuck with huge medical bills
despite what they thought was good coverage. Most people's choice of doctors and hospitals is restricted.
Seniors can't afford drugs, Medicaid recipients face draconian cuts and everyone's rushed out of the hospital.

Investor-owned healthcare has flourished, despite definitive evidence that it raises both costs and death rates.
And bandit CEOs regularly raid our health system, making off with seven- and even eight-figure incomes as
their reward for cooking the books, defrauding Medicare and abusing patients to inflate profits.
Bush's signal healthcare achievement, passage of the $534 billion Medicare drug bill, already is unravelling.
Double-digit yearly price increases-even for older drugs-already have eaten up the paltry savings (about 15
percent) available from the recently introduced Medicare drug discount cards. Even the massive flow of federal
funds that will commence in 2006, when the full drug benefit kicks in, will only get seniors back where they
started last year in terms of drug spending.
Why will $534 billion in new federal spending (over 10 years) buy so little? First, the new drug coverage will be
purchased through private insurance plans with overhead costs that average four times Medicare's. Second,
the bill prohibits Medicare from negotiating with drug companies to lower their prices (and effectively bans
imports of Canadian drugs on the preposterous pretext that         they're unsafe). Both the Canadian
government and our own Defense Department have used their purchasing clout to garner volume discounts.
Prohibiting such bargaining assures drug firms of hundreds of billions in excess profits.
Finally, the bill hands Medicare HMOs-which have been ripping off Medicare for years-an extra $46 billion.
Since 1985, Medicare has paid HMOs for seniors who choose to enroll. The payment formula has allowed
HMOs to collect far more than it would have cost the taxpayers to care for these seniors in the traditional
Medicare program. The Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office have estimated these
extra costs at about $2 billion per year. Yet HMOs-burdened by administrative overhead far higher than
Medicare's
complained they couldn't make a profit from Medicare patients.
Bush's solution? Send them more money. So in 2004, Medicare will pay HMOs an extra $552 above the cost of
traditional Medicare for each senior they enroll, according to an estimate by the Commonwealth Fund.
Incredibly, the Republicans (and many Democrats) describe this corporate welfare program as a "pro-
competition" health policy. Drug firms are granted patents that shield them from generic competitors, foreign
drug imports are banned, government is precluded from negotiating over prices and HMOs are given huge
subsidies to compete unfairly against Medicare-all in the name of competition.
Sadly, many Bush initiatives merely continued Clinton's policies. Kerry promises more of the same. He proposes
to spend about $65 billion annually to expand coverage through two mechanisms: One, offer government
subsidies for private insurance; two, expand Medicaid. As a nod to middleclass Americans, he'd try to hold
down private premiums by having the feds pick up the tab for any patient whose care costs more than $50,000-
a misguided effort that shifts some costs to the taxpayers but leaves control in the hands of private firms.
Kerry's massive new spending would leave at least 17 million uninsured (by his own estimate) and tens of
millions more with inadequate coverage, and stimulate the malignant growth of health care costs.
In contrast, a single payer national health insurance (NHI) program could simultaneously cover all of the
uninsured, upgrade coverage for most other Americans and save money. Under NHI, everyone would be
covered for care at any hospital, doctor's office or clinic without copayments or deductibles. Patients would
enjoy a free choice of provider, and doctors and nurses would be freed from the massive bureaucracy that
encumbers care and wastes money. For-profit ownership of hospitals and other clinical facilities would be
proscribed, and private health insurers and most HMOs would be eliminated-saving billions now squandered on
profits and executives' incomes, while upgrading quality.
Surprisingly, universal coverage under NHI would not increase health costs. At $6,200 per capita, Americans
already spend nearly twice as much for care as do Canadians, Australians, Germans, Swedes and the Swiss-all
of whom enjoy universal coverage and lower death rates than ours. Much of the cost difference is due to our
mammoth health bureaucracy, which wastes upward of $300 billion annually. NHI could slash bureaucracy by
replacing the current welter of private plans with a single public payer and simplifying payments. Even the
Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office concede that NHI could save enough on
bureaucracy to cover all Americans for what we're now spending.
On the contrary, Kerry's plan would actually boost bureaucracy. He'd funnel hundreds of billions of additional
public dollars through wasteful private plans. And he'd do nothing to cut the tens of billions that doctors and
hospitals waste on insurance paperwork. Kerry claims administrative savings for his plan-through computerized
billing and claims processing. But such claims are not credible; more than two-thirds of all healthcare bills
already are filed electronically. It's not sending the bill that's expensive. It's the insurance advertising and sales,
utilization review, eligibility determination, obtaining pre-approvals for referrals, cost-tracking, and co-payment
collections. All would continue under Kerry.
For the 85 percent of Americans who currently have insurance, Kerry offers virtually nothing. No plausible plan
to upgrade their coverage, slow premium increases, bring down drug costs, improve quality, or expand the
number of nurses. He'd just ask taxpayers facing skyrocketing premiums to chip in for the coverage of the
uninsured.
Much of what Kerry is proposing already was tried, and failed miserably. Medicaid expansion has been pushed
by Democrats for decades. Since 1987, 11.4 million people have been added to the Medicaid rolls, and
Medicaid spending has risen from $50 billion to $228 billion, eating a hole in state budgets. Yet the number of
uninsured has grown by 10.2 million people during this period, and Medicaid has remained second-class
coverage, segregating the poor. On many measures, Medicaid patients fare no better than the uninsured.
Medicaid should be replaced by mainstream coverage, not expanded.
Subsidies for private coverage also have a dismal track record. A 2002 federal program offers to pay 65
percent of premium costs for workers who've lost jobs due to foreign imports. As of December 31, 2003, 8,874
of the 500,000 eligible workers were taking advantage of the subsidy. With private coverage costing about
$10,000 per family, few low income workers can afford insurance, even with a big boost from government.
NHI isn't just good policy, its good politics. According to a recent Washington Post! ABC News poll, 62 percent
of Americans favor "a universal health insurance program, in which everyone is covered under a program like
Medicare that's run by the government and financed by taxpayers:'
Of course, NHI would be a death blow to the health insurance industry and it would threaten the super-profits of
powerful drug and hospital firms. Presumably, that is why only Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich have been
willing to buck the special interests, and say what Americans long to hear about health care: NHI can succeed.
Healthcare is a right, not a commodity. .

STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER and DAVID HIMMELSTEIN are professors of medicine at Harvard University and co-
founders of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org).

Were Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore by Garrison Keillor

    How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their
Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose   philosophy is   a jumble of badly sutured' body parts
trying to walk?

SOMETHING HAS GONE SERIOUSLY haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic
Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their
communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who
vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and
Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American
hero of D-Day, who made itOK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a
stalemate, produced   the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue        the French colonial army in
Vietnam, and gave us         a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly)American arts and letters
flourished and higher education burgeoned-and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties
Republicans were giants compared to today's. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian
obligation toward the poor. In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated south down the
Twisted Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the
Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and
fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while
George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon
moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on
pure punk' politics. "Bipartisanship is another term of date rape:' says Grover Norquist, the Sid vicious of the
GOP. "1 don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where 1 can drag it into the
bathroom and drown it in the bathtub:' The boy has Oedipal problems and government s his daddy.
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy backed swamp developers and
corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience,
freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants,
brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people
who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest
of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of
information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk.
Republicans: The NO.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf dumb and dangerous.
Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough!
Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write
legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! 0h Mark
Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding
great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.
Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy-the single greatest failure of
national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a
tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock
up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt
that' will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken
for the president's personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a
war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing
upward, and the deception is working beautifully.
The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in
the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours.
The omens are not good.
Our beloved land has been fogged with fear-fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence,
distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the
opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bulletbrained judges, strip the bark off the
Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press,
lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.
There is a stink drifting through this election. It isn't the Florida recount or the Supreme court decision. No, it's
9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn't the "end of innocence;' or a ruing point in our history, or a cosmic
occurance, it was an event, a lapse of security. And .patriotism shouldn't prevent people from asking hard
questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time. Whenever I think of those
New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the NO.1 subway local, hustling toward their office on 90th
floor, the morning paper under their arms I think of that non-reader George W. Bush,_ how he hopes to exploit
those people with
A little economic uptick, maybe the capture of _Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some
serious nation-changing done in his second term.
This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated
Unitarians, whacked-out hippies _ communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the
Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of
the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with
punishing enthusiasm.
The Union is what needs defending this year. ",Government of Enron and by Halliburton and the Southern
Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus _Republicanii has humbugged
us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right
know what books we read and to dump their _sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut forests and gut the
IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote corporate takeover of the public
airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. This is a great country, and it wasn't made so angry
people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it.
We have a long way to go and were not getting any younger.
Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have
spoken my piece, and thank you, reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than
winning. .

America as a one Party State
Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It’s packing the court and rigging the rules. The target is not the
Democrats but democracy itself
BY ROBERT KUTTNER

AMERICA HAS HAD PERIODS OF SINGLE-PARTY DOMinance before. It happened under FDR's New Deal, in
the Republican 1920S and in the early 19th-century "Era of Good Feeling." But if President Bush is re-elected,
we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. The United States could
become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and
is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S.
history.
In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the
electorate remains closely divided, and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican
ones. Yet the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little press scrutiny or
widespread popular protest.
We are at risk of becoming an autocracy in three key respects. First, Republican parliamentary gimmickry has
emasculated legislative opposition in the House of Representatives (the Senate has other problems). House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas has both intimidated moderate Republicans and reduced the minority
party to window dressing, rather like the token opposition parties in Mexico during the six decade dominance of
the PRI.
Second, electoral rules have been rigged to make it increasingly difficult for the incumbent party to be ejected
by the voters, absent a Depression-scale disaster, Watergate class scandal or Teddy Roosevelt-style ruling
party split. After two decades of bipartisan collusion in the creation of safe House seats, there are now perhaps
just 25 truly contestable House seats in any given election year (and that's before the recent Republican super
gerrymandering). What once was a slender and precarious majority-229 Republicans to 205 Democrats
(including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who votes with Democrats)-now looks like a Republican
lock. In the Senate, the dynamics are different but equally daunting for Democrats. As the Florida debacle of
2000 showed, the Republicans are also able to hold down the number of opposition votes, with complicity from
Republican courts. Reform legislation, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), may actually facilitate
Republican intimidation of minority voters and reduce Democratic turnout. And the latest money-and-politics
regime, nominally a reform, may give the right more of a financial advantage than ever.

Third, the federal courts, which have slowed some executive branch efforts to destroy liberties, will be a
complete rubber stamp if the right wins one more presidential election.
Taken together, these several forces could well enable the Republicans to become the permanent party of
autocratic government for at least a generation. Am I exaggerating? Take a close look at the particulars.

