Archive for category: Class Oppression

Bloomberg believes that Amazon (yes, Amazon) has the solution to the problem of the ‘lower class’. Apparently, “the campaign against economic inequality has put a bullseye on cities” because local governments are being encouraged to raise minimum wages in the US and build more housing – what rotters! Raising wages and building houses is the real problem, according to Bloomberg, which is why cities have an overflow of ‘lower classes’.

The post Amazon’s ‘Factory Towns’ Will Be Satanic Mills For The Working Class appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

An illustration of three people in silhouette walking along a city street, each with a red arrow tag over their head.

The number of gig workers in the US grew an unprecedented 34 percent this year. | Getty Images

An astonishing one in three US workers does gig work now.

More people are turning to gig work than ever before, but since these jobs usually don’t come with employer benefits, their proliferation could worsen inequality for millions of Americans.

The number of people employed in nontraditional ways in the US rose to a record 51 million this year, an unprecedented 34 percent jump compared to 2020, according to new data from MBO Partners, a company that provides business solutions to the independent workforce and has conducted a long-running study of the group. These types of workers — which include contract workers, people who are self-employed, temporary and on-call workers, and those who get short-term jobs through online apps or marketplaces — are now equivalent to a third of US employment.

Gig work shifts the risk from employers to employees and can lead to financial volatility for those who do it, resulting in more economic and psychological stress than regular work. Most obviously, independent work doesn’t include many of the protections afforded by traditional employment. That includes things like minimum wage, overtime, paid parental leave, and employer-subsidized health care. If people’s gig work doesn’t compensate enough to pay for those extras independently, it can put people at a severe economic disadvantage compared to regular employees.

Independent work, though, has its perks. It offers workers the flexibility of being able to choose, to some extent, what, when, and where their work is.

While advocates and some policymakers are actively trying to secure the benefits of full-time employment for independent workers, progress has been piecemeal and nonlinear. California’s landmark bill AB 5 made many contractors into employees and afforded them the same benefits — but soon after it was signed into law, Proposition 22, a ballot measure sponsored by gig companies, passed and exempted many gig companies from having to consider their workers employees. The battle in California isn’t over; in August, California’s Superior Court invalidated Prop 22 and made it unenforceable, but gig companies say they are going to appeal.

In the meantime, the march toward independent work is happening nonetheless.

Growth in business registrations for companies without employees (say, an individual selling products on eBay or freelancers finding graphic design work through Upwork) has outpaced wage employment. Average weekly signups to the Freelance Union, a nonprofit that advocates for and provides resources to the growing independent workforce, grew 300 percent since the pandemic began.

While independent work grew among all employment situations, it grew fastest for people performing occasional (regularly, but without set hours per week) independent work. Those ranks grew 51 percent, to 24 million people. Many of them are doing what is commonly thought of as gig work: on-demand jobs from platforms like Uber Eats or freelance job sites.

Work found through online marketplaces was important for part-timers and full-timers as well. Some 40 percent of all independent workers reported finding jobs using online marketplaces, up from 27 percent in 2020.

The rise of independent work has been happening for decades and for a variety of reasons, from the dissolution of traditional employment to the proliferation of online platforms that connect people with this kind of work. Like many trends, it was accelerated by the pandemic — economic instability historically increases independent work — but it shows no signs of going away when the pandemic is over. And so the jump in gig workers in the US is something we should all be paying attention to.

Why are people choosing gig work?

Despite a rapid economic recovery, there are still 6 million fewer employed Americans than there were pre-pandemic, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Many of those have had to turn to independent work — which often gets missed by the BLS data — to compensate.

Other independent workers do have regular jobs, but those jobs just don’t provide enough money. Nearly three-quarters of new part-time independents in the MBO survey said they took on independent work to supplement their incomes.

“Making ends meet has just gotten harder and harder,” Steve King, a board member at MBO and a future of work expert, told Recode. “In our world, it’s very challenging for a lot of people to hit their monthly target.”

Low wages aren’t the only shortcomings of traditional employment.

“By and large, what we’ve seen over the last four and a half decades is just huge erosion of worker leverage in a way that’s led to just incredibly low job quality for huge swaths of our labor market: low wages, low benefits, bad hours, bad working conditions,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at Economic Policy Institute think tank and former chief economist at the US Labor Department, told Recode.

Most independent workers (63 percent) consider working independently to be their own choice completely. But Shierholz says the choice isn’t because independent work is especially good.

“We know that the quality of these [independent] jobs they say they’re choosing are often just incredibly bad,” Shierholz said. “And that means their other choices are also really, really bad.”

The quality of these [independent] jobs … are often just incredibly bad. And that means their other [traditional] choices are also really, really bad.

Still, some 77 percent of independent workers in the MBO study said they were highly satisfied with their arrangements, 10 percentage points higher than traditional jobholders.

Gig work is a way for people to have more control over what their jobs entail, more flexibility in when and where they work, and a better work-life balance. Perks like the ability to work remotely have become increasingly in-demand during the pandemic, which jarred people into rethinking the primacy of work in general in their lives. Such work is especially important to people with child care or elder care responsibilities, or for people with disabilities where regular employment is difficult.

“I think one of the big things is that online platform work is really enabling people who are looking for greater flexibility,” Adam Ozimek, chief economist at freelancing platform Upwork, told Recode. “A lot of people had a taste of working remotely this year and they see the flexibility that comes with that, and they want even more.”

An increasing share of traditional employees (29 percent) even views independent work as less risky than theirs, according to MBO. Two-thirds of independent workers think so.

Independent work is also sometimes just easier to get. The rise of apps or platforms like TaskRabbit and Fiverr has made the process of finding independent work a lot less arduous by centralizing and simplifying the process of attaining it.

