Without the success of the October Revolution of 1917, a century ago this week, there would have been no USSR to provide sanctuary, training, and arms to anticolonial activists, liberation movements and postcolonial African governments. The dismantling of apartheid would have been far costlier and bloodier.
Africa and the world owe an historic debt to the USSR and the emancipatory dream upon which it was founded, the first national government founded on such vision since the Haitian revolution a century earlier.
Category: Analysis
worker |
February 4, 2018 |
2:54 pm | About the CPUSA, African American Culture, African American history, Analysis, Ben Davis, Claudia Jones, Ferdinand Smith, Gerald Horne, John Howard Lawson, Lorraine Hansberry, Paul Robeson, Shirley Graham DuBois, struggle against anti-communism, struggle against racism, Struggle for African American equality, struggle for socialism, WEB DuBois, William Patterson |
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Scandalize my Name
– from Greg Godels is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/
For the owners, publishers, and editors of the The New York Review of Books anti-Communism is still alive. The periodical occupies a unique, indispensable role in fostering and sustaining Cold War myths and legends.
The New York Review of Books has embraced rabid anti-Communism since its opportunistic birth in the midst of a newspaper strike. Founded by a cabal of virulent anti-Communists with identifiable links to the CIA through The Paris Review and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, NYRB maintains the posture of the popular intellectual journal for academics, high-brow book clubbers, and coffee shop leftists for over half a century. Seldom would an issue go by without an earnest petition signed by intellectual celebrities pointing to human rights concerns in some far-off land that was coincidentally (perhaps?) also in the crosshairs of the US State Department. To be sure, the NYRB would muster a measure of indignation over the most egregious US adventures, particularly when they threatened to blemish the US image as the New Jerusalem.
Even with the Cold War behind us, the NYRB maintains an active stable of virulent anti-Soviet writers, partly to hustle its back list of Cold War classics and obscure dissident scribblers, partly to pre-empt any serious anti-capitalist thought that might emerge shorn of Red-dread.
Paul Robeson on Trial
In a recent essay/book review (The Emperor Robeson, 2-08-18), the NYRB brought its Red-chopping hatchet to the legacy of Paul Robeson in a piece transparently ill-motivated and poisonous.
Paul Robeson was nothing if not an exceptional, courageous political figure who galvanized US racial and political affairs in mid-century. Yet NYRB assigned Simon Callow, a UK theater personality, to the writing task despite the fact that he reveals in an interview cited in Wikipedia that I’m not really an activist, although I am aware that there are some political acts one can do that actually make a difference. And his essay bears out this confession along with his embarrassing ignorance of US history and the dynamics of US politics.
Callow begins his essay seemingly determined to prove his inadequacy to the task: When I was growing up in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, Paul Robeson was much in evidence. His name was haloed with the sort of respect accorded to few performers. He then goes on at some length, heaping praise on Robeson. Then suddenly at some point in the 1960s, he faded from our view.
Whether Callow’s impressions are reflective of the UK experience is irrelevant. Surely, the important truth, the relevant fact, is that in Robeson’s country– the US– he was, throughout that time, a veritable non-person, the victim of a merciless witch hunt. To fail to acknowledge the fact that Robeson and his work were virtually unknown, were erased by the thought police, underscores Callow’s unfitness to discuss Robeson’s career. Indeed, members of the crowd that sought, at that time, to put lipstick on the ugly pig of racism and anti-Communism were soon to found the NYRB.
To say, as Callow does, that before the Cold War Robeson was …lionized on both sides of the Atlantic… is to display an unbelievable ignorance of the racial divide in the US. Robeson’s unequalled command of and success at multiple disciplines failed to spare him the indignities and inequalities that befell all African Americans in that era of US apartheid.
As for the post-World War II Red-scare, Callow simply ignores it as if it never occurred. Never mind the harassment, the surveillance, the denied careers, the confiscated passports, and the HUAC subpoenas that Robeson, like thousands of others, suffered from a hysterical, vicious anti-Communist witch hunt. For Callow, Robeson’s problems spring from a meeting granted by then President Truman in which Robeson had the audacity to make demands on his government. From that moment on Callow tells us, …the government moved to discredit Robeson at every turn.
