The WAWG Blog

The founders of America included a fundamental idea in our Constitution: checks and balances – one branch of government checks another. This important idea is basic to our way of life and applies to any situation where abuse of power must be kept in check. This is especially important when those with power take advantage of their power. When the power abuser is an employer, the only check and balance for the employees sufferring the abuse is a union. But even then, the members of the union are not as financially prepared as their employer when it comes to resolving mutual concerns. This is the case for the United Steel Workers. Please back the fundamental idea of checks and balances by helping to empower the USW:

* Material Donations – Food (non perishable), Diapers, Food Gift Cards:
Deliver to: USW, Local 13-1, 311 Pasadena Blvd, Pasadena Texas 77506 or 2527 Texas Avenue, Texas City 77590 and to USW, Local 13-227, 704 E. Pasadena Fwy, Pasadena, Texas 77506.

* Picketing Assistance:
Report to USW, Local 13-1, 311 Pasadena Blvd., Pasadena, Texas 77506 – or USW, Local 13-1227, 704 E. Pasadena Fwy, Pasadena, Texas 77506. You will be assigned a Gate

* Monetary Donations:
Mail to or deliver to: USW, Local 13-1, Strike Assistance, 311 Pasadena Blvd., Pasadena, Texas 77506 and to USW, Local 13-227, 704 E. Pasadena Fwy, Pasadena, Texas 77506

Externalizing hope will defeat the casino capitalism of the authoritarian right. Here are three requirements for getting there:

1. Progressives who deny their core values, lose, and can’t inspire the underpaid, overworked, debt ridden, and generally oppressed to take action. Dave Johnson discusses the lack of political integrity to inspire citizens:

The results clearly show that voters in 2010 did not abandon the Democrats for the other side, but they did forsake the party in another important way: Many stayed home.

… polling shows that many “independents” are to the left of Democrats and many others are to the right of Republicans. They are not “in the middle” or “between” but rather are more likely to stay home and not vote for candidates who move “to the middle.” Those independents to the right of Republicans are not going to vote for Democrats no matter how far “to the right” the Democratic candidate goes.

“The dumbest thing Democrats could do right now is listen to those like Third Way who urge Democrats to repeat their mistake by caving to Republicans and corporations instead of fighting boldly for popular progressive reforms and reminding Americans why they were inspired in 2008,” Green says.

Again [2012], the Republican campaigned to the right, the Democrat campaigned “in the middle.” The result: Republicans showed up to vote, Democrats stayed home.

Conclusion: You Have To Deliver For And Campaign To Your Base Or They Don’t Show Up!

Republicans campaign to their base and win. Democrats who sound like Republican lite bore their base and lose.

==> Hope is engendered by those who remain true to their moral values.

2. Winning against free market fundamentalism/casino capitalism/neoliberalism requires learning new concepts. These new concepts include hypocognition, bi-conceptionalism, systemic causation, reflexivity, strict father vs. nurturing parents, communicating moral values and facts win over facts alone, and equality requires freedoms.

Professor George Lakoff discusses these concepts and how to effectively express ones moral values to inspire individuals to take action. He ends his interview with:

I want to leave them [the reader] with the idea that all language has to do with how people think, that this is about how brains work, and that we have two moral systems going on here; that politics is about that, that language affects it in that way, and that it also has to do with a communication system. You can’t do without a system of communication getting those ideas out there all the time, not just at election time. Part of that is the idea that progressives have a lot to say about freedom, and not only a lot to say, but essential things to say about our democracy and about what freedom is, and they can appeal to people in ways that they’re not doing now.

“Messaging matters, George Lakoff tells Salon, but the key to politics is combining message with a moral grounding”

==> Inspiring hope against authoritarian rule requires effectively communicating progressive moral values, which builds the foundation for policies that equally support all citizens.

3. In addition to moral integrity, learning new concepts, developing a winning set of messages, and creating a nationwide, perpetual, communication system to repeat these messages, there is also a need to understand both how our fundamentalist capitalist system is replacing our republic/democracy with a plutocracy, and how this economic system converts critical thinking citizens into obedient shoppers who have forsaken hope and see little reason to participate in the current ailing political system.