I. LEGISLATIVE DICTATORSHIP
Political scientists used to describe America's Congress as a de facto four-party system. There were national
Democrats, mostly liberals; "Dixiecrats," who often voted with Republicans (Congressional Quarterly called this
the conservative coalition and tabulated its frequent wins); conservative Republicans; and moderate-to-liberal
"gypsy moth" Republicans, who selectively voted with Democrats.
Ad hoc coalitions shifted with issues. Back-benchers and committee chairs alike often defied both the
leadership and the party caucus. Party loyalty was guaranteed only in the biennial election of the speaker, to
give the dominant party formal majority status and perquisites. Only at rare moments, such as the New Deal's
first six years and Lyndon Johnson's _storied 89th Congress of 1965-67 (295 Democrats, 140 Republicans),
were majorities so large that one party had effective parliamentary discipline. Infrequently, there were other
moments of centralized leadership and relative party Unity, among them the 100th Congress (1987-89) under
Democratic Speaker Jim Wright and the tenures of two autocratic Republican speakers, Thomas Reed and Joe
Cannon, back in the Gilded Age. But the usual complaint, dating from political scientist Woodrow Wilson's 1885
text on Congress, was that the congressional party system was an unaccountable stew of freelancers. A
famous 1950 report by the American Political Science Association argued that more responsible parties would
make for more effective democracy.
Along with shifting coalitions and weak party discipline, there was usually reasonable comity between majority
and minority party. Major legislation was the product of lengthy committee hearings. Both parties could call
witnesses. On most bills (except tax legislation in the House) there could be floor amendments, with extensive
debate. Recorded floor amendments allowed members to be held accountable by constituents. House-Senate
conference committees included majority and minority party conferees, and their final product was a
compromise between the House bills. Go to the official congressional W (http://thomas.loc.gov/home/lawsmadl
lawsnew.txt) and you will learn that this supposedly how a bill becomes a law.

ALL THAT HAS RADICALLY CHANGEd. Seeds of the change began appearing during the speakerships of
both Democrat Jim Wright (1987-89) and Republican Newt Gingrich (1995-99), which produced more
centralized leadership and party discipline. But the more radical changes, at the expense of democracy itself,
have occurred since 2002 under Tom DeLay. Here are the( key mechanisms of DeLay's dictatorship:
Extreme Centralization. The power to write legislation has been centralized in the House Republican leadership.
Concretely that means DeLay and House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, working with
the Committee on Rules. (Hastert is seen in some quarters as a figurehead, but his man Palmer is as powerful
as DeLay.) Drastic revisions to bills approved by committee are characteristically added leadership, often late
in the evening. Under house rules, 48 hours are supposed to elapse before floor action. But in 2003, the
leadership, 57 percent of the time wrote rules declaring bills to be "emergency measures” lowing then to be
considered with as little as thirty minutes notice. On several measures, members literally did not know what they
were voting for.
Sorry, No Amendments. Delay has us! both to write new legislation that circumvents the hearing process and to
all but eliminate floor Republicans and Democrats alike. The Rules Committee, controlled by the Republican
leadership, writes a rule specifying the terms of debate for every bill that reaches the house floor. When
Democrats controlled the House, Republicans complained bitterly when the occasional bill did not allow for
open floor amendments. In 1995, Republicans pleged reform. Gerald Solomon, the new Republic chairman of
the committee, explicitly promised that at least 70% percent of bills would come to the floor with rules permitting
amendments.

Instead, the proportion of bills prohibiting amendments has steadily increased, from 56 percent during the
104th Congress (1995-97) to 76 percent in 2003. This comparison actually understates the shift, because
virtually all major bills now come to the floor with rules prohibiting amendments.
Delay has elevated votes on these rules into rigid tests of party loyalty, on a par with election of the speaker. A
Republican House member who votes against a rule structuring floor debate will lose committee assignments
and campaign funds, and can expect Delay to sponsor a primary opponent.
How does this undermine democracy? As the recent Medicare bill was coming to a vote, a majority of House
members were sympathetic to amendments allowing drug imports from Canada and empowering the federal
government to negotiate wholesale drug prices. But by prohibiting floor amendments, Delay made sure that the
bill passed as written by the leadership, and that members were spared the embarrassment (or accountability)
of voting against amendments popular with constituents.
One-Party Conferences. The Senate still allows floor amendments, but Senate-passed bills must go to
conference with the House. Democratic House and Senate conferees are increasingly barred from attending
conference committees, unless they are known turncoats. On the Medicare bill, liberal Democratic Senate
conferees Tom Daschle and Jay Rockefeller were excluded. The more malleable Democrats John Breaux and
Max Baucus, however, were allowed in. [See Matthew Yglesias, "Bad Max," page 11.] All four House Democratic
conferees were excluded. Republican House and Senate conferees work out their intra party differences, work
their respective caucuses and send the (nonamendable) bill back to each house for a quick up-or-down vote.
On the Medicare bill, members had one day to study a measure of more than 1,000 pages, much of it written
from scratch in conference.
Legislation Without Hearings. Before the Delay revolution, drafting new legislation in conference committee was
almost unknown. But under Delay, major provisions of the Medicare bill sprang fully grown from a conference
committee. Republicans got a conference to include a weakened media-concentration standard that had been
explicitly voted down by each house separately. Though both chambers had voted to block an administration
measure watering down overtime-pay protections for workers, the provision was tacked onto a must-pass bill in
conference. The official summary of House procedures, written by the (Republican appointed) House
parliamentarian and updated in June 2003, notes: "The House conferees are strictly limited in their
consideration to matters in disagreement between the two Houses. Consequently, they may not strike out or
amend any portion of the bill that was not amended by the other House. Furthermore, they may not insert new
matter that is not germane to or that is beyond the scope of the differences between the two Houses." Like the
rights guaranteed in the Soviet constitution, these rules are routinely waived.
Appropriations Abuses. Appropriations bills are must pass affairs, otherwise the government eventually shuts
down. Traditionally, substantive legislation is enacted in the usual way, then the appropriations process
approves all or part of the funding. There has long been modest abuse in the form of earmarked money for pet
pork-barrel projects and substantive riders being tacked onto appropriations bills. But since Gingrich, a lot of
substantive bill drafting has been centralized in House leadership task forces appointed by the majority leader.
And under DeLay, Appropriations subcommittee chairs must now be approved by the leadership, as well as by
the Appropriations chairman.