Then there’s the issue of misclassification driving the growth in independent workers. Industries as far afield as construction and ride-hailing are increasingly calling their workers contractors rather than employees. The distinction, while sometimes legally dubious, is economically advantageous. Employers can save about 25 percent by switching employees to contract workers, according to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute. The savings come from employers not having to pay things like unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and paid leave.

How do you protect the growing ranks of independent workers?

Not having protections like unemployment insurance or employer-subsidized health care means events like an accident, a new child, or a global pandemic could negatively affect independent workers more than traditional ones.

“Freelancers don’t have the social safety net to rely on to get them through the weeks or months that they’re out of work,” Rafael Espinal, executive director of the Freelancers Union, told Recode.

The union is one of many advocates working to create something called portable benefits so that independent workers get things like paid leave, unemployment insurance, retirement plans, and affordable health care, regardless of their employment status.

So far, fewer than 10 states have guaranteed paid employment leave for new parents that would include gig workers. Biden’s proposed American Families Plan would create a “national comprehensive” paid family leave plan that the Freelancers Union is hoping will include freelancers. The proposal is still being fought out in Congress, so even if it passes, what it will ultimately include is up in the air. Independent workers are not included in the Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives workers job protection during unpaid leave.

“When the budget passes, we will have to ensure independent workers are included in the implementation of the program,” Espinal said. “It shouldn’t be a hard lift given that a handful of states were able to successfully implement a similar program.”

And paid leave is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to benefits. It’s not enough to deal with all the needs of the rapidly growing number of freelance and independent workers, who represent a substantial share of the US workforce.

Espinal believes the onus lies with the government to protect independent workers.

“If it becomes unsustainable, it’s because the federal government failed to react,” Espinal said. “I do believe that the silver lining to this pandemic is that it shocks the federal and state governments to the point where they have to react and look at how they create a safety net for millions of people who traditionally have gone without one.”

“Monopoly is a threat to representative democracy—and that protecting our democracy requires effective antitrust.”

Directors generally view their jobs as primarily supporting managers, not monitoring them.

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Who are these other, non-governmental stakeholders? The WEF, best known for its annual meeting of high-net-worth individuals in Davos, Switzerland, describes itself as an international organization for public-private cooperation. WEF partners include some of the biggest companies in oil (Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron, BP), food (Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé), technology (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) and pharmaceuticals (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna).

Instead of corporations serving many stakeholders, in the multi-stakeholder model of global governance, corporations are promoted to being official stakeholders in global decision-making, while governments are relegated to being one of many stakeholders. In practice, corporations become the main stakeholders, while governments take a backseat role, and civil society is mainly window dressing.

The multi-stakeholder ecosystem

Perhaps the most symbolic example of this shift is the controversial strategic partnership agreement the United Nations (UN) signed with the WEF in 2019. Harris Gleckman describes this as a move to turn the UN into a public-private partnership, creating a special place for corporations inside the UN.

The multi-stakeholder model is already being built. In recent years, an ever-expanding ecosystem of multi-stakeholder groups has spread across all sectors of the global governance system. There are now more than 45 global multi-stakeholder groups that set standards and establish guidelines and rules in a range of areas. According to Gleckman, these groups, which lack any democratic accountability, consist of private stakeholders (big corporations) who “recruit their friends in government, civil society and universities to join them in solving public problems”.

Multi-stakeholderism is the WEF’s update of multilateralism, which is the current system through which countries work together to achieve common goals. The multilateral system’s core institution is the UN. The multilateral system is often rightly accused of being ineffective, too bureaucratic and skewed towards the most powerful nations. But it is at least theoretically democratic because it brings together democratically elected leaders of countries to make decisions in the global arena. Instead of reforming the multilateral system to deepen democracy, the WEF’s vision of multi-stakeholder governance entails further removing democracy by sidelining governments and putting unelected ‘stakeholders’ – mainly corporations – in their place when it comes to global decision-making.

Put bluntly, multi-stakeholder partnerships are public-private partnerships on the global stage. And they have real-world implications for the way our food systems are organized, how big tech is governed and how our vaccines and medicines are distributed.

The future of food

In autumn 2021, the UN is set to host the World Summit on Food Systems (FSS) in Rome. This is necessary, given that 3.9 billion people – more than half of the world’s population – are currently battling hunger and malnutrition, even though there is enough food to feed the world. But this year’s summit differs significantly from past UN food summits, embracing ‘multi-stakeholder inclusivity’, in which the private sector has ‘an important role’. A concept note from 2019 showed that the WEF was set to be involved in organising the summit, though it is not now clear what the role of the WEF will be.

“Abandoning pesticides is not on the table. How come?” asks Sofia Monsalve of FIAN International, a human rights organisation focused on food and nutrition. “There is no discussion on land concentration or holding companies accountable for their environmental and labour abuses.” This fits into a bigger picture Monsalve sees of large corporations, which dominate the food sector, being reluctant to fix the production system. “They just want to come up with new investment opportunities.”

FIAN International together with 300 other organizations have expressed their concerns about the multi-stakeholder setup in an open letter to the secretary general of the UN, António Guterres. In a meeting with civil society groups who signed the letter, Amina Mohammed, the UN deputy secretary general, assured them that strong safeguards would prevent a corporate capture of the event, “by allowing only platforms or networks and no single corporation to the summit.”

The Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its first post-Trump in-person meeting this week in Salt Lake City, Utah at the five-star Grand America Hotel.

