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Economic Dreams and Dreamers

May 31, 2018
economy, history, politics, strategy
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Book Review: Barlett, Donald L, and Steele, James B. “The Betrayal of the American Dream.” Public Affairs, NY, 2012 Dallas library 330.973 B289B 2012

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If recent economic developments have not already terrified you, this might be a good book to absorb. It is very much like “Runaway Inequality,” the book promoted by the Communications Workers of America that I reviewed earlier.  It has some of the same dire warnings and suggested solutions as the classes that the AFL-CIO conducted under the name “Common Sense Economics.”

The authors really hate “free trade,” tax giveaways to the rich, deregulation, or capitalist-directed globalization.

Here is the message in a nutshell: “Something terrible happened in America in the 1970s. Since then, virtually all new economic developments have been bad for the working people and crazy good for the very rich. Inequality is rampant. We need to bring back some of the more reasonable practices that were in place before the disaster struck.”

In my review of “Runaway Inequality,” I pointed out that our recent period isn’t the odd one. The odd one was the third quarter of the 20th century. The reasonably good times when some of the productivity gains streamed into workers’ paychecks were not normal. They were just weird.

Today, when the capitalists grab everything in a runaway train ride to oblivion, that’s what’s normal. Trying to go back to the practices of the 1950s is a lot harder than it looks, because the ruling rich are dead-set against it.

Why weren’t the rich dead set against equitable economic practices in 1950? I can think of at least three good explanations. 1) They ruled the world. They had almost no international competition because they had destroyed every other country during the war. 2) American labor was very strong after a tremendous upsurge 1935-1947. 3) The Soviet Union was still seen as a viable alternative to capitalism, and it was important to buy and/or destroy any pro-Soviet sentiment. None of those things were true in America by the time Ronald Reagan was elected.

Even though this book has great reporting on economic events, and even though it has very intelligent prescriptions for making economic things the way they used to be, I don’t think their hopes for the future are likely to happen. The book is great at explaining, but not so useful as a guide to action.

Actually, I began to be skeptical in the introductory pages when they said, “…we define the ‘middle class’ strictly by income….” They could have just said “middle income” instead of “middle class.” The problem with trying to rally middle-income people is that they aren’t really a class. A class is defined by political interests, and middle-income people are all over the map in their interests. Some of them are workers, some of them are lawyers, some of them are trust fund babies, some of them are shopkeepers. 

If someone is serious about making change, they need to start thinking about the working class.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on radio KNON FM89.3 in Dallas at 9 AM central time every Saturday. Podcasts can be found from the “events’ tab on the web site. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.

Solidarity, Far & Wide, at Exxon Protest

May 30, 2018
environment, politics, strategy, unions
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About 25 people from all over Texas and three guys from Australia protested Exxon/Mobil’s shareholder meeting in Dallas on May 30.

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The sometime biggest, and sometime second biggest, corporation in the world has its headquarters right outside Dallas. They hold their annual shareholders’ meetings in the luxurious Meyerson Symphony Hall downtown. Across the street, labor and environmental activists revealed corporate crimes to newspersons and the world at large.

The surprise group came from Victoria’s Gippsland Basin, Australia, where Exxon has 23 offshore installations. Their spokesperson, Troy Carter, spoke on Facebook Live for seven minutes. He said that 230 members of the Australian Workers Union and the Electrical Trades Union were terminated 343 days earlier. The next day, they were offered their jobs with a 40% pay cut! They have been protesting every day since.

The Australian’s printed materials were meant to explain to Exxon stockholders that the corporation was spending a lot more on union busting than it would have cost them to keep their well-trained workforce. But the corporation would not let them into the symphony hall; consequently they had to disseminate their message broadly.

In the United States, the Australian’s tour is being helped by the United Steelworkers of America. The Australians plan to meet with Dallas AFL-CIO leader Mark York before heading to Austin to talk with Texas AFL-CIO leaders. Their Texas tour will end in Houston, where there are many petrochemical workers.

Speakers talked about the danger to our planet from fossil fuels. A woman from Corpus Christi, on the Texas coast, said that her organization was trying to stop Exxon from building the biggest plastics factory in the world. “Do you want more plastic in your oceans?” “Do you want more plastic in your air?” “Do you want more plastic in your bodies?” she asked.

