Corporations Strike Again: Jailing Children in the Name of Big Business

My readers may have been noting an angrier tone in some of my writing since this new year began. One would think that would not be the case. During the election, with so much Republican propaganda to complain about, I tried to focus on issue-oriented writing. With President Obama in office, I should be happy and writing celebratory paens to the stimulus package, the Hilda Solis appointment, the end of the global gag rule, Leon Panetta's CIA appointment, and so on, should I not?

Trust me. Part of me wants to. Yet plenty of people are writing about the pros and cons of President Obama's actions, whether to praise or damn. I find my focus moving to other things, not necessarily things people are not writing about, but certainly things people are not writing about in quite the frame I see them.

The biggest economic problem in the United States is our erroneous belief that our economic system is free market capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. A free market is a market free from manipulation or interference. Conservatives believe that because a government does not interfere, a market is automatically free, because in the mind of a conservative it is government power that most threatens freedom. This is simply not true. We have a Constitution and the powers of the government are constrained and limited by it. Corporations, on the other hand, can only be constrained by the government. Our government, for nearly thirty years (Presidents Carter and Clinton are not immune from blame, though Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush are the guiltiest perpetrators) we have been removing the constraints government has been placing on business since Teddy Roosevelt.

As a result, our press is no longer free because it is controlled by corporate advertising dollars. Our elections are no longer free because the right of corporations to donate money is considered equal to an individual's right of free speech. Our rights of free speech are restricted because 'at will' employment laws means that your employer has the right to fire you if he doesn't like something you said on your day off, off company property or wrote on the internet. Our markets are not free because corporations use mergers and buyouts to form monopolies and our anti-trust laws go unenforced, and because a wealthy and powerful corporation has the ability to drive an entrepreneur providing better products ot services out of the market with sheer money, regardless of the 'market forces' conservatives worship.

As it turns out, according to the Associated Press, our courts are no longer free either.

Two judges in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud charges in federal court today. I assume that this plea and shockingly lenient sentence (seven years) is in exchange for full disclosure of their relationships with PA Child Care LLC and Western PA Child Care LLC and testimony against the officers of same. However, unless these plea bargains lead to convictions on RICO charges (among other things) for the officers of the companies in question, I'm not sure letting the judges off the hook is worth it. Our court system has a shockingly poor record of properly dealing with corporate criminals. I'd hate to see the judges get off with seven years and the corporations in question get off with a fine.

My anger, however, is getting in the way of sharing the particulars of the crime in question. I apologize.

The two judges admit to taking more than two and a half million dollars in payoffs to send kids to prison.

No, you didn't read that wrong.

Despite their innocuous sounding names, you see, PA Child Care LLC and Western PA Child Care LLC are not merely a new corporate owned chain of day care centers. They were formed to contract with the state of Pennsylvania to run juvenile detention facilities. The privatizing of penal institutions is a neoconservative weed that has been floating around since the 1990s, and it has successfully taken root in some gardens; including Pennsylvania. Allegedly, it is cheaper and more efficient for a private corporation to run a prison and bill the government than it is for the government to run a prison. There is no actual economic or accounting logic to support this theory, it is based entirely in the neoconservative meme that 'government cannot do anything but redistribute wealth.' The problem of how a corporation can make a profit taking money from the state to run a prison if the state is paying the corporation less than it was paying for the prison itself is never addressed, because the idea is ludicrous. The only way the corporation can make a profit is to cut costs (usually leading to civil rights abuses for the inmates, but who care about convicted felons anyway?) and overcharge the state. It is another method of using the government to rip off the taxpayers that neoconservatives love, file it way with the reconstruction of Iraq and New Orleans and prescription drug benefits.

So why bribe judges to send kids to prison? Well, the bills such companies submit to the governments that pay them are based on their number of inmates. The more inmates they have, the more money they can bilk from the government for doing a job that the government can and should be doing itself. Apparently, through the normal carriage of justice in Pennsylvania, they were not getting enough juvenile offenders to make the kind of money they wished to make.