While Trump is no longer in office, ALEC members still wearing their MAGA hats can participate in Trump-themed trainings such as, “Achieving and Using Political Power: How You Implement an America First Agenda,” and “Writing the History of the Future: Messaging Strategies to Reclaim States’ Power & American Exceptionalism.”

The Annual Meeting kicked off on Monday with an “exclusive, invitation-only academy” for state lawmakers with the dark money voter suppression group the Honest Elections Project, where ALEC politicians were “to discuss the implementation of new election legislation” with three secretaries of state, among other “fun and educational” events, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reported.

The Annual Meeting will provide a platform for a number of high-profile Trump loyalists. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry (R), U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R), Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz, and ALEC’s favorite economists Stephen Moore and Art Laffer are all scheduled to speak.

Rewriting our nation’s founding document, protecting the interests of fossil fuels, fighting President Biden, regulating Big Tech, weakening unions, and undermining public education are all on the agenda.

Special Program to Work on Radical Rewrite of U.S. Constitution

ALEC is extending its conference well into the evening on Friday this year to hold an “interactive academy” on rewriting the U.S. Constitution. Attendees will “learn how an Article V amendments convention will actually play out,” and “cast their ballots to decide which ideas to pursue,” an invite obtained by CMD details.

One of the goals of the tutorial appears to be to convince lawmakers that a runaway convention can be prevented, despite expert opinions that this is impossible.

“Once you have the convention, it is subject to nobody’s control,” Georgetown University Law Professor David Super told the AP. “It makes its own agenda. It makes its own voting rules that decides how long it lasts and how far it goes.”

At the 2020 Annual Meeting, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) detailed a legal strategy to force a convention to rewrite the nation’s founding document even though at the time only 28 of 34 states needed had resolutions calling for one pending.

Former State Rep. Ken Ivory (R-UT) will moderate the event, while U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell, Prof. Robert Natelson, David Biddulph, former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, and Dr. Barry Poulson will present.

ALEC is already pushing constitutional convention calls for a balanced budget amendment and sweeping new limits on federal powers, but meeting attendees will also have the opportunity to consider a newly proposed convention call for a package of tax and fiscal reforms, including “abolishing the existing Internal Revenue Code,” called the Application Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution to Propose an Amendment to Require Fiscal Limitations and Accountability for the Legislative and Executive Branches of the National Government.

The model application also seeks to combine the states that pass it with other balanced budget amendment convention calls in an attempt to reach the 34 states needed to convene a constitutional convention.

Protecting Fossil Fuel Interests and Other Climate Harming Measures

ALEC politicians will once again consider model bills to protect fossil fuel interests and polluters.

Meeting attendees will debate a number of policies framed around ending “energy discrimination.” The radical Energy Discrimination Elimination Act would punish financial institutions and other companies that cease to do business with fossil fuel companies by barring the state from investing in them and denying them state business. The policy also includes an anti-boycott measure which prohibits government contractors from boycotting energy companies, even asking for “written verification” from companies stating that they “will not boycott energy companies during the term of the contract.”

This model, as well as the Affordable, Abundant, Reliable Electricity Act, which seeks to protect all energy producers in the name of maintaining a reliable electrical grid, are being lobbied for by Randy Eminger, executive director of the Energy Policy Network, an email obtained by CMD details.

An advocate for “clean coal,” Eminger describes his mission at Energy Policy Network as, “to support the continued use of coal-fueled power,” in the email, and notes that “four other comrades from the industry” will be at the ALEC conference as well.

In keeping with ALEC’s climate-denial history and pay-to-play work for fossil fuel giants, ALEC lawmakers will also vote on resolutions to oppose any government action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and oppose any restrictions on the use of fossil fuels to produce electricity.

Indeed, ALEC is even proposing a model bill, the Safeguarding Greenhouse Gas Regulatory Authority Act, to bar any state agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions or entering into any regional compact without “specific legislative authorization.”

The Resolution Urging States to Establish Electric Vehicle Charging Stations as a Competitive Market Free From Utility Commission Regulation urges state utility commissions to forbid “regulated utilities from using electric customer funds to build its own fleet of electric charging stations,” thereby removing crucial funds to expand the infrastructure a larger fleet of electric cars will need in the future. This will have the intended consequence of forcing people to continue driving gas-guzzling vehicles for longer than necessary.

ALEC is also introducing another preemption model bill around plastics, the Act to Establish Statewide Uniformity for Essential Plastic Regulations. Spun as a policy to ensure “essential” plastic products are available, the proposed bill would bar municipalities from banning or taxing plastic food wrappers and plastic water bottles. The measure follows a 2015 American City County Exchange (an ALEC offshoot) resolution that calls on local government not to regulate many single–use products, including, “reusable bags, disposable bags, boxes, cups, and bottles that are made of cloth, paper, plastic, extruded polystyrene, or similar materials.”

Regulating Big Tech?

Despite claiming to be for free markets, and in a move to satisfy the MAGA crowd at ALEC, a resolution and a number of discussions will take place at the meeting on regulating Big Tech.

The Resolution in Support of State Governments Upholding Free Speech on the Internet follows along the same line of Trump’s suit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google over their supposed censoring and violation of his First Amendment rights. The resolution states, “American Legislative Exchange Council members support state legislatures protecting free speech on the Internet and implementing targeted, effective measures to prevent any public or private entity from censoring, blocking, or restricting free speech on the Internet or social media platforms for any reason other than sexual obscenity or excessive violence.”

Workshops titled, “Tech Talk: Content Moderation on Social Media Platforms,” and “Taxing Tech: Will State Regulation Harm Consumers and Raise Prices?” are scheduled, as well as larger discussions titled, “Should Big Tech Be Regulated?” and “Free Markets or Government Regulation of Big Tech?”