A man from Waco, in Central Texas, talked about special environmental problems caused by Exxon in his hometown.

Herb Keener of Communications Workers 6215 and Gene Lantz of United Auto Workers Local 848 spoke for the “blue” section of the “blue/green” (labor/environmental) alliance. Keener’s talk was captured on Facebook Live. He mentioned that he expected Exxon to follow other major corporations in spending their windfall from last December’s giant tax giveaway by purchasing their own stock. These financial maneuvers enrich stockholders without any benefit to employees nor to the general economy.

The protest had a long list of sponsors: 350 Dallas, Society of Native Nations, Dallas Peace and Justice Center, CodePink Dallas, Communications Workers of America/CWA Local 6215, Dallas Sierra Club, Downwinders At Risk, Dallas Palestine Coalition, Pax Christi Dallas, Our Revolution North Texas, Texas Drought Project, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (TEJAS), Solidarity Texas – Dallas Chapter, System Change Not Climate Change, Veterans For Peace North Texas, Waco Friends of Peace and Climate, Texas Coalition for Environmental Awareness, and more.

–-Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3 FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. Podcasts are available from the “events” tab on the site. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.

Isolated, Economics Can’t Win

May 29, 2018
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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The main players in today’s economy aren’t “rational men” as assumed in classical economics. They are “sociopathic men.” It’s the first and most important lesson.

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What crippled economics as a science was its separation, in the late 19th century, from other disciplines, especially politics. At the same time, it was decided that economies work because “rational men” (sorry ladies) cause the supply and demand for commodities to balance out at a fair market price.

It’s like the Holy Bible of economics: nobody actually believes it but everybody quotes it.

If we still studied politics and economics together, as we did before economist Alfred Marshall, we would see that it isn’t rationality that makes the world go around, it’s antagonism. Our economy is vastly different from their economy.

Bad Is Good

All these “rational men” do not have identical interests. In fact, our interests are extremely disparate. While ordinary working people like you and me want high employment, good wages, and low prices; our employers usually want the opposite. What is good for us, especially high wages, is bad for them.

Back in Alfred Marshall’s time, this opposition may not have seemed so important to people studying single economic data in a single market. But two great changes have occurred since then that make oppositional understanding vital: world war and governmental economic policy.

National “Good” is International “Bad”

Nations exploit one another. The First World War was fought to determine which industrialized nations were going to do the exploiting. That wasn’t a decision made by rational men within a single economy. “War is politics by other means,” as we say. Politicians made the decisions to carry out world wars, and the winners reaped the benefit. War determined international economics, but it certainly wasn’t because of rational men.

“Whose Economy” Depends on “Whose Government”

Capitalism has a built-in propensity for crisis. Early in the 20th century, and especially during the Great Depression, governments began to take affirmative action to save capitalism from itself. They recognized that monetary policy and fiscal policy could be used to heat up or cool down an economy to some extent.

The biggest problem was oppositional interests. Governments generally interceded in the economy on behalf of the richest capitalists and not for the majority.

But another big problem was created by all this government intervention. Instruments of debt and other purely financial instruments were floating around everywhere, and they became an obsession. A major part of economics was no longer concerned with commodities at all.

Government tried to regulate financial institutions, but they gave that up in 1999 when Texas Senator Phil Gramm got the “Financial Services Modernization Act” passed.

Without regulation, banks and other financial institutions began to use the tremendous resources that they could mobilize in high-stakes gambling. They particularly liked bundles of low-quality mortgage debt and its various crazy derivatives. The bust that followed was called the “Great Recession.” After that, the government re-regulated to some extent, but they are presently disassembling regulations again for the same reason — amazing profits for the very rich.

It’s not in the interest of the people, and it’s not rational. That’s the first lesson.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. Podcasts can be found from the “events” tab on their website. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site.

 

 

MayDay in 1886 and Now

April 30, 2018
civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy, unions
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Several socialist groups came together on April 29, 2018, in Lake Cliff Park in Dallas to celebrate MayDay. They were kind enough to allow the oldest person in attendance to remind them of the long workers’ tradition by leading singing of “The International.”