Still, the solution was easy: bribe judges to lock up kids who normally wouldn't go to prison.

The judges in question denied children legal representation, rushed hearings through the system to maximize the rate of incarcerations, and handed down excessive sentences for minor offenses by first time offenses. In some cases, they appear to have sentenced children to prison in cases where no real crime was actually committed. One girl was sentenced to three months for creating a MySpace page making fun of a school official. I understand schools have been given wide police powers over students, far beyond any reasonable need (a topic for another post), but three months in juvenile hall for something that should not even be a crime is ludicrous.

Don't just read this and forget it. Share it. Tell the story to your friends, send it to your congressman. This is the sort of thing we're talking about when we talk about 'privatization' and 'deregulation': a license for corporations to abuse the system to make a profit.

In my view, the two corporations in question are guilty of the kind of criminal activity for which the RICO laws were written. This was an organized criminal conspiracy to commit fraud against the government, bolstered by corruption of government officials. I want to know why federal prosecutors don't use RICO against corrupt corporations like they would against any other criminal organization? An organized criminal conspiracy that suborns corruption is a threat to the American people and the American Constitution.

When you read conservative opinion, keep this in mind. This is the ultimate result of the kind of completely privatized corporate economy that conservatives want. Consider that the next time some angry internet comment or Fox News rant warns us of creeping socialism.

We live in an age where corporate commercialism has killed free market capitalism and dressed itself up in the victim's skin to prey on the American people.

Is socialism really something we should be afraid of, considering what its alternative has brought us?

An Open Letter To Three Republicans: Thank You

I sent the following letter, in more personalized form, by email to the offices of Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Though I disagree with them politically on more than one issue, I applaud their ability and willingness to put country before party and vote for the stimulus bill in the Senate. We need more Republicans willing to cross the aisle and reach an effective consensus with the White House and the Democratic congressional majority.

I have criticized the cutting of the bill, and in so doing I have criticized Senator Collins and Senator Nelson of Nebraska. I stand by my statements about the substance of the bill, but I understand the pragmatic need for compromise in politics even if I do not like it. The bill passed in the Senate is not the best bill possible, but it is still a good bill. I do not believe we should stop fighting for the items cut. We should continue to press for them to be passed separately. However, we should give credit where credit is due. These three senators have crossed the aisle, to meet the president Americans elected for his promise of bipartisanship in a fair and bipartisan way. If more of their fellow Republican senators would follow of them, it would be a good thing for the country. I hope they do not allow the backlash they are experiencing from within their party's caucus to do the right thing again in the future. I encourage my readers to send similar letters to these three senators, regardless of their home states. If you live in a state with Republican senatorial representation, send them letters expressing your disappointment that they have not followed the example set by these three. Urge them to do so in the future.

The letter I sent them is as follows:

Senatosr Collins, Snowe, and Specter,

I am not one of your constituents, but I want to thank you anyway. I want to thank you for caring more about the country than about partisan politics, and for helping to pass a bill I believe the country needs. I am a registered Democrat and rather a liberal, so there are issues on which I am sure we disagree. I don't want to floridly say that I wish I lived in your Maine or Pennsylvania so I could vote for you, because I do not honestly know if I would vote for you or not.

That said, I admire you. What you have done has won my respect and my gratitude. I maintain a blog, The Eclectic Radical (www.eclecticradical.blogspot.com) and I will be posting a copy of this email to that blog as well as sending it to the three of you and I will speak well of your patriotism and conviction to do what is right for America. Thank you.

Though I have indicated that I would like a reply, do not feel obligated to give one. I realize I am not one of your constituents. I do hope you read this, however, because I want you to know how I feel.

Sincerely,

Christopher M. Richards

Extra, Extra, Read All About It: The Past and Future of Newspapers

The title of this post is two fold. First, the obvious newspaper joke. Second, this is an extra addition to my normal weekly blog schedule: special and exclusive for my readers. Heh.

