The high price of principles

Nota bene: My blog entries have been disheveled by Thanksgiving and the flu - my apologies!

I was struck by the fact that the following three sentences from newspaper articles floated across my screen in the last few days.

"Even though corporate profits have doubled since recession gave way to economic expansion in November 2001, and even though employee productivity has risen more than 15 percent since then, the average wage for the typical American worker has inched up just 1 percent (after inflation)."

and

"But many analysts said they saw no signs yet that the economy was nearing a bottom. American consumers, who for decades have been the country’s tireless source of growth when all else failed, have cut back on their spending more sharply than at any time since the early 1980s."

and

"Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent."

Now I am no economist but I do remember thinking back in 2005, "Be careful Mr Bush. You simply can't shift the wealth toward the top, preach no-end-in-sight fear and revenge and not expect crime rates to go up."

(Keep in mind this was back when we had pundits and government officials tossing justice to the wind and gleefully spouting off about how we need to "take out" this person or that one.)

My thought was that you can only push poor people so far before they break, especially if you don't give them health care or access to higher education.

But in fact I was wrong. From what I can tell crime rates haven't changed all that much - unless someone is hiding precious data from the public. But instead of widespread human collapse it's the major institutions, the core of our economic structure, that are falling all around us. And you know it's bad when the Republican leadership is considering a socialist move like taking ownership in the Big Three.

Contrary to what it may seem, I am not a communist. I do believe in the creative powers of capitalism. What I don't agree with is when we put profit over the basic ethics of democracy, justice and equality.

What are we to think about a country that allows nearly one quarter of its population go without health insurance? Or a public school, sitting on free government land, that only offers courses that the elite can afford? Or corporations that would rather pay an untrained 16 year old in China than an untrained 30 year old in Detroit or Alabama (or for that matter a country that swears up and down it won't do business with evil communist countries then in a decade hands the lion's share of its manufacturing to one)?

What are we to think about a justice system that works best and most effectively for people with a lot of money? What are we to think of a ballot initiative system that pays $10 for a signature or a legislator who prefers to follow policy handed to her by a corporate lobbyist rather than stand for her principles? Or even very simply what are we to think of a public service like TSA in our airports that offers people with more expensive plane tickets better service?

In the 19th century we fought our bloodiest battle because the southern states only wanted the right of freedom to be extended so far. They knew if it were extended to blacks, their successful agricultural economy would collapse. Suddenly the lofty ideas of equality borrowed from the French philosophers and embodied in the US constitution weren't such a hot idea. But have we really changed that much since then?

We were all stunned that the murderers of Mumbai were poor villagers who were brainwashed and bought for minor sums to go attack civilians, but everyday in America we put our principles aside in the name of profit.

Mormons who represent 2% of California's population used their majority power in Utah to collect $40 million and influence a vote to take away the rights of a minority two states away. In an age where politics get played out on the TV screen, we only get to hear from candidates who have the money to pay the high costs of advertising. And our democratic debates get washed down into very costly and highly insipid, thirty-second sound bites. Our department of defense was so eager to find warriors that they convinced the justice department to waive sentences of felons who agreed to go fight in a war. From my house I can see a bridge that was declared unsafe for earthquakes in 1989! Hundreds of thousands of people cross it weekly and we still haven't replaced it even though I live in one of the most prosperous areas of the country.

A few years ago federal legislation passed to limit the amount of money that a candidate could spend on an election. The next day the National Rifle Association announced they would sue the US government for violation of their first amendment rights. Not remembering any reference to guns in the first amendment I googled the bill of rights. How could the first amendment possibly affect their (ad nauseum) precious right to tote guns, I wondered. Of course the NRA were referring to their freedom of speech -- as in money = speech.

And there you have it in a nutshell.

A true democracy struggles everyday to uphold the notion that each voice is equal. But in a country where dollars speak loudest democracy slips away.

Is it possible we fought a war to become proud citizens of a new country rather than subjects of a frumpy king and instead became lowly consumers in a giant market?