Moneytheism

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” - Jesus of Nazareth

If you listen to capitalists and their apologists they claim to be the voice of reason while, according to them, those of us on the Left run on passion. But actually it’s the capitalists, especially the current breed who’s been in vogue for the last few decades, who are the ones running on faith.

In his most recent book, No Rising Tide, Joerg Rieger explains that there are several tenants to this bizarre capitalist religion and they are built on blind faith. No amount of rational proof will sway the capitalist from these tenants. According to Rieger those tenants are:

• Economic deregulation always promotes growth,
• Tax cuts for powerful corporations and the wealthy always spur the economy,
• Wealth gathered at the top inevitably trickles down, and
• A rising tide will lift all boats.

The comedian Stephen Colbert hit the nail on the head when he coined the term “Moneytheism” to describe this twisted religion. One must wonder how much longer before people finally wake up and realize that they’ve been duped by false prophets all of this time?

I’ve been lucky to have heard Joerg Rieger speak on several occasions and I highly recommend his new book, No Rising Tide.

The Silver Screen

There already exists many reviews of Michael Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. I would echo the various reviewers who have said that this may be his best movie yet. But what's lost in all of these reviews is that this is more than just a good movie.

In his new movie Moore does the one thing no other popular commentator has been willing to do. He’s willing to go on record and call capitalism an evil that has to be replaced. Most will critique and criticize but then they wimp out saying, “But I still support capitalism.” Moore instead steps up to the plate and tells it like it is.

If that wasn’t enough Moore goes one important step further. At one point in the movie he shows a possible alternative to the corporation. And what do we see? He visits two worker-owned cooperatives!

Finally, Moore ends the movie with a call for the viewer to join him in replacing capitalism with a more just system. Amazingly this call seems to be resonating with the audience for at the showing that I attended half of the theater broke out in applause at the movie’s end.

Some criticize Moore for taking liberties with the facts. Admittedly there are times when the critics are right. In the movie he strongly criticizes the bail out yet all evidence points that this Keynesian action may have indeed pulled the economy out of a nose dive.

Yet Moore provides the style and emotion needed to transmit our message via the mass media. With Capitalism: A Love Story Michael Moore has taken a stand and has joined the call for an economic democracy.

Olbermann on Health Care

There’s a distinct possibility that most of my readers are already aware of this but just on the off chance that some aren’t I thought I would write about it. Most know that one of Keith Olbermann’s claims to fame is his occasional “Special Comment,” which is usually just a few minutes long. Recently, Keith Olbermann gave another Special Comment but this one was very different than his previous. Olbermann’s most recent Special Comment was an hour long commentary on health care in which he destroyed the false arguments against the public option and presented numerous powerful arguments for the need for universal health care.

This Special Comment is one of his best as well as one of his most important. I highly recommend it to both those who support health care reform and to those who oppose it.

MSNBC will replay this Special Comment on October 16th at 8:00 PM ET. It can also be viewed at the MSNBC web site.

Delay

I apologize but due to circumstance beyond my control this week’s blog will be delayed until Friday, October 16th.

Choice?

"Now, if you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who don't currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices." President Barack Obama, September 9, 2009, Remarks by the President to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care.

So here we are at the beginning of autumn and Congress has yet to pass health care reform. To make matters worse the legislation that we’ve been given is the Baucus Bill. While there are numerous problems with the bill I want to center on only two elements: weak, poorly funded health care cooperatives and the lack of a public option.

First, the problems with the provisions relating to health care cooperatives. While I strongly support their creation, which I’ve mentioned previously, the details in this bill will handicap the new co-ops. According to the bill the start-up capital would only be $6 billion, which would be spread among the new co-ops. That’s far too little investment to create the type of co-ops that can challenge the private insurers. Add to this the co-ops will be limited in their scope. Ezra Klein with the Washington Post reports that rather than being able to contract with large employers the co-ops would be limited to contracting only with "small groups and individual markets." Another major flaw in the cooperative provision is that it fails to give the co-ops special pricing power. While they can band together to increase their purchasing power they’re restricted from setting national payment rates. To challenge the big boys these co-ops need this power. As Klein put it, "The insurance industry is, in other words, being protected from not just public competition, but co-op competition." Finally, even if the above flaws are fixed there needs to be a restriction placed on these co-ops that would prevent them from some day demutualizing into private corporations as some co-ops have done in the past.

Second, the Baucus Bill lacks a public option. The poorly funded co-ops, as they would be set up by the Baucus Bill, simply would not be able to reign in the abuses of the private insurers. If we’re not going to properly fund and empower the co-ops where that they’re able to challenge the private insurance companies then why not create a strong public option that could have a real effect on the private insurers?