This is a reply to an article on Huffington Post by Diane Francis, advocating government subsidy for newspapers. In it, she rather legitimately bemoans both the financial state of the newspaper industry and the overly commercial, entertainment-first 'journalism' of network, cable, and internet media. In it, she makes some valid points about the 'white knights' currently becoming the new generation of press barons and the need for an outlet for legitimate journalism of honesty, ethics, and integrity. She makes some interesting points, and I agree that government support of the newspaper industry is an idea worth exploring. My only concern would be that government support not become government control. I am fine with the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post receiving my tax dollars in return for a quality product. I do not want USA Today (already of questionable merit) to become the American version of 'Pravda.'

What bears some attention, however, is that the imploding newspaper business model is a relatively recent thing. The idea of genuine journalism in the modern sense, and of journalistic ethics and integrity, is very new. It evolved, slowly, during the Progressive Era of the century's turn and just before. Investigative reporters, writing in newspapers, nonfiction books, and novels based on fact were given the label 'muckrakers' as they began to expose the corruption and lack of concern for ordinary Americans in much of American business and political life. Many of them were leftists, not merely liberals but socialists or communists, concerned deeply with the rights, livelihood, and safety of the ordinary American. This was the origin of the 'liberal media' so condemned today by the right wing, and its existence was a positive improvement on American life in many ways. They began to share 'the truth' with the nation.

Prior to the Progressive Era, newspapers mixed genuine journalism (largely written by amateur correspondents) with political propaganda (written by ruthless professionals) and frequently mingled the two in ways that would be abhorrent to today's watchdogs of 'journalistic integrity' and would closer mirror the writing of Bob Novak, Richard Reeves, and other members of the class of political writer we now call 'pundits.' 'Real news' was frequently full of political meaning and political propaganda was treated no differently than real news. In other words, every newspaper was someone's personal Fox News, dedicated to their viewpoints.

The first American newspapers were founded by European propagandists at the behest of the first American political parties. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton financed the establishment of newspapers whose sole purpose was to communicate the party line to the nation. Most local newspapers were similarly sponsored by local political interests in either support of or opposition to the state (or colonial, prior to independence) governments. They were funded not by their circulation or by advertisement, but by those who wished to see their views published and were willing to pay for it.

Sadly, we appear to be living in times where we are seeing a reversion to that model. Television news has become pseudojournalistic entertainment dominated by scandal, tragedy, and 'gotcha' reporting. The quasi-exception, Fox News, is a perfect mirror of the original political newspapers of America... and their journalistic content leans toward the same unfortunate trends as their competitors. Newspapers are dying, as television engages the public more forcefully and the internet offers much the same content for free.

However, I do not believe that television and the internet are the real reason that newspapers are dying. I believe that the majority of the public increasingly wants the callow tabloid journalism of newsmagazines and television news. Newspapers are too boring for them, even if their writers try to match television content callow for callow. They want to see video of disasters, not photographs, and they want to hear the anger, disgust, or quiver in the anchor's voice as she shares the news with them. They want to be entertained.

I have a great deal of respect for professional journalists and high regard for journalistic ethics. I have a very dim view of what American journalism appears to me to have become, and I am disgusted that newspapers are dying. Ms. Francis's suggestion of government subsidy may be the only way to save them, but if this is the case then which newspapers shall be saved and how shall we decide?

Journalists deserve to be paid for their work and a venue in which to work. I strive to avoid journalism and focus solely on opinion because I do not wish to present the appearance that this blog is intended as anything but my personal soap box. I would like to see newspapers survive, and to survive as organs of journalism rather than tabloid entertainment.

The question is this: can they?