What a deft, nimble way to skirt the suffocating, life-denying effects of an entire era of unbridled racism and anti-Communism.
And, from Callow’s myopic perspective, Robeson’s campaign for peace and Cold War sanity resulted in …universal approbation turned overnight into nearly universal condemnation. For Callow, standing for peace against the tide of mindless conformity and mass panic is not the mark of courage and integrity, but a tragic career move.
In contrast to Paul Robeson’s life-long defiance of unjust power, Callow attributes a different approach to Robeson’s father, William: But the lesson was clear: the only way out of poverty and humiliation was hard, hard work– working harder than any white man would have to, to achieve a comparable result. One waits futilely to read that this reality is precisely what son, Paul, was trying to correct.
Like so many of today’s belated, measured admirers of Paul Robeson, Callow cannot resist delving into Robeson’s sexual proclivities, an interest which bears relevance that frankly escapes me. Similarly, Callow raises the matter of Robeson’s mental health and his withdrawal from public life.
Rather than considering the toll that decades of selfless struggle and tenacious resistance might have taken on Robeson’s body and mind, as it did countless other victims of the Red Scare, Callow contrives different explanations. Robeson, it is clear, knew that his dream was just that: that the reality was otherwise. But he had to maintain his faith, otherwise what else was there? So, for Callow, Robeson’s bad faith was responsible for mental issues and ill health. It was not a medical condition, the emotional stress of racism, or the repression of his political views that explain his decline. Instead, it was the consequences of bad politics.
Paraphrasing the author of a book on Robeson that Callow favors, he speculates that Robeson’s physical and mental decline may have directly stemmed from the desperate requests from Robeson’s Russian friends to help them get out of the nightmarish world they found themselves in. We are asked to believe that a man who resisted every temptation of success, defied the racial insults of his time, and steadfastly defended his commitment to socialism was brought to his knees by anti-Soviet media rumors? Certainly, there is no evidence for this outlandish claim.
Again, using author Jeff Sparrow (No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson) as his mouthpiece, Callow reveals his problem with Robeson: …Robeson’s endorsement of Stalin and Stalin’s successors, his refusal to acknowledge what had been done in Stalin’s name, is the tragedy of his life. In other words, like Budd Schulberg’s fictional snitch in On the Waterfront, if Robeson had only denounced his class, ratted on his friends, and bent to authority, he could have been a contender for the respect of liberals and the blessings of bourgeois success. But since he didn’t, his life was a pitiful spectacle.
Thankfully, there are still many who draw inspiration from the pitiful spectacle of Paul Robeson’s extraordinary life.
One Who Does
As if misunderstanding Robeson were not enough, Callow attacks a prominent scholar who does understand Robeson’s legacy. In contrast with his fawning review of the Sparrow book (as different as chalk and cheese), Callow demeans the contribution of one of the most gifted and thorough chroniclers of the page in history that included the life of Robeson. As a historian, Gerald Horn’s prodigious work stretches across books on such politically engaged Robeson contemporaries as WEB DuBois, Ben Davis, Ferdinand Smith, William Patterson, Shirley Graham DuBois, and John Howard Lawson. His writings explore the blacklist and The Civil Rights Congress, both keys to understanding Robeson and his time. In most cases, they represent the definitive histories of the subject.
But Callow prefers the shallow Sparrow account that substitutes the overused literary devices of in search of../searching for… to mask its limited scholarly ambition.
Callow is baffled by Horne’s Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary. Horne’s insistence that Robeson was a ˜revolutionary makes Callow apoplectic (…page after page). But if Robeson was not an authentic, modern US revolutionary, then who was?
Callow cannot find a “clear picture of Robeson’s personality in the Horne account, a conclusion that probably should not trouble Horne who seems more interested in history rather than psychology.