BUT DIDN'T THE DEMOCRATS COMMIT THE SAME ABUSES during their 40-year House majority? Basically,
no. The legislation written by stealth in the Rules Committee and in conference, and the exclusion of the
minority party from conferences, are new. In 1987-89, Speaker Jim Wright occasionally used closed rules
restricting floor amendments, but DeLay has made the railroading systematic.
Before 1975, conservative Democratic committee chairs often blocked liberal legislation, despite nominal
Democratic house majorities. In 1975, rules changes supported by the large and idealistic "Watergate class"
allowed the caucus to elect committee chairs, overturning the system of seniority. during the speakerships of
Tip O'Neill (1977-86) and Wright, the caucus gradually strengthened both the leadership and itself at the
expense of committee chairs. As speaker, Wright gained control of the Rules Committee and occasionally used
his powers to frustrate floor amendments. He devised complex rules that permitted nonbinding preliminary votes
to be overridden by the final vote. This maneuver, bitterly criticized by Republicans at the time, was the germ of
the rules abuses that DeLay has taken to dictatorial levels.
To enforce party discipline, the DeLay operation has also perfected a technique known as "catch and release."
On close pending votes, the House Republican Whip Organization, with dozens of regional whips, will target,
say, the 20 to 30 Republican members known to oppose the legislation. When he leadership gets a final head
count and determines just how many votes are needed, some will be reeled in and others let off the hook and
given permission to vote "no." ; According to Michigan Republican Nick Smith, the leadership threatened to
oppose his son's campaign to succeed him unless he voted for the Medicare bill. Basically, Republican
moderates are allowed to take turns voting against bills they either oppose on principle or know to be
unpopular in their districts. On the Medicare bill, 13 Republican House members voted one way on the House-
passed bill and the other way on the conference bill. That way they could tell constituents whatever they
needed to. As one longtime House staffer observes, "They can say, 'I would have voted to amend it, but I didn't
get the opportunity.'"
Here again, some previous House and Senate leaders were adept at squeezing wavering members with
rewards or punishments. The difference is that today's tight caucus discipline is used to enforce broader anti-
democratic abuse. On the Medicare bill, the final roll-call vote was held open a full three hours well after
midnight so that the leadership could keep pressuring Republican legislators who wanted to vote "no." Back in
1987, Republicans went ballistic when then-Speaker Wright held a vote open for a then-record extra 15
minutes. Dick Cheney, at the time a Wyoming representative, termed the move "the most arrogant, heavy
handed abuse of power I've ever seen in the 10 years that I've been here."

IN SHORT, SOME OF THESE MANEUVERS HAD EMBRYONIC antecedents, but under DeLay differences in
degree have mutated into an alarming difference in kind. Wright's regime lasted just one congressional
session. It ended unceremoniously when a minor ethics breach (Wright's bulk sales of his book) was
bootstrapped into a major scandal by a Republican back-bencher named Gingrich, leading to Wright's
resignation and his replacement by the far less partisan Tom Foley, and then to the Democrats' loss of the
House in 1994. DeLay's regime shows every sign of going on and on and on-with abuses of which the
Democrats never dreamed.
Why is there no revolt of the Republican moderates? They are split along issue lines, too intimidated and too
few to mount a serious challenge, and almost never vote as a bloc. The only House Republicans who openly
challenge DeLay as a group are those to his right, almost all of whom voted against the Medicare bill as too
expensive.
And why has this anti-democratic revolution aroused so little general attention or indignation? First, Democrats
are ambivalent about taking this issue to the country or to the press because many are convinced that nobody
cares about "process" issues. The whole thing sounds like inside baseball, or worse, like losers whining. If they
complain that big bad Tom DeLay keeps marginalizing them, as one senior House staffer puts it, "It just makes
us look weak." But when Joe Cannon, the Republican House speaker a century ago, played similar games, it
was a very big deal indeed. Press investigation and popular outrage toppled him. Today's abuses are hidden in
plain view, but the press doesn't connect the dots.
In the Senate, Democrats still have the filibuster as a weapon of last resort, though the Republicans want to
abolish it for judicial nominations. The Senate also continues to permit recorded floor amendments. But there is
far less unity among Senate Democrats than among House Democrats, and Senate Republicans are learning
anti-democratic tactics from the House. Most notably, they are complicit in the abuse of conference committees.