What does the future hold? Government subsidy can not save every newspaper in every city in all fifty states, and the question of which newspapers are to be saved and which allowed to die raises thorny political questions. I support a genuine national newspaper, not the news in brief of USA Today but a national newspaper along the model of the New York Times, Washington Post, or Los Angeles Times. Yet would such a thing simply become what I mentioned before, the American version of 'Pravda'? It is a danger, but Public Television shows us that government financing does not guarantee a government organ.

The biggest danger we face to the free press is the fact that no one appears to want to pay for the free press. They prefer the commercial media, subsidized by corporations. They prefer the internet, where information is shared by those with an agenda in sharing it.

We may have to face the fact that we are entering a period, like the Progressive Era, where the media and the press undergo drastic changes for good or ill.

If that is the case, the question becomes not how to save the old media, but to create the new media in the proper image.

My Own Worst Enemy: No, Not A Cancelled TV Show... the Democratic Party

Andrew Taylor wrote today, for the AP and the Huffington Post, that the Democrats do not have the necessary votes to pass their economic package in the Senate. Before moving on to my real point, I will make passing mention of the sloppy journalism in this statement. The Democrats have the votes to pass the bill, what they lack are the majority of votes necessary to prevent a filibuster. While this is a small distinction, it is an important one. It changes the game from 'the Democrats are unable to pass legislation' to 'the Republicans are deliberately holding up needed economic reform because of the very same failed devotion to faith-based economic principles that caused the economic collapse in the first place.' As you can see, there is a notable difference between the tone of those two statements and they have a completely different effect on the reader.

That said, the villain of this piece is not a die-hard Republican conservative. Did we really expect them to vote for a spending bill? Of course not. Nor is it completely ridiculous to expect moderate Republicans who might be expected to vote for the bill to want a bit of political cover on some of the more 'liberal' elements.

No, the real villain of the current Capitol Hill drama is a Democrat: Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Rather than support his party and his president, Senator Nelson is essentially threatening to join a conservative filibuster unless the bill (already somewhat worked over in the House, where it was not necessary) is made more 'bipartisan' and more tax cuts are added and more spending removed. If he wished to display his bipartisanship by joining the conservatives in voting against the bill, as a symbol, I could understand. Helping to prevent the bill from coming to the floor without a thorough gutting, however, is not acceptable.

Conservative Democrats have always been the greatest foil of Democratic presidents, since Franklin Roosevelt made the Democratic Party the nation's liberal party permanently in the 1930s. From Robert Byrd (yes, that Robert Byrd) and Strom Thurmond (yes, my fellow Gen Xers, he was once a Dem, as hard as that is to believe now) taking on Harry Truman over integration of the military, to LBJ needing to rally support from Rockefeller Republicans to pass his legislation, to Sam Nunn taking on Bill Clinton over gays in the military and national health care policy, Democratic Senators have been the most dogged foes of liberal reform. Indeed, even 'liberal' Democrats in the Senate run to the center far too often.

This begs the question: how are we to achieve meaningful social progress? The major national party best equipped to champion a liberal agenda is unwilling to commit to a major political fight over the principles behind such an agenda. The major national political party that has shown itself willing to stick to its principles at all costs is wholly committed to the principles that prevent progress and reform. The minor parties are a ridiculous joke, the workouse orphans of our political system. They cry for gruel and no one listens.

Liberals need to make the kind of commitment to fight for the Democratic Party that conservatives made to fight for the Republican Party. When that fight is won, and it will be a hard fight, liberals will need to commit to another hard fight for their legitimate share of the national political podium.

I am pleasantly surprised by President Obama's commitment to fight for his own principles, but they are not wholly mine. All the same, when the choice is between progress and stasis, I support my president. Senator Nelson should do the same.

Capitalists Against Socialism... Unless It Puts Money In Their Pockets!