Callow’s sensibilities are especially offended by Horne’s depiction of the odious Winston Churchill, the man many believe to share responsibility for the WWI blood bath at Gallipoli and the two million deaths in the Bengal famine of 1943. It seems that Horne’s words for the short, chubby, Champagne and Cognac-loving prima donna– ‘pudgy, cigar-chomping, alcohol-guzzling Tory — struck Callow’s ears as vulgar.
But Callow spews his own venomous insults: Horne’s book lacks …articulate analysis, his account is numbing and bewildering in equal measure, like being addressed from a dysfunctional megaphone.
Horne’s concluding endorsement of the relevance of Marx and Engels famous slogan– Workers of the World, Unite! –really brings Callow’s rancor to a boil: I’m sorry to break it to Mr. Horne, but he doesn’t. And it isn’t.
We surely know which side of the barricades Simon Callow has chosen.
The Legacy
The legacy of Paul Robeson has been maintained for the four decades since his death by his comrades and allies of the left, principally the Communist left. Most of those who worked and fought alongside of him have also passed away. Yet a small, but dedicated group of a few academics and more political activists have continued to tell his story and defend his values against a torrent of hostility or a wall of silence. Through the decades, he has been forced out of the mainstream– the history books and popular culture.
Of course, he was not alone in suffering anonymity for his Communist politics. Another giant who was brought down by Cold War Lilliputians, denigrated by hollow mediocrities, was African American Communist, Claudia Jones. Until recently, her powerful thinking on race, women’s rights, and socialism could only be found by those willing to search dusty corners of used book stores.
Perhaps no one promised to live and further Robeson’s legacy than the young writer Lorraine Hansberry, celebrated before her tragic death for her popular play, A Raisin in the Sun. Her work with Robeson and WEB DuBois on the paper, Freedom, brought her politics further in line with theirs: militant anti-racist, anti-imperialist, pro-socialist, Communist.
Forgotten by those who wish to portray her as a mere cultural critic, she famously called out Robert Kennedy’s elitist, patronizing posture in a meeting with Black civil rights leaders as enthusiastically recalled by James Baldwin.
Ignored by those who would like to see her as simply another civil rights reformer, her speech at a Monthly Review fundraiser, shortly before her death, resounds with revolutionary fervor:
If the present Negro revolt is to turn into a revolution, become sophisticated in the most advanced ideas abroad in the world, a leadership which will have had exposure to the great ideas and movements of our time, a Negro leadership which can throw off the blindness of parochialism and bathe the aspirations of the Negro people in the realism of the twentieth century, a leadership which has no illusion about the nature of our oppression and will no longer hesitate to condemn, not only the results of that oppression, but also the true and inescapable cause of it—which of course is the present organization of American society.
Today, there is a renewed interest in Robeson, Claudia Jones, and Lorraine Hansberry. Articles, books, and documentaries are appearing or are in the works. Some are offering new perspectives on the lives of these extraordinary people, exploring aspects of their lives that show that their humanity perhaps reached further than previously thought. Yes, they were Communists, but they were not just Communists. Indeed, they belong to the world.
However, it would be a great tragedy if they were denied their conviction that capitalism– the present organization of American society, in Hansberry’s words– represented the foundation of other oppressions. It would be criminally dishonest if there were no acknowledgement that they were made enemies of the state precisely because they embraced socialism. For an African American, in racist, Cold War mid-century USA, the decision to embrace Communism was not taken lightly or frivolously. Robeson, Jones, and Hansberry knew exactly what that commitment meant to the forces of repression. And they risked it. They should be looked upon as people’s champions for their courage.
New researchers are welcome to explore other dimensions of the lives of these unbending fighters for social justice. But their authentic legacies are needed now more than ever.