II. A PERMANENT LEGISLATIVE MAJORITY
It may feel like an eternity, but wall-to-wall one-party government has been in place only since Republicans took
control of the Senate briefly during 2001-they lost it when Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords quit the party that May-
and again since January 2O03. During Bill Clinton's first term, Democrats nominally controlled Congress,
though with weak discipline. Clinton himself practiced bipartisan "triangulation," which further weakened the
Democrats. Bush's presidency, by contrast, has produced a near parliamentary government, based on intense
party discipline both within Congress and between Congress and the White House. It helps that Senate Majority
leader Bill Frist literally owes his job to Karl Rove.
In one sense, parliamentary discipline is good for democracy: It enables voters to hold the party of government
accountable. If they don't like the results, they can throw the rascals out. But today, it has become far more
difficult to oust the congressional in-party. One big reason is the vanishing swing district.
If the current abuse of parliamentary processes were operating in ordinary times, the opposition party would
soon be returned to power and a cycle of reform would ensue. The 1903-11 dictatorship of the aforementioned
Joe Cannon abruptly ended when widespread outrage produced an alliance between Democrats and
Progressive Republicans to weaken the speaker's powers in 1910, and then a landslide repudiation that
November in which Republicans lost 57 seats and Democrats took control for the first time since 1895.
But since the early 1980s, the number of contestable House seats has come down and down. It's not that voter
preferences have become more stable; there are actually more registered independent voters than ever.
Rather, in state legislatures both parties have worked to create unprecedented numbers of safe congressional
seats. Sometimes the two parties have cut deals, redrawing district lines to make Republican House seats more
Republican and Democratic ones more Democratic. In other cases, a state party with a legislative majority-
Republicans in Texas today, Democrats in California in 1981-will redraw district lines that create the maximum
number of safe seats for their party. Both courses are profoundly undemocratic because each leaves most
members with little to fear from voters and reinforces the underlying pro-incumbent bias of Congress.
Both parties are partly to blame, but as the recent supergerrymandering caper in Texas illustrates, Republicans
have played dirtier. Historically, districts are redrawn only after each decennial census. The unprecedented
gerrymandering between censuses, carried out by the Texas legislature but orchestrated by Rove and Delay,
will likely shift seven seats from Democrats to Republicans. (The press paid far more attention to the jollity of
Texas Democratic state representatives fleeing to Oklahoma and New Mexico to temporarily deny Republican
legislators a quorum than to the deadly serious consequences when Republicans eventually prevailed.) A three-
judge federal appeals court panel has upheld this caper, which will eventually come before the same Supreme
Court that wrote Bush v. Gore.
Many Democrats thought themselves clever to collude in the safe-seat game. But this particular bout of musical
chairs has ended with a nearly frozen House that is structurally tilted Republican. In combination with the DeLay
parliamentary dictatorship, the consequence is a near permanent partisan lock. So today's Republican Party is
more disciplined and accountable to party leaders but far less accountable to voters.
Here are the numbers: With 229 Republicans and 205 Democrats (counting Sanders), it would take a net
Democratic pickup of just 13 seats (that's 13 Democratic gains equaling 13 Republican losses for a net swing of
26 seats) for the House to change control. Historically, that's a small swing. In the nine elections between 1968
and 1984, the median swing was 42 seats. In the nine elections since 1986, the opposition party enjoyed a
swing of 26 or more only once (the Gingrich landslide of 1994), and the median swing was just 10 seats. So
normally the current Republican majority would be vulnerable to a below-average election-year swing. Today,
however, with only about 25 effectively contestable seats, Democrats would have to win about three-quarters of
the contestable races to take control, ie., 19 Democratic wins to just six Republican wins, which in turn would
require a tidal shift of public opinion.
All told, there are as many as 60 swing seats. But many potentially competitive seats become contestable only
after the current incumbent retires or dies. Conversely, swing seats often become safe seats once an
incumbent is re-elected and entrenched. Because not all incumbents retire at once, at any given time the
number of effective contestable seats does not exceed about 25.
Note also the interplay between the legislative dictatorship and the dwindling number of swing districts. In
previous eras, a majority leader with a margin of just 26 seats' would have to carefully broker compromises both
with his own moderates and with the opposition party. But the DeLay dictatorship and the ever fewer swing
districts have combined to produce the opposite result. Individual legislators with safe seats needn't worry
about swing voters, and DeLay needn't worry about losing swing districts because so few are left. Accordingly,
the congressional Republican Party has become more militantly conservative. Like Bush, who also had no real
mandate for radical change, De Lay is governing as if his party had won by a landslide. The country may be
narrowly divided, but precious few citizens can make their votes for Congress count. A slender majority, defying
gravity (and democracy), is producing not moderation but a shift to the extremes.

HERE AGAIN THE SENATE IS A VARIATION ON THE THEME, but with the same essential consequence: long-
term one party control. Senators are of course elected statewide. By definition, there is no gerrymandering of
the Senate. (The republic's Founders achieved that in advance by giving big states and small ones the same
number of senators.) But for a variety of other reasons, Democrats are unlikely to retake the Senate anytime
soon.
One reason is the increasingly solid Republican South, something that New Democrats hoped their centrist
formula could stave off. In the 1980s and early '90S, several southern Democrats did get elected as pro-
development, pro-defense, racial moderates. But this trend has now collapsed [see Kevin Phillips, "All Eyes on
Dixie," page 24]. Lately, Democrats have lost Senate seats they held in Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. In
2004 they will very likely lose seats held by retiring incumbents in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia,
and could also lose closer races in Louisiana and Florida. Democrats do have a couple of pickup opportunities
elsewhere. But the likely southern losses make it almost a statistical impossibility for Democrats to take back the
Senate in 2004. These losses are not the result of any direct Republican assaults on democracy per se,
though holding down black southern turnout could be considered a kind of assault. But the consequences of
such losses will reinforce one-party government.

III. THUMBS ON THE ELECTORAL SCALE
In the aftermath of the Republican theft of Florida's electoral votes and the 2000 presidential election,
Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. Many states are using HAVA funds to shift from now-prohibited
punch cards or old-fashioned voting machine systems to ATM-type computer terminals. However, the three
biggest makers of such computerized voting systems have financial ties to the Republican Party, and there is
already evidence that the biggest manufacturer, Diebold, has had trouble designing tamper-proof systems.
Some Democrats, led by Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, have proposed that all such machines be backed up by
"verifiable paper trails," but this suggestion has gotten almost no Republican support. Moreover, millions of the
poorest Americans have no experience with ATMs, and could well be deterred from voting.
A second potential for mischief is the provision put into HAVA, at Republican insistence, requiring voters who
register by mail to show a government ID at the polls. This sounds innocent enough. Republicans, however,
have a long and sordid history of "ballot security" programs intended to intimidate minority voters by
threatening them with criminal prosecution if their papers are not technically in order. Chief Justice William
Rehnquist got his political start running a ballot-security program for the Republicans in the 1962 elections in
Arizona. Many civil-rights groups see the new federal ID provision of HAVA as an invitation to more such
harassment. The Department of Justice's rights division was once a bulwark against these tactics, but that
division currently reports to an attorney general named John Ashcroft.
The latest semi-reform of our system of money and politics could also backfire. The Supreme Court recently
upheld the McCain-Feingold law, which prohibits unlimited donations to political parties. Democrats have taken
comfort from the ability of Howard Dean to raise large sums of small money, while major liberal donors like
George Soros can donate vast funds to voter-registration, get-out-the-vote and issue-advocacy organizations.
But McCain-Feingold also dramatically raised the ceiling on permissible hard-money donations and allowed
unlimited sums for independent groups and state parties. The Democrats have one George Soros; the
Republicans have dozens, and many thousands more donors capable of reaching the new $2,000 hard-money
ceiling than the Democrats have.
Money also goes disproportionately to incumbents. For a generation Democrats offset Republican financial
dominance by inviting wealthy donors to invest in their incumbency. When they didn't have Congress,
Democrats had the presidency, and vice versa. No more. Now the Republicans can combine their natural
financial dominance with wall-to-wall incumbency. This financial superiority further helps cement the Republican
lock on Congress by dissuading challenges and also discourages potentially strong Democratic candidates
from running.
When you add it all up, there is still far more conservative money than progressive money. The fewer the
firewalls between big money and the electoral process, the more systematic advantage the right has in
maintaining a permanent lock.