Prohibiting Public Sector Union Collective Bargaining

ALEC has fought long and hard to decimate unions, so it no surprise that it is asking members to consider the Fair and Accountable Public Sector Authority Act. In what can only be understood as a massive attack on working people and the wages, benefits, and workplace conditions obtained through collective bargaining, ALEC’s model bill prohibits public employers from recognizing unions and from collective bargaining with unions.

The model bill goes further than ALEC’s Comprehensive Public Employee Freedom Act, which would prohibit public employers from requiring workers in a bargaining unit to join the union or pay dues, and allow individual workers to bargain independently with their employer.

Taking the Culture War to Public Schools

Yesterday, CMD reported on ALEC’s role in the promoting state legislation designed to restrict what can be taught about history and race in the public schools.

At the meeting this week, ALEC politicians will debate the American Civics and History Act. In the name of promoting civics, the bill would force public schools to make all social science teaching materials available online; require “state or local Board[s] of Education to approve instructional materials prior to first use”; require public school students to take courses on U.S. history, civics, and state government; and make high school students take a civics test similar to the one used for new citizens.

The model also states that “No public school shall direct or otherwise compel a teacher or student to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any belief relating to a current event or currently controversial issue,” and “controversial issue” is vaguely defined to encompass just about anything.

Meeting attendees will also tackle topics including “Free Speech in Higher Education,” “Parental Rights and Curriculum Transparency,” and “Alternative Teacher Certification.”

China and Taiwan

Following ALEC’s presentation of its International Pioneer Award to Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen at the 2020 States & Nation Policy Summit in December, it is again wading into the politics around China and Taiwan.

ALEC members will debate the Resolution to Prioritize Strengthening the U.S.-Taiwan Partnership to Enhance Global Supply Chain Security and Resilience with a goal of enhancing “global supply chain security for both sovereign democracies,” and hear from Taiwanese Ambassador H.E. Bi-khim Hsiao.

Discussions regarding Taiwan’s neighbor, China, strike a different tone. Attendees will participate in discussions titled, “US-China Relations: BFF (Friends) or BFF (Foes),” “The Future of China’s Rise and What It Means to American Democracy,” or “Chinese Influence Operations at the Sub-National Level: Spotting and Stopping Malign Influence in Your Backyard.” In addition, there is a workshop on “Will China Overtake the US Economically?”

Fighting the Biden Agenda

ALEC is putting forth a number of proposed measures aimed at blocking the President’s agenda and queuing up a 10th Amendment legal battle between federal and state government powers.

The radical Executive Order Review Process Act would establish a state mechanism to review Presidential executive orders to determine if they are unconstitutional. If a state attorney general decides one is, all state agencies and local governments would be barred from implementing or enforcing the executive order if it relates to “a pandemic or other public health emergency; the regulation of natural resources; the regulation of the agriculture industry; the regulation of land use; or the regulation of the financial sector through the imposition of environmental, social, or governance standards.”

The bill appears to be a product of ALEC’s new Functional Federalism Working Group. The working group’s leader, former Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, in a late February meeting “floated three potential ways for state lawmakers to present a united front against the Biden agenda: nullification, or passing state legislation to invalidate federal actions that states believe are unconstitutional; the initiation of a constitutional convention that would pass amendments giving states more power; and the passage of non-binding resolutions reaffirming the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, which declares that powers not explicitly granted to the federal government belong to the states, in state legislatures,” Grist reported

ALEC is also targeting Biden’s aid to the states as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which made available $350 billion in state and local recovery funds. ALEC’s Statement of Principles on ARPA Aid to State Governments and Resolution Urging Congress to Let States Cut Taxes both recommend how the money should be spent.

Dinner With Christian Right Activists

ALEC usually provides a venue at its meeting for allies to reach its legislative members, and this meeting is no different.

On Thursday, the Christian Right Family Research Council is holding a “Values Action Dinner” at the hotel to promote anti-trans legislation in the states “to save adolescents from experimentation.”

View note

The legislation is likely based on Arkansas’s SAVE Adolescents from Experimentation Act (SAFE Act), which was enacted in April after a veto override and bans gender-affirming medical treatments and hormone therapies for transgender youth. The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Robin Lundstrom, will be a featured speaker at the dinner. Following a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the SAFE Act was temporarily blocked by a federal judge last week.

Other Christian Right groups ALEC has provided space for at its meetings in the past include: Alliance Defending Freedom, National Association of Christian Lawmakers, and the National Pro-Life Women’s Caucus, a project of Susan B. Anthony List.

Other new model policies to be introduced at the annual meeting include:

When ProPublica published its report last week on the tax profiles of 25 of the richest Americans, jaws dropped across the United States. How was it possible that plutocrats such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett could pay nothing in income taxes to the federal government? What sneaky sleights of pen, what subterfuge, what acts of turpitude could have led to this result?

The shock stems, in part, from a disturbing reality: Nowhere does ProPublica assert that these men cheated, lied, or did anything felonious to lower their tax burdens. The naked fact of the matter is that not a single one of the documented methods and practices that allowed these billionaires to so radically minimize their tax obligations was illegal.

What’s worse, these methods and practices—things such as offsetting income with losses in unrelated businesses; structuring assets to grow rather than generate income, then borrowing against those growing assets for cash needs; and deducting interest payments and state taxes from taxable income—are so downright mundane and commonly applied that most rich people don’t see them as unethical. The more interesting question is not how the men in ProPublica’s report were able to avoid paying much or anything in federal income taxes, but why. What motivates people with so much money to try to withhold every last bit of it from the public’s reach?