Greg Godels
Monday, January 22, 2018
This is Capitalism #5 – The world’s richest 1% took home 82% of the wealth produced by workers in 2017
http://www.idcommunism.com/2018/01/this-is-capitalism-5-worlds-richest-1.html
Eighty two percent (82%) of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report released today. The report is being launched as political and business elites gather for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
According to Oxfam,
- Billionaire wealth has risen by an annual average of 13 percent since 2010 – six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers, which have risen by a yearly average of just 2 percent. The number of billionaires rose at an unprecedented rate of one every two days between March 2016 and March 2017.
- It takes just four days for a CEO from one of the top five global fashion brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. In the US, it takes slightly over one working day for a CEO to earn what an ordinary worker makes in a year.
- It would cost $2.2 billion a year to increase the wages of all 2.5 million Vietnamese garment workers to a living wage. This is about a third of the amount paid out to wealthy shareholders by the top 5 companies in the garment sector in 2016.
A Thanksgiving Letter to Our Wealthiest 1% Americans
A Thanksgiving Letter to Our Wealthiest 1%Â Americans
November 27, 2017 by jackrasmus
By Jack Rasmus
Copyright 2017
As this Thanksgiving holiday comes to an end and the Xmas season approaches, let’s not forget to give thanks to our richest 1% fellow Americans and their corporations. Thanks to all 1.25 million of you from the 130 million of us 99 percenter households.
Your stewardship of the US economy has allowed us to keep 5% of all the national income created since the last recession in 2009; while you wealthiest 1% got to keep the other 95% (see UC Berkeley economist, Emmanuel Saez’s annual income inequality analyses).
But the more you get to keep, the more you can ‘trickle down’ to the rest of us, right? So say your politicians, talking media heads, economists, and other assorted hirelings. So thanks very much for at least sharing something with us.
If not sharing wages equally, we certainly got more jobs to be thankful for from you—who lose no opportunity to proclaim you are the source of all job creation.
Since 2009, you ‘gave’ us millions of part time, temp, contract, on call, and gig jobs. True, mostly low paid, without pensions or benefits jobs. Better than nothing jobs. And while it took you 8 years to re-create the level of jobs we had back in 2007, better late than never, right? Even if our pre-2008, higher paid jobs were replaced mostly by lower paid after 2008, it sure beats unemployment benefits. So thank all of you 1% self-proclaimed job creators for all the low paid, no benefit, service jobs you eventually did create for us.
As owners of the system you certainly had a difficult task managing your complex, mega-corporation called the USA economy, keeping all those foreign competitors and troublemakers in line with the US economic empire. You know, those ‘russkies’ that just won’t lay down and play dead anymore, those too clever Chinese, and all those assorted ‘rocket men’. But that’s what our 1000 offshore military bases are for, aren’t they? Our trillion dollar a year defense budget is well worth it.
And getting us out of the worst economic crisis since the great depression of the 1930s in 2008-09 was no easy task for you, we know. So all of you 1.25 million wealthiest 1% households deserve every dollar you’ve diverted to yourselves in the process of economic recovery these past 8 years, including:
• The $6 trillion in stock buybacks and dividend payouts paid out to you from your corporations since 2008 (see Yardeni Research, November 2017);
• The nearly 400% increase in the value of your stock holdings (see the DOW, S&P 500 and Nasdaq combined market gains since 2008);
• The additional $ trillions in capital gains income you earned on bond interest and capital gains since the last recession;
• Your share of half of the $1.9 trillions in ‘pass through’ non-corporate business income net gains since 2007 (see US national income accounts);
• The unknown $ trillions more you earned from investing in derivatives in offshore markets that you don’t report, which even the US government cannot discover;
• The still additional $ trillions more you stuffed in your offshore accounts to avoid paying US taxes (see recent revelations from the so-called ‘Paradise Papers’);
• The $2 trillion cash your bank and non-bank US corporations are still sitting on in the US, and another $2 trillion your multinational corporations are hoarding offshore—together earmarked at least in part for your personal future distribution (see Moody’s Analytics).
That’s easily more than $15 trillion in cash, near-cash, and easily convertible to cash sources of income accumulated over the past 8 years (and excludes the earnings from real estate and real property)—to be shared amongst the 1.25 million of you.