IV. RUBBER-STAMP COURTS
Recently, several close court decisions have defended democracy and due process. In December, a federal
appeals panel in New York ruled that President Bush lacked the authority to define an American citizen arrested
in the United States as an "enemy combatant" and to deny him or her due process. Another appeals court, in
San Francisco, held that the indefinite imprisonment of 660 noncitizens at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, violated
both the U.S. Constitution and international law. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit blocked, at least temporarily, the Bush administration's efforts to gut major portions of the
Clean Air Act by administrative fiat.
However, if George W. Bush is re-elected, a Republican president will have controlled judicial appointments for
20 of the 28 years from 1981 to 2008. And Bush, in contrast to both his father and Clinton, is appointing
increasingly extremist judges. By the end of a second term, he would likely have appointed at least three more
Supreme Court justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and locked in militantly
conservative majorities in every federal appellate circuit.
How would such a Supreme Court change American democracy? We already know from Bush v. Gore that even
the current high court is a partisan rubber stamp for contested elections. A Scalia-Thomas court would narrow
rights and liberties, including the rights of criminal suspects, the right to vote, disability rights, and sexual
privacy and reproductive choice. It would countenance an unprecedented expansion of police powers, and a
reversal of the protection of the rights of women, gays and racial, religious and ethnic minorities. An analysis of
Scalia's and Thomas' rulings and dissents suggests that a Scalia-Thomas majority would also overturn
countless protections of the environment, workers and consumers, as well as weaken guarantees of the
separation of church and state, privacy, and the right of states or Congress to regulate in the public interest.
(For a full and thoroughly chilling account, see "Courting Disaster II: How a Scalia-Thomas Court Would
Endanger Our Rights and Freedoms," People for the American Way, June 2003, hH.1 J"m" "m..rl "nunl .I"n.1 nn"
OI
THE MOST PREDICTABLE PUBLIC-POLICY RESULT OF EXtended one-party rule would be the completion of
the Bush/radical-right project: the dismantling of social investment, regulation, progressive taxation, separation
of church and state, racial justice and trade unionism. The administration's opportunistic version of federalism
would continue to preempt the ability of states and localities to enact progressive policies of their own.
Even more insidiously, the radical right would likely use its wall-to-wall control of government to reduce liberties,
narrow electoral democracy and thereby minimize the risk that it would ever lose power. Republican one-party
rule would also strategically target progressive habitats, changing laws that currently tolerate or incubate oases
of progressive political power and build liberal coalitions, such as the labor movement, universal social
insurance, and an effective and valued public sector.

IS THIS ONE-PARTY SCENARIO INEVITABLE? FOR A VARIETY of structural reasons noted above, Democrats
are unlikely to take back Congress this decade, absent a national crisis or massive scandal that overwhelms
the governing party. But, contrary to the views of some of my colleagues, I think a Democrat could well win the
White House in 2004. The Democratic base is aroused in a fashion that it has not been in decades, and swing
voters may yet have second thoughts about George W. Bush. It's not at all clear what the economy and the
foreign-policy scene will look like next fall, or what scandals will ripen.
Democrats have also begun fighting back against legislative dictatorship, and this may yet become a public
issue. When the Republican Senate leadership unveiled rules changes to make it effectively impossible for
Democrats to block extremist judicial nominees with a filibuster, the democratic leadership threatened to use
parliamentary tactics to shut the place down. House Democrats are now almost as unified as their Republican
counterparts, and, if anything, even angrier. Tom DeLay may be sowing a whirlwind. And if a variation of the
2000 Florida theft is attempted in 2004, it is inconceivable that Democratic leaders and activists would show the
same docility that Al Gore displayed.
We've seen divided government before, with a Democratic president and a fiercely partisan Republican
Congress. It is not pretty. But it is much more attractive than a one-party state.
Benjamin Franklin, leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, was asked by a bystander what kind
of government the Founders had bestowed. "A republic," he famously replied, "if you can keep it." There have
been moments in American history when we kept our republic only by the slenderest of margins. This year is
one of those times.

It's Jobs, Stupid
BY ROBERT B. REICH

It's the most anemic jobs recovery on record. Productivity is soaring, but that's mainly because fewer workers
are doing more. At least 150,000 new jobs have to be created each month just to keep up with population
growth. We haven't come close.

In December, the private sector produced a paltry 1,000.
Not to be ghoulish about it, but this could be good news for Democrats seeking to regain the White House and
stem the Republican tide in Congress. There can't be a genuine recovery until jobs come back, they aren't
likely to roar back within the next nine months and George W. Bush will have a hard time convincing voters that
he's a good steward of the economy unless Americans feel that the recovery is on solid footing.':' .
But to be credible, Democrats have to come up with their own plan for how to spur job growth. And that plan
has to respond directly to the structural changes in the economy that account for this unprecedented dearth of
new jobs. Before I get to the plan, you need to understand those changes.        .
"Jobless" recoveries aren't supposed to go on this long. It used to be that businesses started hiring again when
demand picked up. No longer. Technology and globalization have given companies two easy ways of
temporizing. They can substitute off-the-shelf software (automated scanners at the supermarket, for example,
or e-ticket kiosks at the airport). Or they can outsource to low-wage workers abroad (back-office service
workers in India or manufacturing workers in China).
Eventually demand will pick up enough to restore job growth. There's still a limit to what software can do and
how much work can efficiently be out sourced. But in the meantime, millions remain unemployed, are too
discouraged to look for work, have to settle for jobs paying far less than the ones they lost or are forced to
become self-employed "consultants" (glorified temps, essentially). Worse yet, the "meantime" could drag on for
years. With so many people facing such uncertainties, consumer demand may well stall.