Another Mayday celebration, by another group of socialists, takes place at Kidd Springs Park at 5:30PM on May 1st. One cannot help but observe that the progressive movement, even the activists who supposedly have the highest levels of consciousness, continues to be disunited. It’s like Will Rogers used to say about the weather: “Everybody talks about unity, but nobody does anything about it!” I believe the trend, though, is positive.

The trend toward celebrating the International Workers Day is a very positive sign. I can remember reserving that very same Lake Cliff Park pavilion May 1, 1984, and doing all the preparations and publicizing myself. Then I sat there, alone, for two hours hoping somebody would come, but they didn’t! This year, we have two of them. The first one had about 40 people, and I imagine the second will be at least as big.

I’ll be doing a talk about “MayDay Then and Now” at Roma’s Pizza, 7402 Greenville Avenue, beginning at 6 pm on Saturday, May 5th. I’d like to count that as a third MayDay celebration. Every year, I publicize MayDay on my radio show.

MayDay Has a History

The workers’ movement, of course, goes back at least to Moses and the slaves of Egypt, and workers probably celebrated the vernal equinox around MayDay long before they had calendars. But the year 1886 marks the close association of the workers’ movement with May 1.

That year, the word went out from Chicago for a worldwide general strike to demand the 8-hour day. There were protests everywhere. Strikers were killed in Chicago. A police riot erupted on May 4th during another rally in Haymarket square. Authorities came down hard on the Chicago movement and, in 1887, hanged four of the main leaders. Since then, the world remembers “Chicago, 1886” on May 1st.

The repression from the bosses combined with the opportunism of many American labor leaders separated the Americans from the International Workers Day; consequently there have been few celebrations here until recently.

Was Labor Stronger Before?

Almost any reading of labor history will bring out the romantic in us. We long for the great general strike of 1874, or the worldwide struggle of 1886, or the organizing frenzy of 1935-1947. In 1980, when the American government decisively teamed up with the bosses to suppress the labor movement, unions began a numerical free fall that continues today. We had 35% of the workforce organized into unions, and we have only 11% now. People dream about the good old days.

No, We’re Stronger Now!

But despite the decline in union numbers, American labor is actually stronger today than ever. Part of the reason is productivity, but most of it is education. One worker today is four times as productive as those who organized in 1935-47. If one worker walks off the job today, it’s like four workers striking in the old days.

We have more unity than ever. In 1935-47, remember that the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations were two separate and competing organizations. Remember also that racism and other kinds of chauvinism were far more divisive in the “old days” than they are today. The AFL-CIO didn’t even try to organize the millions of undocumented workers before 1999 — they joined the government in calling for deportation!

Today, the AFL-CIO bends over backward to work with church, civil rights, and community organizations. In 1987, unions were so totally isolated that five of the more progressive ones had to create a separate organization, Jobs with Justice, to try to build solidarity outside the official labor movement. Today, virtually all unions have gone past their initial hostility and regularly work with Jobs with Justice and other solidarity efforts.

In the old days, many workers were barely literate. Today, we command more information than they could have imagined. With our phones and computers, workers have the ability to function as almost a single worldwide unit. That’s power! We’re only at the first stages of using it, but today we have the power!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. Podcasts can be found from the “events’ tab. If you are interested in what I really think, look at my personal web site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Helped Hitler?

April 24, 2018
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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Book review: Jeffreys, Diarmuid, “Hell’s Cartel. IG Farben and the making of Hitler’s war machine.”  Metropolitan Books, New York, 2008

IG Farben defendents

The biggest corporation in Europe solidly backed the Nazis during the time they were taking power. During the ensuing war, the big chemical company was more and more deeply involved in Nazi warmaking and ethnic cleansing.

The book begins and ends with the trial of several top company officials. In between, it details the history of the conglomerate from the time that it supplied poison gas during World War I through the trials that ended in 1948. In both wars, they provided much of the vital expertise and materials.

IG Farben established and ran its own slave labor camp as part of the Auschwitz complex. The abuse and murder of tens of thousands of slave laborers was carried out in Farben facilities just as in the other death camps. One of their small but very successful product lines was Zyklon-B, the death gas.