In total wealth and assets, not just income, American households held $58 trillion in net worth in 2009; that has since risen to $105 trillion, according to the US Federal Reserve bank’s latest 2017 report. Since median US Households’ net worth is still 30% below 2007 levels—and 90% of all US households are still below 2007 levels (per the New York Times, September 28, 2017)—the lion’s share of that $47 trillion total gain in net worth must therefore have gone to you one percenters. Congratulations. (Can’t wait to get my trickle down share. Please send by way of this blog address).
Let’s not forget to thank in particular the bankers among you. While it’s true they gave us the 2007-09 financial crash that led to 14 million home foreclosures and $4 trillion in our lost savings, your bankers did allow us to offset our stagnant wages these past 8 years with more loans and debt.
So thank you bankers, for the $1.4 trillion in student debt, the $1.2 trillion in credit card debt, and the more than $1 trillion in auto loan debt. That’s $3.6 trillion! Who needs wage increases when we can borrow our way to prosperity!
And while we’re talking about banks, let’s not forget to thank our central bankers, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, for buying up all bad investments you one percenters made before the 2008 crash. I mean the subprime mortgage bonds and other securities you got stuck with and couldn’t sell, that Ben and Janet generously bought from you at above market prices. That was another $5 to $6 trillion cash subsidy to your professional investor class.
By the way, I hear Ben is now making the speech circuit rounds, speaking to your bankers and companies for a fee of $200k per pop, and is serving on your corporate boards? And Janet has just announced she’ll soon also be leaving the Fed and joining him. Reward them well, Mr. and Mrs. 1%. They’ve done yeoman work for your banks, providing loans at 0.15% for 7 years, while the US government charged students 6.8% student loan rates and grandma and grandpa retirees lost more than $1 trillion in fixed income savings as result of near zero interest rates.
And let’s not forget your great multinational corporations who’ve been offshoring our high paying jobs made possible by free trade treaties like NAFTA. You know, the tech companies, big pharmaceutical companies, auto parts and textiles, and all the rest. Now we can buy cheaper priced products at Walmart and Target from you that they make in Mexico, China, and Indonesia.
Like loading up on Loan debt, free trade is so much better than getting wage increases!
And this season let’s not forget to thank your politicians whose elections you finance. Thanks to George W. Bush for cutting taxes by $3.4 trillion. And Obama and the Democrats for cutting your taxes by another $1.1 trillion during the recession, and then extending the Bush tax cuts in 2013 for another decade by a further $5 trillion. Now their heir to the presidency, Uncle Donald, is proposing another $4.5 trillion tax cut for you one percenters, for yet another decade. I can’t wait for all the ‘trickle down’ that’s finally coming.
Your Republican party politicians (aka one wing of your Corporate Party of America) can’t take all the credit. Your Democrat wing deserves some.
So thanks to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer, for their current efforts to broker a deal with Uncle Donald to let the 800,000 ‘Dreamers’ kids stay in America—in exchange for agreeing to deport their parents and for funding the border Wall with Mexico.
I do hope that next year Nancy and Uncle Donald can revisit the repeal of the ACA-Obamacare Act. It will mean another $592 billion tax cut for you one percenters and your corporations, and maybe then even more trickle down to us 99%. All those single moms with kids, disabled persons, and mentally ill don’t really need the improvements in Medicaid they got from the ACA. They were doing just fine before. You one percenters need the tax cuts more.
In conclusion, I’d like to give special thanks to your most famous one percenter, Don Trumpeone, a member of the wealthiest .01% (or 12,600) super richest households within your ranks, whose income gains in 2016 averaged $65 million.
Thank you, Don Trumpeone, for keeping us 99% safe in 2017. We ‘kiss your hand’. This year not one American was killed by the North Koreans, or by the Russians in the Ukraine, or by those violent Yemenis and world domination seeking Iranians—even though 60,000 Americans have died from the Opioid epidemic (started by the big Pharma companies) this past year; another 38,000 of us died from guns made in the US (291,000 since 2007); and the USA has continued to fall below its 20th ranking in infant mortality among the advanced nations while our teen suicide rate has doubled since 2007.