Here are some excerpts from a recent article on authoritarian driven austerity and how it’s neoliberal polices have taken control of our political system, which in turn makes it challenging for principled leaders to inspire passive, but hopeful, citizens to take action:

Austerity measures not only individualize the social; they also produce massive disparities in wealth, income and power that impose immense constraints on people’s well-being, freedom and choices, while serving to undermine any faith in government, politics and democracy itself. The distrust of public values and egalitarian approaches to governance coupled with a wariness, if not a disdain for group solidarities and compassion for the other, nourish and promote a dislike of community engagement, social trust and democratic public spheres. Austerity produces a world without safety nets or the social and political formations that embrace democratic forms of solidarity. Clinging “fiercely to neoliberal [supporting unrestrained free market capitalism] ideals of untrammeled individualism and self-reliance,” many young people not only embrace therapeutic models of selfhood but develop a deep distrust, if not resentment, of any notion of the social and shun obligations to others.

By eroding the middle class and punishing working and poor people of color, it becomes difficult for radical movements to emerge, and consequently politics gets emptied of any hope for a democratic future. In the midst of a culture of survival and the normalization of violence, thoughtlessness prevails as time becomes a deprivation focused largely on the need to simply stay alive. Under such circumstances, time becomes a burden, making it difficult for individuals to think critically, grapple with complex problems and resist neoliberal [supporting unrestrained free market capitalism] notions of citizenship, which define citizens largely as consumers. As critical thought withers and citizenship turns into a pathology, democracy is reduced to matters of self-interest and falls prey not only to a depoliticizing cynicism, but also a call for anti-democratic alternatives such as the demand for “illiberal democracy,” which is taking place in Hungary and “is characterized by extreme nationalism, free-market capitalism designed to promote the interests of the state, government control of the media and concentrated power in the executive branch of the government.”

The turn to authoritarian capitalism is on the rise and can be found in “Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.” The principles of authoritarian capitalism are also on full display in the austerity policies pushed without apology by Republican Party extremists and their Democratic Party cohorts in the United States. Channelling Ayn Rand, right-wing politicians such as Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio argue for the most extreme austerity policies under the guise that moral weakness and greediness are the debased characteristics of those citizens struggling for financial support and social provisions in the age of austerity. In this discourse, it is not surprising that austerity measures find their ideological legitimation in the notion that self-interest is the foundational element of agency and that selfishness is the highest civic virtue. Rand’s insistence that “there is no such thing as society” when coupled with an aggressive assault on all things public and social does more than disparage democracy; it becomes a blueprint for the rise of fascism. Even liberals such as Paul Krugman are sounding the alarm in the midst of rising inequality and the emergence of totalitarian ideologies that make the circumstances ripe for the appeal and rise of totalitarian ideologies that gave birth to the horrors of fascism and Nazism in Europe in the 1930s.

==> Stopping the destruction of the world by free market fundamentalism/casino capitalism/neoliberalism requires political integrity, effective, long-term, communication of progressive moral values, and turning hope outward by educating a small segment of the two-thirds of non-participants and getting them to join ‘in transformative collective action’ to create a new radical, “insurrectional democracy.”

From: Peak Inequality: The .01% and The Impoverishment of Society:

Beyond these baseline costs, looking at moderate costs for a family of four owning a home in a median family area, with one car, education and retirement costs factored in, it will cost $130k a year. Add a third child and a second car into the mix and it will cost roughly $150k a year. Only 1.46% of the overall population makes over $150k per year. In other words, in the current economy, the average traditional American Dream is only attainable for the 1%. The 99% has been mathematically eliminated from the traditional American Dream. If they want to have a family and own a home, they are now sentenced to a lifetime of economic insecurity and ever-increasing debt.

From Conditioned Consciousness: How the .01% Gets Away with Trillions:

… many of us feel powerless to change things. It is stunning to hear so many people say that they can’t do anything about it. Far too many people think that we can’t create change; that is the primary reason why we don’t. Why do you think that we can’t change the world? How did you come to that conclusion? Who taught you to believe that?

We should also ask why, after the Vietnam War debacle, do we now think war is so indispensable?

From The Victory of ‘Perception Management’:

Though Reagan’s creation of a domestic propaganda bureaucracy began more than three decades ago – and [Senior] Bush’s vanquishing of the Vietnam Syndrome was more than two decades ago – the legacy of those actions continue to reverberate today in how the perceptions of the American people are now routinely managed. That was true during last decade’s Iraq War and this decade’s conflicts in Libya, Syria and Ukraine as well as the economic sanctions against Iran and Russia.