Working people usually say that we do the bidding of “whoever signs our checks.” Have you ever wondered who signed the checks for Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who killed hundreds of people with torture and outrageous medical experiments? IG Farben.

The company executives received light sentences and early parole. They went on to continued successful careers in European industry.

Books and movies about Nazi Germany have poured out in an endless stream since the end of WWII. We are fascinated with the horror of it and with the questions that are never quite satisfactorily answered, “How could this have happened? Why didn’t somebody do something?”

This book supplies part of the answer, if readers are ready to accept it. Hitler came to power essentially because wealthy Germans, like the officials at IG Farben, preferred the Nazis to the Communists. Even after the war, even during the trials at Nuremberg 1947-48, the main distraction from justice was fear of rising communism.

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON 89.3FM radio in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time on Saturdays. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site.

 

 

Christian Soldiers Vs America

April 1, 2018
civil rights, democracy, history, politics, strategy
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Book Review: Hedges, Chris, “American Fascists. The Christian Right and the War on America.” Free Press, New York, 2006

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“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross”

—sometimes attributed to the author Sinclair Lewis and sometimes to Louisiana Governor Huey Long

I appreciated this Dallas Public Library book more than I enjoyed it. I really liked his examination of the underlying precepts of radical right evangelism and his historical comparisons to the thinking and strategies of earlier fascists. On the downside, I think he credited televangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson too much and blamed fascist financiers like the Koch brothers too little. I think Hedges understands a lot more about the ideology of fascism than he does about the reasons for it.

Hedges was a top-level foreign correspondent. He really knows how to do research and how to present it. He focused his research on the section of protestant evangelism in the United States that he names “dominionism.”

From page 11: “Dominionism, born out of a theology known as Christian reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians.”

I was interested in faith and fascism because of callers to my radio talk show “Workers Beat” today, March 31, 2018. One of them said that the current pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Robert Jeffress had said that everything President Trump does is okay because it is “ordained by God.” Another caller said that Jeffress, a few years ago, had called President Obama “the anti-christ.”

Another book, “’White Metropolis” charges First Baptist with far-right racist politics in the past. Hedges doesn’t mention Jeffress in his 2006 book, but he hits hard against Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, both of whom are presumably in Heaven now.

Long-time unionists know that Americanism is often evoked against its own people. Labor writer Len DeCaux tells us about a 1913 strike organized by the Industrial Workers of the World, employers tried to use the American flag as a strike breaking device. Declaring March 17 “Flag Day,” they draped flags over mill gates with signs calling for a return to work. The silk workers, makers of flags themselves, retorted with a huge American flag across Main Street bearing these words: “We wove the flag; we dyed the flag. We live under the flag; but we won’t scab under the flag!” –Excerpted “The Living Spirit of the Wobblies”

During a speech delivered in 1918, labor leader Eugene Victor Debs made a similar statement: 3 “No wonder Jackson said that ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.’ He had the Wall Street gentry in mind or their prototypes, at least; for in every age it has been the tyrant, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both.”

Can They Be Stopped?

Author Chris Hedges thinks that the radical Christian Right should be repressed. He thinks that the liberal approach of extreme tolerance for varying points of view will lead to the destruction of America. He points out that Hitler could have been stopped if Germans had been less pathologically tolerant. On page 202, Hedges says, “Debate with the radical Christian Right is useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It is a movement based on emotion and cares nothing for rational thought and discussion…. This movement is bent on our destruction. The attempts by many liberals to make peace would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly.”

I agree with Hedges. Tolerance cannot be extended to include intolerance. Where the book goes wrong, though, is in implying that these unscrupulous and opportunistic evangelists can, on their own hook, bring fascism to America. Hitler, working alone or with his ideological compatriots, couldn’t have done it either. The ideologists are not that powerful nor persuasive. Fascism is a form of rule chosen deliberately by rulers. That’s the danger.