Bush's two major job initiatives are to gut the overtime laws and seek to allow more guest workers into the
country. Both will only make the bad situation worse. The requirement to pay time and a half for overtime gives
employers an incentive to hire more workers; eliminate overtime pay and that incentive is lost. Meanwhile,
opening America's borders and otherwise legalizing guest workers will reduce the demand for Americans to fill
those jobs. The administration's claim that the program would be limited to jobs that "no Americans can be
found to fill" is ludicrous on its face. The only reason a job remains unfilled is that it pays too little. An employer
who has to fill it with an American will have to raise the wage.
Here's what Democrats should propose instead:
     First, level the playing field between technology and labor. As it is now, businesses get an investment tax
credit for buying technology that substitutes for labor. One option is to repeal the tax credit, but that would be
politically difficult. Another is to give businesses a "new jobs tax credit" (say, 10 percent of the costs) for all net
additions to payrolls. Make it for two years, or until the proportion of employed adults returns to its pre-
recession level.
Second, recognize the high social costs of outsourcing. Businesses should still be allowed to outsource-even a
temporary ban on the practice would be a nightmare to enforce, would probably violate international trade rules
and would drive up consumer prices. But there's no reason businesses should be able to deduct from their
taxable incomes the full costs of outsourcing. Limit the deduction to, say, 50 percent. However, if businesses
hire American workers, allow them temporarily to deduct the full costs of their payrolls until jobs are restored.
Third, buffer workers against income losses. With so many having a hard time finding work, unemployment
insurance should be extended. In addition, many workers have to settle for jobs that pay less than their former
wages. They need wage insurance-paying, say, half the difference between the old and new wages, for up to
two years.
Democrats need not be neo-Luddites or protectionists to respond to the worst jobs recovery in American
history. They can offer these three constructive steps to get jobs back faster and to alleviate the pain in the
meantime.
The Bushies have it all wrong. It's time for the Democrats to say so, to say why and to offer what's needed.

The Permanent Election

BY ROBERT B. REICH

One of the things that distinguishes advanced democracies from banana republics is that winners and losers
accept the results of elections. Losing candidates and parties don't initiate coups. Winners don't kill off the
losers and their supporters. The winning party has an opportunity to govern. Both sides go back to their
respective corners-winners take office, losers take other jobs-and wait until the next election to do battle again.
In recent years, however, US politics has shifted somewhat away from this model toward more or less
continuous battles. The first stage, which began several decades ago, was the "permanent campaign." Here,
newly elected officials would almost immediately begin rounds of fund raising and media strategies designed to
discourage potential rivals from entering the fray years hence. Potential rivals, for their parts, would begin
almost at once to raise money and organize for the next election:        .
We are now, it seems, witnessing the next stage in our
shift toward a banana republic form of government. Permanent campaigns are morphing into permanent
elections. In the permanent election, rivals seek to reverse the decision of the majority of voters and unseat the
victor as soon as they can. Unlike the permanent campaign, in which incumbents and rivals only act as if the
next election were imminent, in the permanent election, the next election is in fact always imminent-or at least
an imminent possibility.
Exhibit One: Impeachment. Bill Clinton's Republican opponents sought to reverse the election of 1992 almost
as soon as Clinton came to Washington. Their carefully contrived plot, surveyed in Sidney Blumenthal's recent
bestselling book, The Clinton Wars, culminated in an impeachment in the House, though not a conviction in the
Senate, coupled with enormous pressure on the president to resign from office. To be sure, Clinton's liaison
with Monica Lewinsky helped advance the Republicans' cause, but there can be no doubt that they sought his
ouster from the start;. And although the strategy failed to unseat Clinton, it created a climate that helped defeat
Al Gore in 2000.
Exhibit Two: Election re-engineering. In the 2000 election, George W. Bush set out to overturn the will of a
majority of American voters by rigging the voting system. It's by now well established that Florida officials
purged from voter rolls thousands of people in the state who were guilty of nothing more than being black and
likely to vote for Gore. Bush subsequently fought against a manual recount, taking his case all the way to the U.
S. Supreme Court, where five of the nine justices, all Republican nominees, effectively ended it.

Exhibit Three: California's recall petition. Last fall's gubernatorial election may be undone on Oct. 7, when
California voters return to the polls., The recall petition, signed by the requisite number of Californians, under
the state constitution, is being used for the first time in California history to possibly unseat Gray Davis and
substitute one of more than a hundred contenders.
In the permanent election, constitutional procedures impeachment, Supreme Court intervention and state recall-
designed to be used only in rare and extraordinary circumstances are used instead as political tools to reverse
elections. In none of these recent instances did the original winner commit such wrongful acts that a large
majority of the electorate clearly demanded the use of such emergency measures. Instead, rivals initiated them
for unambiguously partisan purposes.
What's wrong with permanent elections? First, their outcomes are potentially undemocratic. A relatively small
minority of California voters may determine the state's next governor. Only a minority of American voters in
2000 wanted George W. to be our president. Most Americans didn't want Bill Clinton thrown out of office for
lying about sex.
Permanent elections are also, literally, unsettling. A nation requires periods of government stability and
continuity during which citizens can count on certain people being held accountable for a time. But under a
system of permanent elections, everything is up for grabs, all the time. Nothing is ever final because an election
may be overturned at any time.
Finally, permanent elections may distort elected officials' decision making. Office holders cannot run the risk of
taking even temporarily unpopular positions, in the hope they will be considered wise by election time because
an unpopular position might itself trigger an election.
It's too early to tell whether permanent elections will become a permanent aspect of American politics, but the
ease with which rivals have been able to summon impeachment resolutions, Supreme Court interventions and
recalls suggests they may. The fact that each of these initiatives was largely successful-the Clinton
impeachment weakened Clinton and hurt Gore, the re-engineering of the 2000 election made W. president, the
California recall is likely to end Gray Davis' governorship-adds significantly to their allure and legitimizes their
use for next time.