One factor is the common ideology that underlies all of these practices: The government is bad and cannot be trusted with money. Far better for the wealthy to keep as much of it as possible for themselves and use (a fraction of) it to do benevolent things through philanthropy.

[Michael Mechanic: Research proves it: There’s no such thing as noblesse oblige]

My grandfather Roy O. Disney, who co-founded the Walt Disney Company with his brother Walt, was a fervent believer in this idea. He was so determined to prevent the government from taking any of the money he wanted to leave to his family that he created generation-skipping trusts to end-run the IRS. What he did back then was so effective that most of it is illegal today.

I will protest to my dying breath that he was a good man—one of the best, in fact.

But I will also add, at the very end of that dying breath, that he should not have been able to do that.

Practically speaking, the way the trusts were devised meant that I came into a significant amount of money at the tender age of 21. I became an asset manager before a lot of people get their first apartment. I’m 61 now, meaning I’ve been the recipient of four decades’ worth of tax advice from the decent, good, kind men (yes, they were all men) who were put in place by my grandparents, and then my parents, to ensure that I wouldn’t do anything stupid with what I had been given.

Every single method and practice outlined in the ProPublica report has been suggested to me at one time or another by these decent men as a credible, perfectly legal, and not-at-all-questionable way to manage my assets. And, over the years, I have said yes to many of those suggestions. So it’s true: If you were to get a hold of my tax returns, you would find a record of a person who has adhered scrupulously to the law and, in doing so, has also taken advantage of the many holes our legal system has left wide open.

When you come into money as I did—young, scared, and not very savvy about the world—you are taught certain precepts as though they are gospel: Never spend the “corpus” (also known as the capital) you were left. Steward your assets to leave even more to your children, and then teach them to do the same. And finally, use every tool at your disposal within the law, especially through estate planning, to keep as much of that money as possible out of the hands of government bureaucrats who will only misuse it.

If you are raised in a deeply conservative family like my own, you are taught some extra bits of doctrine: Philanthropy is good, but too much of it is unseemly and performative. Marry people “of your own class” to save yourself from the complexity and conflict that comes with a broad gulf in income, assets, and, therefore, power. And, as one of my uncles said to me during the Reagan administration, it’s best to leave the important decision making to people who are “successful,” rather than in the pitiable hands of those who aren’t.

I took far too long to look with clarity upon these precepts and see them for what they are: blueprints for dynastic wealth. Why it took me so long is a fair question. All I know is that if you are a fish, it is hard to describe water, much less to ask if water is necessary, ethical, and structured the way it ought to be. As long as no one so much as raised an eyebrow about the ethics of the CRAT, the CRUT, and the credit swap, who did I think I was to query the fundamentals? I did not have the emotional courage to go down that path.

There was another reason for my inaction, and I am deeply ashamed to say what it was. But here goes: Having money—a lot of money—is very, very nice. It’s damn hard to resist the seductions of what money buys you. I’ve never been much of a materialist, but I have wallowed in the less concrete privileges that come with a trust fund, such as time, control, security, attention, power, and choice. The fact is, this is pretty standard software that comes with the hardware of a human body.

As time has passed, I have realized that the dynamics of wealth are similar to the dynamics of addiction. The more you have, the more you need. Whereas once a single beer was enough to achieve a feeling of calm, now you find that you can’t stop at six. Likewise, if you move up from coach to business to first class, you won’t want to go back to coach. And once you’ve flown private, wild horses will never drag you through a public airport terminal again.

[Annie Lowrey: Cancel billionaires]

Comforts, once gained, become necessities. And if enough of those comforts become necessities, you eventually peel yourself away from any kind of common feeling with the rest of humanity.

I tell you all this not to defend myself; that’s between me and my conscience. I am telling you this because human nature is a mighty force, and fighting it requires understanding it.

What has caused me to question my indoctrination has been ethics. Goddamn ethics. For many people, especially those most deeply embedded in the culture of having and getting money, ethics are a wispy and ineffectual nuisance—an abstract set of principles that can’t possibly stand up to the rigors of life lived fast, business conducted efficiently, and competitors devoured and cast aside.

The older I’ve gotten and the more clearly I’ve understood these things, the more the impulse to betray my own class has taken charge of my judgment.

What’s shocking about the ProPublica report is not just that the tax bills are so low, but that these billionaires can live with themselves.

If your comfort requires that society be structured so that a decent percentage of your fellow citizens live in a constant state of terror about whether they’ll get health care in an emergency, or whether they can keep a roof over their family’s heads, or whether they will simply have enough to eat, perhaps the problem does not rest with those people, but with you and what you think of as necessary, proper, and acceptable.

Authoritarianism is not only a characteristic of the radical right but also of some business organizations and especially their leaders. Moreover, there is ample evidence that some corporate organizations knowingly support radical-right ideas and causes. In some cases, corporations (either directly, or via wealthy owners, or via foundations or other intermediaries) provide vast amounts of funding for radical-right ‘research’, ‘education’, publications, websites, political lobbying, activist support, and general promulgation of radical-right ideology. In the US alone, such ‘dark money’ runs to hundreds of millions of US$ each year.

How well established is the threat and how can corporate support for the radical right be curtailed?

The Corporate/Radical-Right Axis: An Unhealthy Symbiosis

The success and normalization of radical-right ideology is also a measure of the symbiosis between the political and corporate worlds. According to Kean Birch (2007), Peter Bloom & Carl Rhodes (2016; 2018), and Colin Crouch (2014), the two worlds are synergetic. While many senior executives avoid or reject radical or extreme politics, a significant number do not. Although, in principle, it is neither unlawful nor controversial for mutual lobbying on shared interests, nevertheless, there is an obvious risk of corruption, e.g. the Austrian far-right FPŐ corruption scandal involving Heinz-Christian Strache.