We 99% have so much to be thankful for this holiday season. And you 1%–and your corporations, politicians, and media pundits—are largely responsible.
So God keep blessing America. Let’s all stand for the flag. And thank you, our wealthiest 1% fellow Americans, the richest and greatest generation the world has ever seen.
Jack Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com, twitters @drjackrasmus, and his website is http://kyklosproductions.com
https://news.cgtn.com/news/7a516a4e78597a6333566d54/share.html
Houston Chinatowns prosper thanks to growing US-China exchanges
Culture
2017-09-30 17:20 GMT+8
In Houston, Texas – the fourth largest city in the United States – two Chinatown business communities have prospered due to an expansion in US-China cultural exchanges.
The first Chinatown is located east of downtown, but today, a second area of the city has emerged as a thriving international district.
In the 1980s, the younger generation of Chinese entrepreneurs gave rise to this new Chinatown, creating a bustling community that covers an area of 16 square km in southwest Houston, roughly 20km from downtown Houston.
Dun Huang Plaza in Houston’s Chinatown. / Photo via 365thingsinhouston.com
The first business opened in the new Chinatown in 1983, which was designed and developed to meet the needs of America’s car-based society.
Today, thanks to many years of support and nurturing by the local Chinese community, the new Chinatown is home to an array of large and small shops, businesses, supermarkets and national banks, as well as being the shopping and business center for the local Asians population.
Because of the presence of the many banks in what is a relatively concentrated area, this new Chinatown has gained the nickname as “Houston Wall Street”, exemplifying its prosperity and importance.
And the prosperity of this new Houston Chinatown goes hand-in-hand with the rise of the new generation of ambitious and upwardly mobile Chinese.
“In the past, the old immigrants needed to spend a lot of time and hard physical work to make bread (money), so the progress was slow,” said Kenneth Li, chairman of Southwest Management District and member of Houston mayor’s International Advisory Board.
The Houston Police Department’s Chinatown station. /Photo from China Daily
Many young Chinese in Houston are now students and have a high educational background which gives them a bigger advantage in society and the marketplace, Li said in an interview with Xinhua.
Ruling Meng, a retired superconductivity scientist at the University of Houston and founding president of the Chinese Association of Professionals in Science and Technology (CAPST), said that she is a beneficiary of US-China people-to-people exchanges.
“I have always said that I am very grateful to the motherland for my training,” said Meng, who is over 80. “I was a college student in the 1950s in China, and the United States provided me with new opportunities for development.”
Meng said that economic conditions were not good then for Chinese people, but everyone studied hard. Even today, Meng is grateful to those who helped her along the way, and said she founded the CAPST in 1992 in order to give this type of care and support to younger Chinese scholars in Houston’s campuses when .
A shopping center in Houston’s Chinatown. /Photo via texasmonthly.com
Charlie Yao, president and CEO of Yuhuang Chemical Inc., which is based in Houston, is the former chairman of CAPST. He is among the new immigrants from China to the United States.
Many young Chinese today are white-collar professionals who have critical thinking skills and are open-minded, he said.
“China’s vigorous economic growth has helped to promote overseas Chinese to a higher level of living,” Yao said. “No other country in the world has been developing at a rate of more than 10 percent in the past few decades, but China made it.”
Jon R. Taylor, political science professor of University of St. Thomas in Houston, agrees with Yao. He said young Chinese professionals moved to Houston from other parts of the United States in pursuit of job opportunities and a better life, which in turn pushed the development of the new Chinatown in Houston.
Dun Huang Plaza in Houston’s Chinatown. /CNN Photo
Furthermore, Kenneth Li encouraged the new generation of Chinese to treat American mainstream society as a way of promoting the development of US-China cultural exchanges. It’s a win-win proposition as both cultures learn from and gain knowledge about each other.