Yesterday Sam Stein, of the Huffington Post, broke the news of a conference call (hosted by Bank of America) in which leaders of major American corporations voiced the need for a collusive conspiracy to influence the lawmaking process. Not only did bailout-beneficiary Bank of America host the call, but the best known name on the corporate welfare dole, AIG, was represented as well. AIG, a very well known insurance company, was asked to pressure its customers and clientele to give Republican lawmakers 'large contributions.' The co-founder of Home Depot was quoted, in the same story, as rallying fellow corporate pirates to prevent 'the demise of a civilization.' In the same quote, he referred to himself as an 'elder statesman', which shows serious chutzpah for a guy who helped start a hardware store.

What is the horrible threat to American civilization as we know it that mobilizes these titans of the business world to put the welfare dollars they received in the biggest socialist program of 21st Century America to work in political donations to the legislators who opposed the very program that gave them those welfare dollars?

Well, you see, labor unions are Evil.

The same issue that is leading one or two Republican Senators on the comittee responsible for her confirmation to attempt to hold up the appointment of designate-Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is mobilizing American business: The Employee Fair Choice Act. Having spent the last not-quite-thirty years stripping away the protections workers receive from membership in labor unions and the protections against abusive corporate policies available to workers, it appears that big business is mortally afraid we will go back to the dark days of the 1950s when labor unions protected the rights of workers, who made more money than they ever had before, and American business was more profitable than it had ever been before. It is too horrible to imagine.

As I wrote about the EFCA last week, I am not going to repeat myself on that score. Instead I am going to echo a theme I touched upon earlier in the month. The United States of America is not a corporate nation. The preamble to the Constitution does not begin with the words 'We the Chief Executive Officers' or argue the 'need to control the lives of workers on and off the job.' This is the reason that the Gettysburg Address includes its famous reference to government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people.'

It is the issue of 'government for the people' that most concerns me. The Republican Party claims to champion 'individual rights over group rights' and argues that every law which regulates human activity reduces the freedom of individual citizens. However, I deny the validity of the conservative claim that government is the most real and most serious threat to individual American liberties. I deny this despite the attempt of our previous president to behave like a tin-pot dictator whenever possible, despite the Patriot Act, and despite warrantless wire-tapping.

I have written, several times, that I am a capitalist. I believe in an economy based on private enterprise and the profit motive. I do not consider the desire to make a profit, in itself, to be evil. We all want to be as successful as we can be.

However, I believe that the greatest threat to individual American freedom is the American corporation. Health care companies make fortunes managing people's health for a profit, and the only way to make a profit is to charge more than you spend. In the case of health care, this means that people who need health care must be denied it or over-charged for it for the corporation to make money. Someone, somewhere, has to be screwed. Automobile insurance, which began as a means of making sure you could get your car fixed or replaced if you had a wreck, has become a massive state-sanctioned protection racket in which the government is frequently the leg-breaker. This metaphor can be more broadly applied across a wide range of industries. The corporate deregulation of the past four presidential eras has not made Americans more free. It has made corporations more free to make a buck by denying Americans their rights.

Free speech rights go out the window, because your employer (under 'at will' policies) can fire you if he doesn't like the way you vote, what you post on the internet, or what you say when not at work. The freedom to assemble is likewise out the window, that is the reason for the demand for the EFCA: employers can fire employees who attempt to assemble to vote for a union. Employment agreements constrain you from starting your own business or working for a competitor after leaving corporate employ. All of this is possible, along with a host of corrupt business practices that would be felonies if practiced by individuals and not corporations, because of the federal government deregulated corporations in the name of 'freedom' at the behest of champions of 'individual rights over group right.'

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in an age of piracy. In the Golden Age of Buccaneering, during the 17th Century, men like Henry Morgan and Jean-David Ney (famous as Captain L'ollonais) were able to make a fortune plundering, raping, and murdering because of the money and power their activities gave the politicians who supported them. Henry Morgan eventually became Lieutenant-Governor of the Crown Colony of Jamaica.

