JournalInquirer.com

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Saturday, January 23, 2010 12:08 PM EST

As I was scanning the channels after the announcements began pouring in that Martha Coakley had lost the election for U.S. senator from Massachusetts I thought I saw Howard Beale on the Union Broadcasting System in the rant that was heard ’round the world — again.

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it,” Beale said.

But I was mistaken. It must have just been a spooky flashback from 1976.

Beale’s network wasn’t on my TV Tuesday night, but the banter leading up to the election’s result reminded me that some things — like the plight of the middle class, and anger always chasing a spot to spew — never change.

There’s no question we are in the midst of an anger pandemic that is spreading faster and infecting more people than the H1N1 virus. Coakley can testify to that.

People are really worried about their jobs, their future, and their families. Most people want some kind of fix of the broken health-care system but don’t like the fix that’s winding its way through Congress. Most people didn’t want the economy to collapse but they don’t like the outcome of the fix that ended up putting more profits on Wall Street than potatoes on dinner tables on Main Street.

It’s harder to make ends meet — especially now that so many people are spending more in an effort to pay off credit cards, other debts, and refilling pension funds instead of working hard to increase their credit limits.These frustrations and many others are making people lash out at just about anything they can — especially politicians.

And just like Beale’s situation in that 1976 movie “Network,” there’s always someone who can smell an opportunity to exploit some crazed anger for his own gain.

It’s a funny thing that the wave of anger as expressed by Massachusetts voters could, for instance, actually kill the effort to fix America’s seriously flawed health-care system. It is bitterly ironic that the anger seeking ventilation about things such as out of control health-care premiums and co-pays; loss of coverage because of job change, pre-existing conditions, or just getting sick; seeing one’s children start careers with no coverage at all; and many other unbearable health-care coverage atrocities has been directed at the people and institutions that are working hardest to fix the problems instead of the parties that have been at work creating them.

That’s the same “art imitating life” trick UBS used on Beale to goad his anger in an effort to boost ratings and residual profits.

But it seems to me that the goaders on a lot of issues are the ones we should be getting mad at.We pay more and more each day to feed big insurance and big pharma’s profit addictions. And then they spend some of our money to rile up the anger and aim it at blocking the system changes we need the most but might dampen profits.

People are in a rage about working harder, longer, and faster while getting less in return. The goaders rile up the folks about the taxes taken from their shrinking paychecks. But who is shrinking the paycheck and stealing the rewards for the extra effort and productivity? We’ve been through an unprecedented era where most of the rewards for productivity went to the top of the income ladder while the workforce was being pushed down — one rung at a time.

Who’s mad about that?

Beale got it partly right when he challenged his audience: “So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

The part he left out? Just make sure you get angry at the right people.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

JournalInquirer.com

The war between the classes is over: Guess who won
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, January 14, 2010 12:08 PM EST

Let me be first to declare that the most recent war of the classes is over. As has been the case throughout history, the wealthy class has won again.There never was a real contest in this round. Victory was pretty much snatched from the armies of the nonwealthy when weapons and resolve were abandoned as they became convinced class warfare is nothing but a symptom of a socialist disease that needed to be purged from American tradition.

Of course, as always, the ones who were actually screaming the loudest and fighting the hardest in this bout were the richest few, along with those on their payroll and everyone else who wished they were.

A few years ago early hints suggesting victory for the richest was near came from the woolly caterpillar for the ruling class, Warren Buffett. In a New York Times article written by Ben Stein, Buffett said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” That was then affirmed by an observation that showed that, in 2007, 23.5 percent of all income in America went to the top 1 percent of earners. The last time that happened was 1929.

Evidence of the victory is mounting daily. Last month, third-quarter reports revealed a huge up-tick in worker productivity, with an 8-percent increase that showed the American workforce producing more and getting nothing in return. The productivity/profit curve continues to leave out the workforce from the reward cycle.

It’s a simple age-old equation that was amplified back in the day by John D. Rockefeller who said: “I’d rather earn 1 percent of 100 people’s effort than 100 percent of my own.”