There is also the potential for the advancement of unwholesome political agendas that suit both political and corporate interests, e.g. the Cambridge Analytica abuses of millions of Facebook users leading up to the 2016 Presidential election in the US and the UK Brexit referendum. Cambridge Analytica was created by arch radical-right ideologue and promoter Steve Bannon and bankrolled by Robert Mercer, wealthy CEO of Renaissance Technologies.

Far-right funding links tend to keep a low profile but in recent years have received increasing scrutiny, e.g. T.J. Coles (2019; 2020), Josh Halliday et al (2018), and Tom Keatinge et al (2019). Author Jane Mayer (2016; 2017) described the fusion of mutual interests between the radical right and corporations as the application of “dark money”. These mutual interests and synergies demonstrate how the vast wealth of particular individuals and families, their corporations, and their tax-exempt foundations, support the social and political objectives of the radical right.

A survey of 22 such US funds in Waring (2021, pages 70-74) put the combined declared annual revenues of those surveyed at US$532m. The combined fund values of the largest five came to nearly US$4bn. With the estimated total number of US funds for radical-right causes exceeding 100, it suggests a conservative figure for their combined fund values of US$10bn and combined annual revenues of at least US$1.3bn. Prominent among wealthy donors are Robert Shillman (CEO of Cognex), Robert Mercer, and Nina Rosenwald (the Sears, Roebuck & Co heiress). The Publix heiress, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, reportedly made a large donation (along with Alex Jones, the high-profile far-right provocateur) to facilitate the radical-right rally in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, from which many attendees proceeded to attack the Capitol building. Corporate supporters were also allegedly involved in that attack, for example, the arrest of the CEO of Cogensia.

If radical-right politicians become stronger, corporate donors with radical-right sympathies may also become emboldened to act in an authoritarian manner within their own companies, and probably thereby harming employees, external categories, and society as a whole. The authoritarian attitudes and conduct of some corporate bosses are often noticeably similar to those of radical-right political leaders. President Trump was an extreme example of both categories, as a radical-right political leader and a corporation owner. Bloom and Rhodes (2016) were scathing about the genre.

Commercial Opportunists

In addition to ideological and financial support, there are also corporate leaders who, for the sake of their own commercial opportunism, aid and abet the radical and far-right. Prominent among these are the Internet and social media platform providers. Some of the largest have been accused of providing extremists, terrorists, and other criminals with unfettered facilities to promote their beliefs and activities, and to spread hatred against ethno-religious and other minorities (e.g. the Chief Rabbi of Britain, Ephraim Mirvis, in identical complaint letters of July 26, 2020 to Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook), as well as those rejecting radical-right beliefs. They have also been accused of facilitating the dissemination of false facts and fake news, especially relating to wild radical-right conspiracy theories from QAnon and others. Defenses put forward by such platform providers as Twitter and Facebook, that they are merely free-speech information channels and not publishers, have been widely dismissed as sophistry.

The policy of such companies to only react to public pressure and adverse publicity, instead of proactively and quickly banning such material and account holders, remains a target of legislators, e.g. the current Online Harms Bill in the UK. Only following the use of social media by Trump to fire up supporters, which many believe triggered the insurrectionist mob attack on the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, and the use of such media by the mobsters in situ to video and disseminate their actions, did such companies as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter suspend Trump’s accounts.

Perhaps they foresaw a likely global tsunami of tough government regulation of Internet and social media platforms in the aftermath of the attempted coup. However, deferring to all the money-making traffic and profits they gain from such radical-right abuses, these companies remain evasive and resistant to self-regulation.

A boycott of Internet platforms, threatened in 2018 by major corporate advertisers unless they cleaned up their policies, and supervision and control of extremist content and hate messaging, began in 2020. Unilever, which annually spends over US$3billion in digital advertising, and numerous other corporate clients exasperated by continuing perceived obduracy by Facebook, in particular, undertook a 1-month advertising boycott of Facebook (and in some cases, other platforms). Such mass action may provide a pointer to one potential strategy for combatting online racism and hate messaging.

Overlaps of Corporate and Radical-Right Authoritarianism

Corporate authoritarianism typically encompasses a range of overbearing, if not dictatorial, stances and bad conduct by some corporate leaders towards customers, employees, contractors, and society in general. While some motivations evidently emerge from pathological or anti-social personalities, other motivations may be simply laziness and avoidance of managerial inconvenience or minimizing adverse impact on revenue (an aspect of greed and/or misplaced competitiveness), or an indignant free-market determination not to recognize rules and limits set by ‘big government’. Some corporate leaders may possess all these motivations.

The psychological study reported in 2016 of problem personalities in work organizations in Australia, and the follow-on study of 261 senior executives reported in 2020, suggests that approximately 20% of CEOs are classifiable as exhibiting clinically elevated psychopathic personality traits. The power attractiveness of boardroom jobs may explain why toxic personalities appear to have a disproportionate presence among corporate leaders.

The prevalence of radical-right world-views in the general population may not be as high as their ‘noisy’ public presence might suggest. Emily Turner-Graham (2019, page 143) estimated on the basis of known memberships and supporter data that in 2018 the total number of UK supporters of the radical right, ranging from the ‘softer’ populist end of the spectrum to the hard extremist end, to be some 1.82 million or 3.8% of the UK electorate of 47.93 million. However, as with anti-social and/or psychopathic traits, those with radical-right proclivities may also be attracted disproportionately to gain powerful positions.