Check and Balance

BY PAUL STARR

FROM THE NATION'S FOUNDING, THE UNITED STATES HAS
promoted communications through constitutional guarantees, favorable legislation, and extensive subsidies.
There has been nothing sinister about this bias. Although the purposes have varied, the support-first for the
press and later for other media-has helped to create a rich and diverse sphere of public debate and a dynamic
and innovative industry. But the very success of that policy has also created a dilemma, as ownership has
become concentrated in a few hands and the most powerful private interests have bent the law to their own
advantage. Ideally, the media guard the public against abuses of power. It's not so clear how to guard against
the power that the media themselves acquire.
As a political lobby, the media are a daunting force. Corporations in most industries enjoy influence primarily
through representatives of the congressional districts and states where company headquarters, facilities, and
jobs are located. The media, however, are ubiquitous, and politicians are especially reluctant to offend them
because of their own
needs for news coverage and publicity.
The First Amendment also puts the media in a distinctive position in relation to
campaign-finance laws. Only media corporations can make what are, in effect,
unlimited contributions by promoting the candidates they favor. Rupert
Murdoch can put FOX and his entire empire at the service of a candidate or a
cause. That's his right. But hardly anyone else can put comparable resources to
political use at election time.
Although power of this magnitude usually gets its way, commercial media interests are divided in many
regulatory and antitrust disputes. The effort to limit media concentration also reaches across ideological lines
and enjoys wide public support (as has been evident in the fight against the Federal Communications
Commission's lifting of ownership caps). For while liberals worry about Murdoch, conservatives worry about
Hollywood and "liberal bias" in the news. Perhaps the one positive effect of these shared suspicions of media
power is an interest in limiting the concentration of ownership.
Opponents of media concentration can also make use of another intangible asset. The United States has a
tradition of actively supporting a pluralistic and decentralized press. The key institution was originally the Post
Office, which long provided subsidized rates to newspapers (and later magazines) regardless of viewpoint. In
the mid-19th century,.Congress even allowed newspapers to send copies for free to subscribers who lived in
the same county, a measure designed to protect local papers (and no doubt local politicians) against the
growing metropolitan press. Even in broadcasting, which during its first decades was dominated by two or three
national networks, most stations were locally owned and managed. And until recently the FCC imposed low
caps on the number of stations that any single organization could own.
This longstanding resistance to concentrated control faded in the past decade, as many policy-makers came to
believe that new digital media made the earlier caps on ownership unnecessary. The full picture, however, is
more complicated than this happy view suggests. Americans do have access to far more TV channels than in
the past, but five organizations now control enough of those channels to command 75 percent of the prime-time
audience. After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 removed the national cap on radio-station ownership, two
companies-Clear Channel and Viacom-accumulated enough of the strong stations to give themselves 70
percent of the revenue in radio. No doubt the Internet affords countless groups low-cost means of
communication, but traffic is concentrated on sites controlled by the same corporations that dominate other
media.
Moreover, the forces that sustained public-minded journalism have grown weaker in recent decades. The FCC
no longer uses its authority to promote public-affairs programming in the broadcast media, which have cut back
the money and airtime they devote to news and public issues. The big question facing the media, as Harold
Evans has said, is not whether they will stay in business but whether they will stay in journalism.
We need the equivalent of the postal policies of the early republic that promoted free expression and a diversity
of public voices. Here are a few things that might be on such an agenda: First, Congress should rewrite the
1996 telecom act to preserve existing limits on media ownership and reinstate tighter limits in radio. Second, to
help ensure that public broadcasting receives adequate financing, Congress could set aside the proceeds from
spectrum sales for an endowment. Third, in its current re-evaluation of "must carry" rules (which require cable-
television companies to carry local broadcast stations), the FCC should stipulate that the broadcasters could
invoke the requirement only if they supply some minimum level of public-affairs programming. And, fourth, to
make broadband Internet more widely available, wireless access in densely populated areas should be
provided as a free public utility.
Copyright, First Amendment jurisprudence, and other areas of law and policy need a fresh look all with an eye
to fulfilling the promise of new technology to diversify and enrich our public life instead of narrowing and
impoverishing it.

Favorite Quotes: James Naughie of the BBC was set to publish a book titled 'The
Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency" In it Naughtie writes of a phone
conversation between Powell and British foreign secretary Jack Straw, in which Powell
describes neoconservatives Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as "Fucking Crazies."

When questioned about his sexual morality during a talk at Harvard,
Supreme court justice antonin Scalia, who supports anti-sodomy laws, said,
"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and
should be encouraged."

George Bush"If this was a dicttorship it would be a heck of a lot easier-so long as I'm the dictator"

Bush invited Ted Kennedy to watch the movie 13 Days. He indicated to Kennedy that the Bush's were also a
political dynasty. So Bush wants to be thought of like the Kennedys. That means papa Bush will have to be
scrapin the kids bodies off the sidewalk. But some sick fuckers from Texas killed the KENNEDY clan. There
are plenty of sick fuckers IN TEXAS to do away with the Bushs also. G. H. W. Bush hired the white trash
Lee Atwater to run his campaign. Anyone who hires the likes of Atwater and Rove deserves a fate worse
than the Kennedies. Bush expressed a desire to be like the Kennedies. So be it.

This is what I would do:
Mario Cuomo will actually be president and tell Bush what to say and do. Bill Clinton will
dictate US foreign policy. Hillary Clinton will dictate a national health plan. Robert Reich
and Kuttner will dictate the government agenda for any and all things having economic
implications. Bill Clinton will approve all judicial nominees

You may contact Robert Jastrebski at:
Rjastrebski@peoplepc.com

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