Li believes that cultural exchanges are two-way in nature, as some local Chinese groups invite Americans to visit China.
“We should try our best to promote the people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States,” Li said. “With Confucian thought prevailing, Chinese are peace-loving people. We must send that message to the world.”
The street signs along Bellaire Boulevard in Houston’s Chinatown are posted in Mandarin characters as well as English script. /CNN Photo
Brian Lantz, a senior executive of Schiller Institute in Houston, said he is glad to see the emerging young generation of Chinese professionals in Houston, both in Chinatown and elsewhere.
“America will benefit from the growing roles of American Chinese and Chinese who are here in business,” he said.
While Chinese people are doing important work in academia and science, they also are bringing about improvements in the greater Houston community, saying, “I think we can all benefit.”
Source(s): Xinhua News Agency
Copyright © 2017 
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2017/09/time_to_face_the_crude_truth_a.html
Can we talk about our relationship to the oil industry? It’s not our savior | Opinion
Louisiana and its politicians have long embraced some unhealthy myths: Corruption in our politics isn’t so bad. Teachers are the real problem with our schools. Poor people are lazy. Climate change is a hoax. Oil is crucial to our economy because it employs so many workers and funds our government.
Few myths have damaged us more than the last one. Our blind allegiance to oil and gas has led to lax or poorly enforced environmental laws. The worst actors in the industry have contributed to the disappearance of our wetlands and poisoned our water.
And our eagerness to subsidize this industry has cost us billions in tax revenue. A 2015 report by the Legislative Auditor found that one exemption from one state tax — the severance tax on horizontal drilling — resulted in the loss of $1.1 billion from 2010 to 2014. Last year, the 27 state tax exemptions Louisiana grants to oil and gas interests amounted to $195 million. In 2012, during the height of the oil boom, the state let slip away $527 million in oil revenue; the following year, $462 million.
Since 2013, Louisiana has absolved one natural gas company, Cameron LNG, of more than $3 billion in property taxes. Since 2010, the state has awarded Cheniere Energy and its subsidiaries more than $3 billion in local and state tax subsidies. And in 2016, Louisiana gave Venture Global LNG $1.86 billion in property tax exemptions.
Total permanent jobs promised by those companies in return for the tax exemptions: about 1,400 (an average of $5.5 million in state and local subsidies per job). Industry officials claim without these generous tax breaks, they cannot afford to do business here.
That might be a stronger argument if energy exploration and refining weren’t already among the most profitable enterprises on Earth. Five of the 12 largest corporations in the world (by revenue) are oil companies, despite the slump in oil prices.
But these corporations provide plenty of good jobs for Louisiana workers, right? “The Louisiana oil and gas industry is one of the leading employers in the state,” the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association claims. The most recent employment numbers on its website — 64,000 — are from 2013, when oil was around $90 a barrel. The American Petroleum Institute (API), meanwhile, claims 291,00 Louisiana workers were employed in the industry in 2015.
The August 2017 report on industry employment from the Louisiana Workforce Development Commission, however, pegs the number working in or supporting oil and gas at about 40,000 or 2 percent of Louisiana’s total workforce. It’s likely the API’s 2015 numbers were wildly inflated. Even Louisiana oil industry lobbyists acknowledge a sharp jobs downturn caused by slumping oil prices.
Nationally, the API claims the oil and gas industry employed more than 10.3 million direct and indirect workers in the U.S. in 2015. Meanwhile, the BLS, which does not count indirect jobs, estimates the industry’s current national job number is 178,000.
Counting indirect jobs from a specific industry is an inexact science, so let’s consider only the API’s claim of 2.9 million “direct impact” jobs in 2015. According to the API study, almost a million of those jobs were at gas stations, where employees also sold cigarettes, beer and slushies.
The myth of oil as a once-and-future major employer and massive contributor to the economy is dangerous not only because it absolves the industry from paying its fair share in taxes; the myth also has strengthened the industry’s case as it lobbies to avoid or evade environmental regulations in Washington and the states.
