Nice recovery, if you can afford it

According to economists and the media, in June 2009 we came out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression and we’ve been on the upswing since. Unemployment’s down, with corporate profits recouping their losses from the recession and hitting new highs along with the stock market.

But it really continues to be a tale of two economies: one that works for the 1 percent and another, in which the 99 percent are increasingly falling behind.

For some striking evidence, look at the recent study by a prominent economist reported in the New York Times.

As the recovery took hold in 2010, UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saenz reported, the top 1 percent captured 93 percent of the income gains.

Top incomes grew 11.6 percent in 2010, while the incomes of the 99 percent increased only 0.2 percent. That tiny gain followed a drop of nearly 12 percent over the previous two years – the largest two-year drop since the Depression.

Other signs on the economic landscape also show the wreckage for those not protected by wealth.

Despite a dip in unemployment and the most the most recent more optimistic job creation numbers, the economy isn’t producing enough jobs on a sustained basis to permanently reduce unemployment. And many of the jobs that have been created pay severely reduced wages. Under the two-tiered wage systems increasingly favored by U.S. corporations, new blue-collar jobs pay start at a steeply lower hourly wage than they did in the past – $12 to $19 an hour as opposed to $21 to $32.

One in seven Americans are on food stamps, while high gas prices put the squeeze on low-income and working people alike. Meanwhile, foreclosures are on the rise in the wake of the state attorneys general announcement of a settlement over foreclosure fraud charges with the biggest banks, though the details of the settlement still haven’t been released.

The Occupy movement has put the great divide between the 1 percent and the 99 percent on the political map, forcing President Obama to acknowledge income inequality in his state of the union speech as the “defining issue” of our time, while the Republican’s front-running presidential candidate, Mitt Romney has dismissed such concerns as “envy.”

Obama’s concern about inequality has yet to translate itself into effective action, and it’s unclear, given the strong ties he’s had to the big banks and corporate titans, whether he’s capable of delivering.

Occupy, after delivering a much-needed jolt to the public discourse, likewise, has also yet to show that it can go beyond influencing the debate to actually winning gains for the 99 percent and reducing the widening inequality gap.

It’s no coincidence that income inequality has accelerated as large corporations have grown more influential in our political system through the clout of their cash, encouraging deregulation, tax cuts, trade deals and a host of other policies that benefit the 1 percent and disadvantage the rest of us. The fight against income inequality and for a more fair economy inevitably leads to the fight to rid our government of toxic corporate donations. Find out about WheresOurMoney’s constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court’s terrible decision that unleashes unlimited, anonymous corporate political donations, here.

 

 

 

A Yes Vote for a National Ballot Initiative

While the long-predicted tsunami of voter anger is about to break across the national political landscape, oddly enough this may just be one cataclysmic event that California won’t experience. Yesterday the New York Times has pronounced the House of Representatives all but lost to the Democrats, but today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Jerry Brown’s lead over Meg Whitman doubled over the last month.

That might have something to do with Whitman’s obscene spending for the post – Californians have a tradition of rejecting the candidacies of people who treat high office as a new found hobby – and it couldn’t have helped that Whitman hired (and then cruelly fired) an undocumented housekeeper.

But wait. The Times’ polling also showed that in California, “Democrats have gained strength and GOP motivation has ebbed slightly in the last month.”

So what’s up with California voters? People elsewhere might attribute it to the weather, or our mythical blessed out state. But that’s not it: 81% of Californians told the pollsters that the state is “seriously off on the wrong track.”

I have a theory to explain why California voters aren’t reflecting the national trend, and it’s based on a political safety-valve unique to California: our often-maligned ballot initiative process.

This year, as in most elections, California voters will not only fill over a dozen federal, state and local elective offices. They will get to decide some major public policy issues, including legalization of marijuana, reapportionment, climate change, and majority rule in the state Legislature – a total of nine ballot propositions.

Californians rightly complain about the initiative process – that it’s increasingly invoked by the powerful special interests, that we shouldn’t have to do the politicians’ jobs for them – but the fact is, we love initiatives. Ballot measures empower Californians, giving us the opportunity – for better or worse – to shape our own destiny.

For many Californians, politicians are already a lost cause. What excites and inspires people to pay attention to politics here is the dynamic, creative and often chaotic opportunity to sidestep the political establishment and take matters into their own hands.

“For all the problems ballot initiative politics present today, the ballot measure offers the best part of modern politics,” says California citizen leader Jamie Court in his new book, “Raising Hell.” That’s “the ability to directly change injustice, without the main problem with politics today, politicians who are too corrupt or inept to make changes.”

In most states, angry voters can only vent their frustration by choosing from an often deeply unsatisfying list of candidates, a  desperate exercise in the “lesser of two evils.” When politicians are the only available target, the electorate’s outrage is by necessity narrowly focused. And it also gets amplified, like when you pump water through a fire hose. So it’s “throw the bums out” – as is likely to happen next week throughout the nation, whether or not they deserve it. Then the voters get to welcome a whole new bunch of bums.

Ballot initiatives offer a much more precise weapon: for example, an initiative to roll back auto insurance premiums, like I wrote in 1988, in the middle of public indignation over skyrocketing insurance premiums, when California lawmakers were too afraid of their industry patrons to do anything about it.

I’m as angry as everyone else these days about how Washington and Wall Street got together and betrayed us. If we had a national initiative process, I’d propose a cap on the interest rates banks and credit card companies can charge us for borrowing our own money from them.