Recognition in both academic and corporate circles that authoritarian corporate organizations and their leaders had become not just an embarrassing anachronism, but also a dysfunctional stumbling block to the survival and continuity of corporations in the 21st century, has arisen relatively recently. By 2010, failures by corporate leaders to recognize, understand, and respond appropriately to such fundamental issues as organizational culture/climate, and power relations and potential abuses of them within their organization, as well as leadership failures, had emerged as a recognized major impediment to corporate success and sustainability. See e.g. Jeffrey Pfeffer (2010; 2018).

Corporate Moral Purpose: Lost and Rediscovered?

Many corporations appear to have ‘lost their way’ in terms of properly understanding their purpose and then enacting it. A radical new paradigm, the “framework for the future of the corporation”, has been proposed by the British Academy (2018) to replace the present dysfunctional one:

“Corporations were originally established with clear public purposes. It is only over the last half century that corporate purpose has become equated solely with profit. This has been damaging for corporations’ role in society, trust in business and the impact that business has had on the environment, inequality and social cohesion. In addition, globalisation and technological advances are exacerbating problems of regulatory lag.” (page 8).

In a similar vein, 181 CEOs of major US corporations at the US Business Roundtable also issued a joint statement in 2019 redefining the purpose of a corporation with a focus on benefitting all stakeholders and not just stockholders. Business press articles e.g. Milken Review have also favored the theme. Since maintaining and increasing inequalities based on indefensible criteria lies at the heart of radical-right ideology, the new model is anathema to the radical right.

Authoritarianism among radical-right politicians and in corporations is essentially the same underlying phenomenon, which projects their shared interests and promotes symbiosis. As noted above, corporate world-views still focus on profit, personal greed, personal gratification, predatory unilateral competition, callous disregard for the classes of people they harm, and a belief that the only stakeholders to be serviced and protected are themselves and corporate shareholders. The ‘new corporation paradigm’ inherently and explicitly rejects all such characteristics of corporate authoritarianism. Increasingly, shareholders will be expecting boards to adopt this model and this implicitly requires boards to curb, if not terminate, any director or CEO whose attitude and conduct smacks of radical-right excess.

Typically, those corporate leaders and executives who support radical-right ideology and objectives will probably not care that their conduct and character are subject to criticism and opprobrium, in whatever context or medium. As proud supporters and true believers, some may even revel in the notoriety and reinforcement of the radical-right cause which their contribution seeks to advance. However, even corporate authoritarians who do not consciously espouse radical-right ideology may find themselves nonetheless increasingly likened to, and categorized as fellow travelers of, the radical-right by virtue of exhibiting similar rhetoric, ideas, and conduct. Either way, they will all become increasingly vulnerable to sanctions and dismissal.

Clearly, the new model for corporations based on broad-based stakeholder fairness and equity (not necessarily equity in shares or asset rights) is totally at odds with authoritarianism. Authoritarian attitudes, amoral calculation, cavalier conduct (especially any with a radical-right character), and corporate donations to radical- or far-right causes, will have no place or acceptance in the new model corporation.

Recent ‘New Model’ Corporate Actions

When authoritarianism infects a corporation, it has potentially damaging effects on a broad range of stakeholders: mistreatment of employees, contractors, customers, the public, environment, public health, etc. as well as democracy overall. In countering such potential, especially in publicly listed corporations, corporate governance rules, anti-discrimination policies, and CSR (corporate social responsibility) have had some effect but much less so in privately owned corporations where Listing Rules have no impact.

In October 2020, the bold public threat by Legal & General, one of the UK’s largest institutional investors, namely to all FTSE 100 and S&P 500 companies to implement the Parker Report recommendations on appointing ethnic minority directors or face retribution, was unprecedented. So too was the walk-out by Glaxo Smith Kline and Credit Suisse directors from a social event when a racist cabaret act opened. The ‘new model corporation‘ epitomizes this sea-change that heralds a potential check on corporate/radical-right symbiosis.

In keeping with the new anti-authoritarian mood signaled by the US Business Roundtable joint statement in 2019, in April 2021 some 700 major US corporations issued statements condemning the voter suppression bill signed off in Georgia state by Governor Brian Kemp. These included CitiGroup, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, Merck, and Microsoft. Voter suppression by radical-right interests is now regarded as an unacceptable assault on the mutual and joint interests of corporations and the communities they serve.

For privately-owned companies, in some cases, laissez-faire leadership, inferior managerial quality, and authoritarian, prejudicial, and discriminatory values may prevail, and radical-right infiltration may already have occurred. However, as with listed corporations and their leaders who fail to behave ethically and responsibly, increasingly these ‘rogues’ too may find themselves being quarantined to an out-group of ‘untouchables’ whose business no one wants. The mood change in corporate boardrooms is that authoritarianism, whether personal or ideological, and whether seeking to encourage ‒ or worse ‒ fund radical-right causes, will no longer be tolerated.

Organizational, Professional and Peer Group Strategies

At an organizational level, a number of strategies are available to counter radical-right insurgency, interference, or manipulation. For corporations, these include formal anti-extremist (including anti-radical right) policies as part of corporate governance and risk management. These policies would include such routine protections as:

(a) Separation of CEO and Chairman/President functions as two separate individuals, so as to prevent a joint Chairman-CEO becoming too powerful, self-serving and beyond effective control if indulging in decisions and conduct damaging to the corporation;

(b) Appointment of fully independent non-executive directors (NEDs) to help steer executive directors away from potentially egregious or damaging decisions and conduct;

(c) Establishing an effective Board Risk Committee (separate from a Board Audit Committee) tasked with ensuring that the Board addresses ‘all significant risks’ to the business, which would include any potential threats arising from ideological sources of whatever kind;

(d) Requiring effective due-diligence background checks (negative or positive vetting, as appropriate) on all staff appointments, staff promotions, contractor appointments, agent appointments, partnering and joint venture contracts, licensing agreements, and proposed mergers or acquisitions;

(e) As an integral part of due-diligence, requiring psychological evaluation for all individuals subject to positive vetting.