So, it stands to reason that the net would improve by chasing a bigger effort from fewer people. Why create new jobs when you have more to squeeze out of the ones you have left.

As Elizabeth Warren, chair of the congressional oversight panel created to oversee the banking bailouts, stated in her “America Without a Middle Class” article: “Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed, or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put 10 million homeowners out on the street.

Profits are rising, the Dow is rapidly recovering ground, black ink is flowing in bailed-out companies, and hedge funds are hedging again. All while the workeras are getting squeezed even harder.

But the most recent and conclusive indicator this war is over came with last week’s outbreak of giddiness on Wall Street as bankers bid on the number of zeros — six, seven, or eight — that need to be penned on their bonus checks.

It’s over. They won.

Peace is good, right?

It’s a new day and a new beginning. It’s time to rebuild the class war-ravaged economy and renew the commitment to competition.

As the captains of business and industry might say, it’s time to clean out the junk that slows our state’s and nation’s business down — health plans, pensions, sick time, and all that hampers competitiveness. High wages and government-sponsored safety and security nets are barriers to profits — we must tear down those walls. Workers’ quality of life expectations can be adjusted for us to compete with India, Singapore, China, and hungry emerging nations, the victors suggest.

To the victors of war goes that booty, and just because American wealth has already won all contests with the rest of the world in disproportionate levels, that’s no excuse to trim the chasm between the wealthy and the rest of us — even if it leads to another collapse bigger than the last two.

Can’t beat ’em; can’t join ’em. What’s left?

How about some real competition between workers and the wealthy to win a bigger share of the pie?

"Healthy competition" is not a socialist disease, right?

Let’s rumble.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

JournalInquirer.com

Practical nursing program
shouldn’t be tossed overboard
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, January 7, 2010 12:09 PM EST

Jetsam is an amusing word for vocabulary enthusiasts. Unless you’re a crossword junkie or a mariner of sort you may not have much use for it though. Most ship captains are not fans, since they know the word doesn’t have any relationship to fun and they’d rather not have a need to use it at all.

But, in this economic maelstrom we’re in, the captains of our ship of state are faced with tough decisions about how to weather the storm and come out intact. One choice is to take on a heavier load temporarily and provide more stability on the rough seas. The other is to empty out the hold and lighten the ship by tossing overboard anything they can get a hold of.

The outcome of those tactics often depends on the storm.There’s no doubt we’ll weather this one so the better choice is stability. Tossing everything overboard may bring storm survival but with little left but a lighter ship and piles of irretrievable jetsam lining the bottom of the abyss. Adding a bit more weight that can be dispensed when the seas calm will ensure we still have a ship to sail and contents that will help provide for our futures when the sun shines again.

One item among many in our state in line to become jetsam as the captains debate how or when it may be tossed is the licensed practical nurse adult education program.

The LPN program is offered at 10 state technical high schools and rewards about 350 eager students with productive lives in health care as LPNs every 18 months. There are about 400 students and 44 teachers at work in the program now. Students pay $4,850 in tuition, about 20 percent of the full cost of the program.It’s claimed that suspending the program would save the state $1.7 million. But an analysis by the State Vocational Federation of Teachers, the union representing teachers in the vo-tech school system, shows that suspending the LPN program will actually cost the state $850,000 or more.

Most of the teachers are protected by the no-layoff agreement with state employee unions and they’ll be placed in comparable positions, as they essentially will be paid not to teach. In addition, the state must repay application fees to the 1,000 applicants already lined up for the program. Lost tuition that covers the salaries of the teachers and maintaining dormant facilities adds to the cancellation costs.

A better reason to make this program jetsam-proof is jobs. Our rate of recovery from the storm is directly related to rates of rehiring and new job placements. The best way to storm-proof our future economy is to ramp up the jobs.

Unfilled jobs do not generate taxes or put dollars back into the economy when Connecticut needs it most.At a recent press conference, Matthew Barrett, from the Connecticut Association of Healthcare Facilities, pointed out that new data shows baby boomers trending as less healthy and more likely to need care.

