Americans Hate Congress Want Jobs

This New York Times poll is interesting. It shows that despite the media onslaught and the lies pumped out by the Republicans, nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that creating jobs ought to be a higher priority than making cuts. If we broke it down by class, I'm certain that amongst working class people - the majority of Americans - the number would probably jump to about seventy-five percent. It's heartening to see that despite all the bullshit rhetoric spewed by Fox News and John Boehner amongst others, that the debt ceiling fiasco has damaged the Republicans in particular, though Obama and the Democrats also emerge damaged from this fiasco (72% vs 66% disapproval, respectively). The poll also indicates that the highest number in polling history have a negative view of Congress - a whopping 85%. Amongst some other goodies in the poll:

The Tea Party is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll. In mid-April 29 percent of those polled viewed the movement unfavorably, while 26 percent viewed it favorably. And 43 percent of Americans now think the Tea Party has too much influence on the Republican Party, up from 27 percent in mid-April...

Though Republicans prevented tax increases from being included in the debt-ceiling deal, half of those polled said the agreement should have included increased tax revenue, while 44 percent said it should have relied on cuts alone. That issue is likely to be revisited soon: Congress is preparing to appoint a special committee to recommend ways to reduce the deficit. Sixty-three percent of those polled said that they supported raising taxes on households that earn more than $250,000 a year, as Mr. Obama has sought to do — including majorities of Democrats (80 percent), independents (61 percent) and Republicans (52 percent)...

But there was uncertainty about whether the debt-ceiling deal would help or hurt the economy: nearly half said it would have no effect, while 24 percent said it would make the economy worse and 22 percent said it would improve it.

This is a demonstration of two things: First is the fact that despite what many pessimists think, the American people are not simply empty vessels for right wing propaganda. They have suffered through several years of a housing crisis that continues to rip apart working class families. They are suffering from their own debt crisis and they are facing ongoing job insecurity or unemployment and underemployment. The rhetoric of the media or the Tea Party can have an influence but it is only one source, and not necessarily the most important, by which American workers try to figure out what the hell is going on.

Secondly, and most importantly, it shows that there is space to build an alternative to the Democrats & the Republicans, both of whom have effectively the same agenda - massive cuts & austerity - but who only disagree on the particular way that it will be implemented, whether all-out class war is the way to go or a phoney "balanced approach" in which the very rich give back a small portion of the many tax breaks that they have received in the last thirty years. However, the problem remains that that alternative will have to be built in struggle, through mobilization. But the trade union movement in the US, even more than in Canada, is split, conservative and pathetic. The heads of the US unions have largely been happy to wallow in the filth of their obscene salaries as their rank and file membership have seen their wages and conditions eroded and the aggressive anti-union policies of the American ruling class de-unionize the workforce to the point of making unions extinct. The union movement is a sick horse that the leaderships are riding into the ground. And when they are done, most of those union leaders - people like James Hoffa Jr., a former company-side labour lawyer - will walk away to plum jobs in the political machinery of the Democrats (or Republicans in the case of some of the more odious leaders like Hoffa) or into the corporate sector. It is frankly scandalous that during the entire recession and during this whole debate and move towards austerity that the American union movement has not lifted a finger for a national mobilization to challenge the Tea Party. Having allowed the inspiring Wisconsin movement to wither on the vine, they seem determined to prevent any effective mobilization. It will take an explosion by rank and file movements within the existing union movement and, perhaps even more, explosions by the unorganized to renew American unionism and take the latent class anger and hunger for a choice other than the Tweedle-Dee/Tweedle-Dum politics of Washington and turn it into reality.

USA: Immigration Issue Could Split The Right

For years immigration has been an issue for the right wing to mobilize around - from the far-right vigilante groups like the Minutemen and the equally odious Tea Party movement to mainstream Republican governors, who bolstered their support during a period of mass unemployment and immiseration using immigrants as scapegoats. But it might yet turn out to be a pandora's box for the right wing in America.
As everyone knows, evangelical leaders have been a key component of the so-called conservative coalition, united around issues like abortion rights and same sex marriage. It seemed sometimes that the conservatives were an unstoppable monolith. Yet, an article in today's New York Times suggests that the big mobilizations against the immigration clampdown are creating schisms within the conservative coalition. With 15% of the large US Latino population self-declared evangelical Christian and with the majority as active Catholics, there is a danger that the politicization and mobilization taking place could push Latinos towards the left. US trade unions, for instance, have been vocal supporters of immigration reform to alleviate and normalize the status of the 12 million illegal immigrants living and working in the US.