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3 FM in Dallas 9-10AM Central Time every Saturday. From the home page, hit the “events” tab to hear the last two programs. If you are interested in what I really think, check out my personal site

Counting Down on Democracy

March 29, 2018
democracy, elections, history, politics, strategy
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Republicans continue the countdown on democracy with their plans for the 2020 census. African American and Latino organizations are trying to stop them.

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The NAACP’s lawsuit says that the last census seriously undercounted African Americans, and preparations, or lack of preparations, for the 2020 census threatens to do the same. Latinos are especially upset by the Trump Administration’s plan to ask if they are citizens or not.

If the Republicans get away with it, they will be able to seriously diminish Black and Brown representation in government. Their anti-democratic redistricting would be made even easier for them.

Historical Context

This is not the first time that the parties in power have used counting as a way to undermine democracy. Bear in mind that the first constitution counted slaves as 3/5’s of a person so that slaveholders could amass more electoral clout, even though the slaves had no say about anything.

Political Context

The fight for a fair census is another part of the larger fight for democracy and against incipient fascism. Voter suppression laws from state governments are rampant. Redistricting has undercut the “minority” vote. Big money has won Supreme Court backing and is now free  to dominate all elections without even revealing who they are. The Voting Rights Act has already been eviscerated.

Working families have to fight on every front to preserve the partial democracy that we have won over the centuries. Every front includes economic struggles as well as electoral.

— Gene Lantz 

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you look in the “events” tab of knon.org, you can find programs from the last two weeks. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site

Look Out for War

March 26, 2018
economy, elections, history, politics, strategy
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A big change is coming in international relations.

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It may seem that the whacky international news is only being caused by our whacky president and his whacky ways, but there are several underlying real trends pointing the United States toward starting a new war.

The most obvious one, which I have written about before, is that the Republicans and Donald Trump are looking at some major election losses in November unless they do something drastic. The most recent shifting of posts in the White House is definitely in that direction.

Another reason is more long-term and has to do with trade balances and history.

Looking Back

Nearly all of us living today are products of post-World-War-Two thinking. The “American Century” that began in 1945 put the United States at the head of all nations both militarily and economically. Historically, it was a most unusual situation for the world and for America, but most of us think of it as “normal” because it’s the only situation we have ever experienced. It isn’t normal at all, and it can’t last.

U.S. military domination continues, but is severely challenged right now in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. U.S. economic domination continues but is severely challenged by the European Union, new alliances in South America, and, most of all, by China.

U.S. economic domination is no longer based on our industrial productivity. A great deal of our industry has been shut down. Our agricultural production is still very strong, but also faces challenges. If anything, U.S. economic domination is based on finance, especially on borrowing.

An interesting article from CBS News says, “Why China won’t dump its huge U.S. Treasury bond Hoard.” They say it won’t happen, but they wouldn’t have written the article if people weren’t worried about it. Apparently, China holds about $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds. They buy them every year, but they slowed down their purchases last year, the article says. It was just an incremental change, the article says.

The Nature of Change

Most change is incremental. It happens so slowly that we hardly notice it until some statistician points it out. These are quantitative changes. But quantitative changes can accumulate and, eventually, create giant qualitative changes that seem to happen all at once and come out of nowhere. Think of a stock market collapse, an earthquake, or a sinkhole. Think of a war.

Why Have a War?

Competition, not cooperation, is the natural behavior of capitalist economies. War is a natural consequence of capitalism. Even in the “American Century” so far, U.S. armies have been engaged over and over again. Even when the armies were not engaged, the U.S. has employed proxy armies such as the “Contras” in Nicaragua, the Kurds in Syria, or the Saudis in Yemen.

What passes for “diplomacy” is actually based on war or the threat of war. Witness the current expulsion of diplomats from Russian embassies, for example.

Why NOT Have a War?

Like any other enterprise, war depends on the cooperation of the people carrying it out. If we refuse, if we mobilize against it, no one can force us into the next big war. But we need to get started.

–-Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON.org 89.3 FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. Programs are podcast for two weeks and can be found under the “events” tab of the home page. If you are interested in what I really think, check out my personal web site.