The Connecticut Department of Labor forecasts 324 openings for LPNs each year for new and replacement positions. Suspending this program will have a significant impact on those job openings and the care that needs to be provided in already understaffed health-care facilities.

Just let applicants go to private LPN programs, some say. There are three private LPN training programs in Connecticut. But most students don’t have access to enough gold doubloons to pay the tuition, which ranges from $32,000 to $48,000 — a bit more than the $5,000 affordable tuition at the vo-tech program.

This program has demonstrated value, has served the state well in developing and placing qualified people in decent jobs, and is critical to fulfilling future health-care needs.

The LPN program could be saved and restored by the end of this month without consequence. Otherwise, we all lose out. The next restoration window would be September. By then the damage will be done, as some job and public health stability will have been senselessly tossed away.

That’s not an amusing use for jetsam at all.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

JournalInquirer.com

Optimism for a new decade
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, December 31, 2009 12:09 PM EST

I can’t let a new year pass without the usual “eat right, exercise, lose weight, and stop cussing” commitments that last about a week. But here’s a few New Year’s resolutions I can keep. They’re easier and focused on a lighter, brighter optimistic new decade.

It’s a good time for optimism — pessimistic bitterness and anger have been around for too long.
To start, I will laugh more.

Opportunities to laugh are still few and far between, so humor needs to be found in different places. For instance, when I hear senior tea-baggers screaming “Keep government off my back, and don’t touch my Social Security or Medicaid” I won’t shake my head or roll my eyes.
I’ll laugh and optimistically assume that person is joking and really knows Medicaid isn’t a gift from the HMOs.

Next on the list: More music; less Limbaugh, Hannity, and Vicevich.

These three miss my targets anyway, but I feel the need to listen and be more informed about all perspectives. The broadcasts of these anger jockeys have become bitter, propagandistic blather, where it’s hard to disconnect issues and policy angles from blatant propaganda that riles up the resentment junkies.

A couple of generations ago Spiro Agnew labeled his liberal detractors “nattering nabobs of negativity.”

It seems like the anger jockeys have absorbed the nabob role quite well.

Now that’s funny.

For the rest of the new year I need to speak up more about things that need to be said starting with this: Chris Dodd is one of the most effective, committed, and helpful U.S. senators our state has ever had working for us. He is a decent human being with an incredibly deep understanding of what the people of our state and nation need. He has acted valiantly on our behalf and stands squarely in our corner.

Ted Kennedy spent his entire political career looking out for us. The Kennedy family had a genetic disposition to be fighters for equity, justice, and helping those in need. I’ll miss that. But while Dodd has no Kennedy descendency, he is guided by the same moral compass and disposition in his advocacy for all of us. He will fill the void left by Kennedy’s passing — something our nation desperately needs.

Dodd has a huge record of accomplishment. Most recently he led the charge for health-care reform, assuming the HELP committee leadership role as Kennedy became too ill to see it through. Dodd is taking on big finance and fixing Wall Street, banks, and credit cards. He led efforts for the Family Medical Leave Act, Combating Autism Act, and firefighter safety. He pushed for the National and Community Service Act and AmeriCorps, along with Connecticut jobs and funding for state projects that helped boost our economy. And a lot more.

When Vice President Joe Biden was in Connecticut recently he said Dodd is the Senate’s go-to person for getting things done.

Dodd serves as the chair of the Banking Committee and is moving reforms that have been stuck for years. He is a key leader in the Foreign Relations Committee, especially on South and Central American issues.

Dodd is a leader in a venue where it takes 20 years to reach maximum effectiveness and it takes 60 votes to win on any significant issue. He is where most new senators can only hope to be and he’s mastered the skills needed to move issues that matter. He’s in a better position than he’s ever been to help Connecticut and all working families.

Many of the things that need to be heard, such as how much Chris Dodd has done, have been drowned out by inane angry shouting. Maybe the next year, or even the decade, will be filled with less shouting and brighter lights shining on things that really count. I’m optimistic.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.