Today, politicians grant corporations license to plunder the American economy in return for the money and power they gain from corporate campaign donations and corporate lobbyists' perqs. Carly Fiorina, the failed CEO of Hewlett-Packard, was responsible for shipping thousands of American jobs overseas and putting thousands of Americans out of work. She served on Senator John McCain's presidential campaign and is said to be considering a run for governor of Washington. Today the piracy is happening not on the high seas, but in the shopping malls, downtown marketplaces, and agricultural communities of America. The victims of piracy are not foreign 'heretics', but Americans. The victims of this new Golden Age of Piracy are American workers, American small business owners, and American farmers who are crowded or crushed out of the 'free' market by corporate money and power back by government sponsorship.

Clearly, America's modern pirates are not opposed to socialism that strengthens their corporations and keeps them well-fed and looking pretty. Yet when the rights of working American citizens are advocated, they are the defenders of the bastions of capitalism.

Get mad. Stay mad. Do something about it.

Bipartisanship In Action: Senate Republicans Rush to Confirm Labor Secretary

While lack of subtlety can ruin sarcasm, sometimes too much subtlety can cause sarcasm to be lost, especially in print. So I want to point out that when reading the title above in your head, you should lend it the most acidic tone you can imagine.

Republicans on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee may place a procedural hold on the nomination of Labor Secretary-designate Rep. Hilda Solis of CA. While they claim that their reluctance to confirm her is connected to what they perceive as her failure to answer questions, it really comes down to one issue. They have been trying to bait her into answering toxic political questions they can then use as an excuse to vote against her. Most notably, the fact that she would be a Labor Secretary devoted to defending the rights, safety, and livelihood of people who actually labor.

Rep. Solis co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act (card-check) in the House. Most Republicans (and some Democrats) oppose card-check because it would make it much easier, procedurally speaking, for workers to unionize. Big business, as a rule, opposes card-check for the same reason. They claim that card-check would make it easier for unions to intimidate workers into joining, but I suspect their real concern is that card-check makes it much harder for them to intimidate their employees into not joining. Card-check is one of the reasons that Wal-Mart held meetings to attempt to order its employees to vote for Senator John McCain in our late election. Considering Wal-Mart's employee policies, and indeed considering the employee policies of many employers in the South and lower Midwest and the expansion of such insidious policies as 'right to work' (which is more properly the right to deny your workers their rights to unionize or defend themselves from exploitation) and 'at will' (which the employer's right to fire the employee at anytime without notice or cause and the employee's right to quit at anytime... and to be penalized for failure to give notice) one can see that big business has a lot to lose both from card-check and from a Labor Secretary concerned with protecting the rights of workers.

While corruption among union management has sometimes been a real problem, it is ridiculous to paint labor unions as corrupt institutions by nature in the manner conservatives have always attempted. One only has to look at the top level management of nearly any American corporation to argue that big business is the last American institution to have any right to accuse any other of corruption. Certainly the last to have any right to claim to be the hero, protecting the rights of their workers against evil unions.

It comes down to a question of power. As our current system stands, the big corporation has all the power and their employees have very little recourse. This is due to a combination of factors into which I will not go in this posting, but many have mentioned many times. American wages have gone down as a result of these factors, as have opportunities for employment. As a result, the people supplying 'the good jobs' have a tremendous advantage over their employees: they can simply fire anyone they please and find someone else eager to replace them and desperate for a job. They can then repeat the process, avoiding the need to give costly raises or benefits that hurt the bottom line and cut into multimillion dollar bonuses for the CEO who tanked the profits last year.

Free Choice takes a step in giving employees some share of power over their lives, and some small semblance of power to protect their rights. Senator Orrin Hatch (R - UT) has been quoted as giving Rep. Solis a stern warning not to become a rubber stamp for the forces of big business or big labor.

Considering the source, that's ridiculous.

This Land is Our Land: Woody Guthrie, Martin Luther King Jr, and Poverty

As I write this, I am conscious that yesterday was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday and that Monday is the national holiday honoring that birthday. As my first post of the year was concerned closely with race, and the editorials and blog posts on that topic have already begun, I am instead going to speak about another issue about which Dr. King felt very strongly: poverty.