The essential requirements of corporate governance and risk management within an organization are well established. Whereas the formal framework for corporate governance and risk management should work to prevent harmful radical ideologies and authoritarianism operating in corporations, and does appear to in general, there are numerous instances of failure. The reasons for such failures lie in a combination in the particular organization of defective formal frameworks and weak and/or toxic leadership. As Clive Smallman has laid out (pages 191-224), the characteristics of positive leadership versus toxic leadership are clear and well known. Ensuring that only positive leaders are appointed is another crucial aspect of due-diligence, and emphasizes the necessity for psychometric and psychological evaluation as well as searching for tell-tale signs of offensive attitudes and conduct.

How fast the ‘new model corporation’ gains traction is likely to hinge on a combination of factors, including enlightened self-interest of corporate leaders. This is especially so in the context of the fragile global economy of the Covid-19 and post-Covid era, the policy positions and codes of ethics of professional and sector/trade bodies, and how rapidly the overall management education and training syllabuses of business schools, universities, and other centers are able to be re-orientated to reflect the new model.

Dr Alan Waring is a Policy and Practitioner Fellow at CARR and Adjunct Professor at Centre for Risk and Decision Sciences (CERIDES), European University Cyprus. See full profile here.

© Alan Waring. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).

This article was originally published at CARR’s media partner, Rantt Media. See the original article he r e.

Lisa Graves

“I was once a Koch lobbyist,” writes Lisa Graves. “I just didn’t know it.” A look at just how deep and wide the libertarian billionaires’ grasp have long been.

The big Wall Street banks have all talked a good line about supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. But that was never going to be enough for racial justice advocates.

“Stating commitments without accountability and transparency does not dismantle systemic racism,” said Marc Bayard, director of the Black Worker Initiative at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Bayard is part of a coalition pushing Wall Street banks to submit to independent examinations of the impact of their policies and practices on racial inequality.

The financial industry has a long history of racism, and even though protections against redlining and other discriminatory practices have been on the books for decades, the problems persist.

In fact, big Wall Street banks have largely abandoned poor people of color, forcing them to rely on payday lenders and other small predatory financial firms. According to an FDIC survey, 13.8 percent of Black households and 12.2 percent of Latino households did not have bank accounts in 2019, compared to just 2.5 percent of white households.

Another study found that for every $1 loaned out to finance residential properties in white neighborhoods in Chicago from 2012-2018, a mere 12 cents was invested in Black neighborhoods.

This spring, two labor union-related institutional investors gave executives at seven big Wall Street banks a big opportunity to show they’re serious about changing course on racial inequality.

CtW Investment Group, which advises unions affiliated with the Change to Win federation, and the SEIU pension fund filed shareholder proposals asking the banks to engage civil rights organizations, employees, shareholders, and customers in a racial equity audit process. The goal: identifying and remedying the adverse impacts of bank policies and practices on non-white stakeholders and communities of color.

But instead of embracing the audit idea, all but one of the banks urged shareholders to reject the proposals.

How have shareholders responded? Thus far, four of the seven banks (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs) have held their annual meetings. And while none of the audit proposals received majority votes, sizeable minorities backed the idea, putting pressure on management to take notice.

A 38 percent “yes” vote at Citi was particularly encouraging, given the fact that institutional investors typically follow the corporate board’s recommendation. Shareholders at JPMorgan Chase and State Street hold their meetings this week. CtW dropped the Morgan Stanley proposal after the bank agreed to conduct a racial equity audit.

Why did nearly all of the banks urge “no” votes on the audit proposals? In SEC filings, the banks argued that such analysis was unnecessary given the enormous strides they’re already making on racial equity.

“Conducting a racial equity audit at this point in time would not provide us with useful additional information,” states the JPMorgan proxy statement. “We believe our shareholders would be better served by the Firm’s vigilant focus on building on current momentum to maintain a culture of respect and inclusion and advance racial equity.”

That same proxy statement revealed that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon earned $32 million in compensation last year. Like the chief executives of all seven of the banks in 2020, Dimon is a white man. (Jane Fraser, a white woman, took the helm of Citi in February 2021.)

Across the financial sector, the upper echelons are overwhelmingly white. At the five largest U.S. investment banks, the share of senior executives and top managers who are white ranges from 71 to 83 percent. (JPMorgan Chase: 81%, Goldman Sachs: 77%, Bank of America: 81%, Morgan Stanley: 83%, and Citigroup: 71%)

Nationwide, employees in the lucrative securities industry are 80.5 percent white, 5.8 percent Black, 11.5 percent Asian, and 8.1 percent Latino. Average pay in that industry (including bonus) was nearly $600,000 in 2019. By contrast, whites make up an estimated 55.4 percent of people in jobs that pay less than $15 per hour.

In a letter to JPMorgan CEO Dimon, the groups Transform Finance, Activest, Worth Rises, the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), the Institute for Policy Studies, and Public Accountability Initiative joined other racial justice organizations in supporting the racial equity audit proposal before JPMorgan, demanding “a commitment to long-term tangible change.”

“Without a comprehensive investigation of how institutionalized racism impacts policies and business practices at these banks,” says Bayard of IPS, “all their public commitments to equity will amount to empty promises.”

The post While Professing BLM Support, Wall Street Banks Reject Racial Equity Audits appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

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