…

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is bigger than ever, but his neocon messaging barely stands out as distinctive, given how the neocons also have gained control of the editorial and foreign-reporting sections of the Washington Post, the New York Times and virtually every other major news outlet. For instance, the demonizing of Russian President Putin is now so total that no honest person could look at those articles and see anything approaching objective or evenhanded journalism. Yet, no one loses a job over this lack of professionalism.

…

At this advanced stage of America’s quiet surrender to “perception management,” it is even hard to envision how one could retrace the many steps that would lead back to the concept of a democratic Republic based on an informed electorate. Many on the American Right remain entranced by the old propaganda theme about the “liberal media” and still embrace Reagan as their beloved icon. Meanwhile, many liberals can’t break away from their own wistful trust in the New York Times and their empty hope that the media really is “liberal.”

There is still hope …

From The Coming Revolution: Evolutionary Leap or Descent into Chaos and Violence?:

The ultimate point is that there is presently more than enough wealth and capabilities to solve societal problems. We can truly evolve society in unprecedented fashion. We live in the most wealthy and technologically advanced society in the history of civilization. In the US, we have $94.4 trillion in wealth. People should not have to struggle and be buried in debt to get basic necessities and live a healthy life.

…

Most people are unaware of the paradigm shift in technology and wealth creation that should have provided economic security and made life much more enjoyable for everyone well over a generation ago. We haven’t evolved the political and economic system because the mainstream media has not revealed to the general public that we have $94.4 trillion in wealth, with $25 trillion of it unused. If people knew that this much wealth existed, and could comprehend the implications of what could be done with just a fraction of it, we would have a revolution.

At this point, a significant portion of the population knows that our present system is unsustainable and unstable, even many of the richest .01% will now acknowledge that. We already have a critical mass of aware citizens, we just need to inspire and organize them to build the cultural and political will.

Alas, the horrifying socio-economic reality haunts me; after extensive research, it is clear that we don’t have much time left before we descend into chaos. If we want to change things through nonviolent methods, the window of opportunity is closing fast. We need to radically intensify the pace in which change is occurring. The .01% and political class must urgently acquiesce to the needs of the people. As John Kennedy once said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

The statistical evidence is clear.

We have reached the tipping point.

Revolution is coming, one way or the other.

Two views on the coming progressive revolution:

From An independent progressive movement by Houston Blogger Perry Dorrell:

The strongest argument for a progressive movement, independent or third-party, remains that the two corporate political parties are still essentially one; half of the duopoly is just meaner and more cruel than the other. Do ya really think the disparity between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush makes up enough of a difference to motivate the 2/3rds of Americans who did not vote in 2014 to storm the ramparts supporting one or the other? …

…

So where does that leave an independent progressive movement? Same place it’s been for a while: sitting at a standstill. So what options remain for a progressive revolution? Let’s begin at the beginning: progressives must vote. Period, full stop. They also have to cast ballots in the Democratic Party primary occasionally, for the kind of candidates they want to see nominated by that party. And when the Democrats fail to nominate those candidates, then independent progressives have to vote for Greens — or Socialists, or independents who are aligned with the left — on every single ballot line they appear. That’s the only way that there will ever be a progressive revolution in the Democratic Party. There will be no change made otherwise.

From Fight for Our Progressive Vision by Bernie Sanders:

First and foremost, against an enormous amount of corporate media noise and distraction, it is imperative that we not lose sight of what is most important and the vision that we stand for. We have got to stay focused on those issues that impact the lives of tens of millions of Americans who struggle every day to keep their heads above water economically, and who worry deeply about the kind of future their kids will have.

Yes. We make no apologies in stating that the great moral, economic and political issue of our time is the growing level of income and wealth inequality in our nation. It is a disgrace to everything this country is supposed to stand for when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and when one family (the Waltons) owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. No. The economy is not sustainable when the middle class continues to disappear and when 95 percent of all new income generated since the Wall Street crash goes to the top 1 percent. In order to create a vibrant economy, working families need disposable income. That is often not the case today.

– Corporations/Billionaires own our government

– Obedient shoppers or Critical Thinkers?

– Enslaved by paychecks and debt

– Where freedom is an illusion

– About ME or about WE?