Let me make my position clear. It’s my belief that quality, affordable health care is a fundamental human right. A sure way to guarantee this right would be through a Single-Payer system operating within a network of private practitioners and community-based, non-profit clinics/ hospitals. But we know that no matter what legislation comes out of Congress this year it will not include this. So whatever legislation that we do get must have the ability to restrict the power of the private insurers and to provide access to quality health care to those who currently don’t. This means that we need legislation that includes either a strong public option or well-funded and powerful health-care cooperatives.

One last comment. I can’t help but wonder why couldn’t a bill include both a strong public option and well-funded, powerful co-ops? What would prevent such a combination? The President said that this legislation will include "quality, affordable choices." Then I say that Congress should give the American people exactly that. Give us the ability to choose either well-funded co-ops with real power or a strong public insurance.

Faith and Economic Democracy

Back in July of this year Bill Moyers sat down with three leading theologians on his PBS show to discuss the role of faith and social justice. One of his guests was Gary Dorrien, who is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. He’s the author of 13 books and numerous articles. As I mentioned in a prior post Professor Dorrien is also a strong advocate of economic democracy.

In the Bill Moyers production Dorrien stated,

“That's why I'm for economic democracy, because I think that economic democracy is essentially an attempt to sort of hold down, serve as a kind of a break on human greed and will to power, which are virtually universal, so I'm not talking about anything that requires some kind of idealistic idea about human nature, or what we're capable of, or the like. My main argument for it is the same that Niebuhr, that Reinhold Niebuhr had about democracy. You know, the human capacity for goodness makes democracy possible, but it's precisely the human capacity for evil that makes democracy utterly necessary. There are two sort of fundamental stories or ideas about a just society, what it could be, that have been operative in US American history virtually from the beginning, and that are always there. And that one is the idea of providing unrestricted liberty to acquire wealth.

And there's a politics that goes with that. You want to hold down government. You want to hold - even democracy is not really necessarily a good word, in that conception. And then in the other idea, it's that you want to attain as much through a democracy as you can, over society's major institutions.

You can interpret virtually every decade of U.S. American history by the way these two different sort of conceptions of what a just society would be, end up conflicting with each other, sometimes modifying each other, sometimes changing each other.”

I highly recommend to this episode. You can download the episode’s transcript as well as view the show at the PBS web site.

Bad Attitude

“Every hero was once, every villain was once just a boy with a bad attitude.” ~ Meatloaf

Blogs like mine tend to be rather academic. I write about cooperatives and social investment. I post concerns about the existential effects of capital and globalization. While there’s a need for such talk (I wouldn’t keep writing this blog if I didn’t think it was needed) sometimes it seems rather cold and maybe even a little elitist. To use a term I heard as a boy one might call it “highfaluting.” What the discussion needs at times is a little attitude. Or maybe I should say what’s needed is someone with a bad attitude.

I’ve found a group that’s more than happy to provide exactly that.

The Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project exists to coordinate various groups whose goals are to protest the upcoming G-20 Summit that will take place September 24-25 in Pittsburgh, PA. According to the PG20RP web site their goal is to, “deepen ongoing social resistance locally, to demonstrate and build new and existing alternatives to the worldview represented by the G20 and the direct policies it promotes, and to disrupt the summit and undermine its attempts to gain legitimacy.”

Many of the events of the PG20RP are expected to be peaceful. On September 22 there will be an “Anti-G20 Community Gathering” that will consist of food and entertainment designed to spread the message of the dangers of globalization. While on the 23rd there will be a peaceful protest including a “Red and Black contingent,” which according to the site would “not be masked.”

After that it promises to get a lot more interesting. On the 24th there will be the “March on the G20” in which the site advises of the possibility of “direct actions” and that there would be ways made available to those who didn’t want to participate but want to show “solidarity with those do.” On the 25th the protests will continue and conclude at the local jail in a show of support to those who are arrested during the protests.

It’s very important that I stress here that I strongly oppose the use of violence, which many times occur at these protests. But I do have to say that I like the energy and passion that groups such as those associated with the PG20RP bring to the process. When these groups channel their efforts into non-violent direct action (such as marches, strikes and sit-ins) they can play a positive role in the creation of a more just system.

Sometimes it’s good to have a bad attitude.

What can you do?
* Post this promotion (Click Here) to your web site. (Warning: this flyer includes the use of the “F-Word.”)
* Link to the PG20RP from your site or blog: Link to PG20RP
* Organize a non-violent group to participate with the PG20RP events in Pittsburgh.
* Provide medical support to the participants. To learn how you can provide aid Click Here