Indirectly, of course, poverty is a racial issue. A great percentage of minority Americans are in poverty than white Americans. However, with the working class decimated by outsourcing in the name of 'free' trade and by feral deregulation of business combined with federal policies that have favored agribusiness over the traditional American family farm, poverty affects many white Americans as well. The current economic crisis only makes that worse, as the people who suffer the most when things get tight are the people who already have the rubber band stretched near the breaking point.

Last night, while idly checking news before I went to bed, I came upon 'Eight Commonly Misinterpreted Songs' in Yahoo's news links. The last song on the list was 'This Land is Your Land', by Woody Guthrie. While the author of the piece is correct in pointing out that the song is not an expression of mindless, jingoistic patriotism, she misinterprets her attempt to correct the public's misinterpretation when she claims 'This song is often grouped with “God Bless America” as patriotic tunes, but Guthrie had the opposite intention.' The song was intended to be, and is, intensely patriotic.

There is a biting irony in Guthrie's criticism of the belief that property rights trumped individual rights and that the government existed to protect the wealthy from the poor, yes. Certainly the song is bitterly critical of those who hoard what they possess jealously and assume those less fortunate than themselves to be criminals and wastrels. The song was written during the Great Depression, at a time when many 'haves' became 'have nots' and those who did not were determined to avoid that fate at any cost to the greater good of society. Many of the conservatives of the day believed, as they do now, that government exists to protect property rights and that any government defense of the rights of the 'have nots' violates the rights of the 'haves.'

'This Land is Your Land' is a ringing left wing endorsement of the rights of the 'have nots' and of the fact that all Americans have a share in America. It is a revolutionary call for the 'have nots' to consider where their own interests lie and use what power they have together, for their own protection and improvement. It is a reminder that we are all Americans and that we can do something to change our circumstances if we remember that this is our country too. We have the right to vote and the right to organize and we can use both. Citizen for citizen, vote for vote, there are more of us than there are of them. We choose to squander our power or act against our own best interests, but we do have the power to change course.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered that same message to America in a different context. He proved, by his life, ministry, and activism, that Americans could make a difference in America. He was an affirmation of the better angels of our nature, despite flaws and foibles. He had a dream and he believed that this was his land too, and he could work to make his dream come true and inspire others to do the same.

We have that power now. We have a new President and a new Congress. We can lobby them for meaningful change on a plethora of issues relating to poverty and individual rights at a time when economic necessity weighs in favor of that change. The government needs to actively work to bring economic opportunity to rural America and inner city America while actively protecting poor Americans from the more predatory side of American business. This is not impossible, and it grows the tax base which pays our government's bills. 'Spreading the wealth around', as highly criticized as it is by those who have wealth as it is, is ultimately good for everyone. Even the wealthy benefit, as people who could not afford to buy cars and homes find themselves able to do so without predatory mortgage practices and risky mortgage securities. We need to invest in productivity, not debt and price indexes.

Healthcare is one place to start. Common sense, firmly enforced regulation of the capital market is another. Special prosecutors to investigate the credit industry might restore a great deal of faith in the government, and in the long run faith in the government will go a long way to rebuild faith in the economy. All of these goals, however, require effort. Not only from our elected officials, but also from their constituents to push them to do so.

I am a working class (currently unemployed) white man in a Southern state. I voted for President-elect Barack Obama in the general election because I understand that my interests have more in common with a black family in the inner city or the Mexican-American family that owns my favorite restaurant, up the street, than with investment bankers, auto manufacturers, or oil barons. I write this blog in an effort to express that understanding to as many people as possible, especially other people like me. However, ultimately, whether you are an oil baron or a waitress, what is good for me is good for you too. If my circumstances are bettered, I can afford to buy gas and to eat out. That betters their circumstances. There is logic in liberalism. We can make America the place it claims to be if we put in the work.

After all, this land is our land.