– For-profit media conditions consciousness

– Democracy or Republic? No! Plutocracy!!

– The freedom to honor greed

– The freedom to honor torture

– Freedom to imagine national perfection

– Freedom to ignore scientific evidence

– Freedom to bomb for oil

– Freedom to dominate the world

– Where state crimes are hidden

– Where corporate crimes are ignored

– Corporate governance replaced representative goverenance

– Where fearful/hateful minority vote

– The American Revolution of 1800

I just responded to a Texas Democratic Party Survey. Here are their questions and my answers:

What do you think we could have done differently?
All organizations that are working to elect Democrats need to coordinate their activities to reduce duplication of effort, provide a consistent moral message, and increase effectiveness of getting non-voters to the polls. In our county, BGTX, unions, and candidates we all doing their own thing and I suspect the same thing happened in other counties. I started working with BGTX in April of 2013 and worked with them all the way through election day. One example of lack of coordination was the follow-up calls made for the mail-in ballot requests and applications. BGTX used their extensively corrected VAN database to make calls. Others used out-of-date VAN data to make calls.

What were your favorite moments or stories of 2014?
The day when the local county Republican chairwoman referenced one of my tweets in her urgent message to Republicans warning that BGTX was a threat and they better vote.

What do you think we can do to get more Democrats to the polls?
Stop backing neoliberal (free market fundamentalism) ideology and get back to our moral foundation of equally protecting and empowering all citizens. The voters who would vote for us and our values see no difference between Dems and Rep. They are both owned by those with excessive money. Sponsor resolutions and/or legislation against “corporations are people” and “money is speech.”

What do you think Democrats need to do to win in the future?
Learn from the Republicans, who have been winning the message war for decades: preface all communications with the moral value of why what we want for America is morally right.

Republicans motivate their supporters to vote with fear of their fellow citizens. Democrats need to motivate their supporters by appealing to their compassion for their fellow citizens. Protect All Americans from Corporate Abuse: Vote Democratic. Empower Citizens, not Corporations: Vote Democratic

Regardless of the particular arguments you want to use, we need to embed them in a moral value foundation. What makes our argument morally right? If we start with a moral value they can agree with, they will more likely agree with the rest of our argument.

For example, for our system of self-government to work we need fair elections.

The moral responsibilities of our government is to equally protect citizens from those with excessive power and to equally empower citizens for both success and effective self-governing. When that moral responsibility is diminished, citizens are harmed.

If the moral responsibilities of the government are privatized, then they are either ignored or minimized by corporations, and citizens are harmed. If the right to vote is not equally applied as the result of corporations writing laws through ALEC, then citizens are disenfranchised. If citizens are not equally educated to think critically due to excessively reduced corporate citizenship dues, then citizens are more easily manipulated by corporate and billionaire ads to vote against their own best interest. If multinational corporations, that owe no allegiance to America and are incorporated in another country, can spend unlimited funds on political ads in American elections, then citizens are ignored by politicians who are elected with corporate donations.

As corporate governance replaces representative governance, more harm comes to citizens and the likelihood of fair elections becomes an illusion.

What are you looking forward to in 2016?
Selection of candidates who are not corporate lackeys and who will equally protect and empower flesh and blood citizens.

What issues are a priority for 2016 you’d like to add?
Responding to climate destruction to minimize the future impact of dirty energy on those who are not part of the ONE%. The ONE% are the only one’s who can afford to live on a dying planet. The poor will suffer the most while we ignore global warming.

Reversing Citizens United and other activist rulings by the SCOTUS that empower corporations and promote abuse of citizens.

Busting up banks too big to fail.

Suggested Reading for Week Ending 10/26

Suggested Reading for Week Ending 10/19

Suggested Reading for Week Ending 10/12

The majority of citizens have let this happen by not participating in the political process. Too many citizens are not electing representatives who will work for the majority of citizens. Instead we are letting a ‘minority of us’ elect those who see the majority of citizens as ‘them.’

Why privacy matters – “Mass surveillance creates a prison in the mind.”

“He that does not move, does not notice his chains.”

Suggested Reading for Week Ending 10/5

Suggested Reading for Week Ending 9/28

We seem to have forgotten about the Syrians we’re supposedly helping.

“… perhaps once we have freed ourselves, we can reach out to free the people of Gaza.”