“Hispanics are religious, family-oriented, pro-life, entrepreneurial,” said the Rev. Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm. “They are hard-wired social conservatives, unless they’re driven away.
“I’ve had some older conservative leaders say: ‘Richard, stop this. You’re going to split the conservative coalition,’ ” Dr. Land continued. “I say it might split the old conservative coalition, but it won’t split the new one. And if the new one is going to be a governing coalition, it’s going to have to have a lot of Hispanics in it. And you don’t get a lot of Hispanics in your coalition by engaging in anti-Hispanic anti-immigration rhetoric.”

Land's point - absurdity about hard-wired social conservatism aside - is an interesting one and speaks to the pressure that evangelists feel. On the one hand, the Republicans were substantially discredited by the Bush years, with his neo-liberal tax cuts that failed to stop the economy's implosion and the widely perceived debacles in the foreign policy arena, from Iraq to Israel to Afghanistan. Of course the Democrats have a natural ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and the Republicans may well pick up substantial numbers of seats in the mid-terms - but it won't be on the basis of enthusiasm. And those most enthusiastic of Republicans - the Tea Party - are likely so crazy that their "insurgent" candidates in a number of states will mostly suffer ignominious defeat. All this speaks to a right wing that is weakened and divided. It's only against this backdrop, and the mobilizations of hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters, that Land's bold talk of splitting the conservative coalition can be understood.
For progressives that offers some key lessons. It has been through mobilizations - not through waiting on the good will of the Obama Administration - that change has begun to take place. It will be through continued mobilizations that the conservative coalition will be fractured. It's also an opportunity to make broader links - something that the evangelicals understand. If Latinos are being driven away, it is also because they are being driven towards something. In California where Latinos likely voted in significant numbers to support the anti-gay marriage proposition two years ago there is the possibility of demonstrating that the LGBT movement understands the links between supporting immigrants rights and winning gay rights. In both cases it is about limiting freedom of choice and the right to a life with dignity. If the LGBT movement can demonstrate its principled solidarity it can not only help win a victory for immigrants' rights, it can also drive a deeper wedge, pulling Latinos towards reciprocating the support. That isn't to say it will be easy but the prize is so big that it is worth it. And a victory for both immigrants and LGBT people would be a massive blow to the confidence of not only the Republicans but the Democrats who have pushed hard to keep the movements in line behind Obama - even when he hasn't delivered so much as supportive rhetoric. Of course, in any crisis there is both opportunity and danger. There is always the possibility that, for instance, the LGBT movement doesn't support the immigrants' rights movement and is, instead, scornful of it. This may sound absurd but think about feminists attacking Muslims in placing like France and Switzerland, lining themselves up with hard-right anti-immigrant forces. If the oppressed don't unite, the right wing evangelicals could maneuver themselves into the leadership and steer it into a direction most advantageous to them - and with the most conservative outcomes possible. That could help cement the divisions between LGBT and Latino immigrants in a way that makes it much more difficult to overcome. Luckily, the recent mobilizations in the LGBT movement, post-Obama, have involved socialists in the leadership who are pro-immigrant and have a perspective of uniting the oppressed. Let's hope that they are able to find avenues to bring at least elements of these two movements together in a working relationship.

Rich Default On Mortgages At Higher Rate Than Workers

Well, this New York Times article is interesting, given the dominant narrative that says it was the poor who caused the economic crisis by getting in over their heads with home borrowing. Seems that the wealthy are defaulting at higher rates. But then why should it only be workers who were affected by the entire dynamic of debt-driven economic growth that generated the boom of the first decade of this century? The entire logic of the boom that went bust in 2008 was based upon excessive borrowing and it was facilitated and encouraged by the US government, through the Federal Reserve Bank under the leadership of Alan Greenspan. In particular, following the dot-com bust at the end of the 90's, he pursued a strategy of rock bottom interest rates and a super-easy money supply that saved the economy from a recession at that time by encouraging the development of a housing bubble. For the poor, it was an opportunity to own a home. For the wealthy, it was an opportunity to own a massive home. But, as the article in the Times points out, the poor and middle income generally do what they can to hang onto their homes, while the rich are more likely to see them as a real estate investment that they let go without undo sentiment.

"Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.
More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.
By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.
Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.
“The rich are different: they are more ruthless,” said Sam Khater, CoreLogic’s senior economist."