 

 

News was Bad, but Mostly Good

March 9, 2018
democracy, elections, history, politics, unions
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Take a look at recent news from the point of view of the progressive movement. Keep in mind that only the working class, and working class issues, can truly pull the movement together. The entire working class will not unite over gun control, over the right to abortion, over civil rights, or any of the other important causes. Wages and working conditions will unite us, because all of us care most about them.

On May 6, Texas held the first primary elections of the season. Democrats were overjoyed to double the turnout that they had in the last mid-term elections. Republicans improved about 15%. But the raw number of votes determines election winners, not percentages of improvement. While the Democrats were able to get a million voters to the polls, the Republicans got half again as many. The leading Democrat, Beto O’Rourke for Senate, got 600,000 votes, while the Republican incumbent got 1.3 million! The same was true in the governor’s race.

One of the reasons for improved Democratic Party turnout was that they fielded candidates in every race, even in the ones where they were almost sure to lose. There’s a downside to that, because some of the contested seats were held by rock-solid working class incumbents with 100% pro-worker voting records. Politicians are mostly opportunists, not principled leaders.

Labor is calling the results “mostly good news” because over 90% of our endorsed candidates got into runoffs or won outright. But we lost three of the best of the state representatives, including Roberto Alonzo of Dallas who has been honored nationwide for his commitment to labor’s cause. Labor worked hard for their candidates

Progressive Movement Remains Fragmented

No one could deny that there is an upsurge in the progressive movement since the 2016 elections. The big improvement in voting statistics demonstrates it. But cohesion is not one of the grand characteristics. The most unifying theme among Democrats was dislike for President Trump, according to the pundits.

But the only way they could unite effectively is around the basic issues of the working class, and the election results did not show that trend. While the AFL-CIO could honestly claim a 90% success rate, another organization, Emily’s List, which only endorses on women’s issues, could claim 100%, according to the Politico news service. All their endorsed women were in runoffs or had won outright.

Labor’s candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor was controversial because of being a woman, a Latina, and gay; but she won a thumping big plurality and goes into the runoff with a big advantage among Democratic voters. It would be a stretch to claim that she did so well because of the AFL-CIO endorsement, when Emily’s List had better results.

People who want serious change remain confronted with this problem: how can we unite the progressive movement?

Best News Was Barely Reported

While pages and pages of newsprint covered the Texas elections, there was scant coverage of the teachers’ strike in West Virginia. But from the point of view of unifying the progressive movement around workers’ issues, the news from West Virginia was at least as important, if not more so. For the first time in years, American labor saw a well planned and well-executed strike create big gains for workers. By holding out statewide for nine days, those teachers won a 5% raise for themselves and for all state workers. They also got a freeze on health care costs. The AFL-CIO Executive Board endorsed the strike in, I think, about the 7th day. The American Federation of Teachers spoke encouragement, but I didn’t see any of the nationwide forces really throwing themselves into it. The main fund raising I saw was one of those “go fund me” accounts.

In today’s news, way back in the back pages, teachers in Oklahoma have issued an ultimatum to their legislature. Arizona teachers are also talking strike.

Historical View is Bad, but Mostly Good

A lot of people, including me, believe that economic conditions are leading the capitalist class toward choosing fascism as their preferred form of rule. The great robbery called the “tax cut” went through Congress in December with very little popular support. Despite their best efforts, it is unlikely that the rich will convince Americans to warm to it very much.

What I’m saying is that it is getting harder for the rich to continue robbing the American people. That’s why they are working so hard to disarm us with voter suppression, dangerous foreign policy, anti-union legislation and legal decisions, deregulation, redistricting, and destruction of civil rights and civil liberties. Once our rights are gone, we can’t defend ourselves at all. That’s fascism.

Even though I think the obscenely wealthy are likely to choose fascism, I don’t think they will be able to implement it. That’s the good news. We aren’t as dumb as they may think. Actually, we’re far better educated and far more capable of coming together than the Italians and Germans of the 1930s were.

This is the time to organize. Low unemployment and high discontent are the ingredients for a great upsurge. Despite the low voter turnout numbers, Americans have more energy, and it is more generalized, then at any time since World War II. We may be fragmented, but we won’t stay that way. Once we are united, nothing can stop us!

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3FM in Dallas from 9 to 10 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are interested in what I really think, check out my personal web site.