The jobs narrative has led to another harmful myth: We can have oil industry jobs or a clean environment, but we cannot have both. Well, look no further than California, where the nation’s toughest environmental regulations exist in harmony with a vibrant oil and gas industry. (To their credit, Gov. John Bel Edwards and six coastal parish governments are suing to hold oil companies accountable for how they damaged portions of our coast.)
Pitting jobs against a clean environment is also how industry supporters crush regulations to address climate change. That jobs-versus-environment argument ignores that oil and gas companies are automating tasks that once required warm bodies.
The real issue is not jobs so much as how states like Louisiana suffer when the oil and gas industry doesn’t pay its fair share in taxes. As the oil companies automate, their profit margins will increase. And their lobbyists continue persuading legislators in places like Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., to increase or maintain billions in “drilling incentives.”
For decades, Louisiana has acted like providing corporate welfare to the oil industry is our patriotic duty. We’ve behaved like a feckless colony and allowed oil companies to swoop in, scoop up our oil and gas and pay us little in return. The industry buys the fealty of our politicians who have persuaded us that it’s our salvation.
It’s not. And if Louisiana wishes to enter the 21st Century, it’s time to wake up, smell the crude and quit behaving like a third-world petro state.
Robert Mann, an author and former U.S. Senate and gubernatorial staffer, holds the Manship Chair in Journalism at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. Read more from him at his blog, Something Like the Truth. Follow him on Twitter @RTMannJr or email him at bob.mann@outlook.com.
https://www.sott.net/article/278407-Is-Putin-incorruptible-US-insiders-view-of-the-Russian-presidents-character-and-his-countrys-transformation
Friends and colleagues,
As the Ukraine situation has worsened, unconscionable misinformation and hype is being poured on Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Journalists and pundits must scour the Internet and thesauruses to come up with fiendish new epithets to describe both.
Wherever I make presentations across America, the first question ominously asked during Q&A is always, “What about Putin?”
It’s time to share my thoughts which follow:
Putin obviously has his faults and makes mistakes. Based on my earlier experience with him, and the experiences of trusted people, including U.S. officials who have worked closely with him over a period of years, Putin most likely is a straight, reliable and exceptionally inventive man. He is obviously a long-term thinker and planner and has proven to be an excellent analyst and strategist. He is a leader who can quietly work toward his goals under mounds of accusations and myths that have been steadily leveled at him since he became Russia’s second president.
I’ve stood by silently watching the demonization of Putin grow since it began in the early 2000s – – I pondered on computer my thoughts and concerns, hoping eventually to include them in a book (which was published in 2011). The book explains my observations more thoroughly than this article. Like others who have had direct experience with this little known man, I’ve tried to no avail to avoid being labeled a “Putin apologist”. If one is even neutral about him, they are considered “soft on Putin” by pundits, news hounds and average citizens who get their news from CNN, Fox and MSNBC.
I don’t pretend to be an expert, just a program developer in the USSR and Russia for the past 30 years. But during this time, I’ve have had far more direct, on-ground contact with Russians of all stripes across 11 time zones than any of the Western reporters or for that matter any of Washington’s officials. I’ve been in country long enough to ponder Russian history and culture deeply, to study their psychology and conditioning, and to understand the marked differences between American and Russian mentalities which so complicate our political relations with their leaders. As with personalities in a family or a civic club or in a city hall, it takes understanding and compromise to be able to create workable relationships when basic conditionings are different. Washington has been notoriously disinterested in understanding these differences and attempting to meet Russia halfway.
In addition to my personal experience with Putin, I’ve had discussions with numerous American officials and U.S. businessmen who have had years of experience working with him – – I believe it is safe to say that none would describe him as “brutal” or “thuggish”, or the other slanderous adjectives and nouns that are repeatedly used in western media.
I met Putin years before he ever dreamed of being president of Russia, as did many of us working in St.Petersburg during the 1990s. Since all of the slander started, I’ve become nearly obsessed with understanding his character. I think I’ve read every major speech he has given (including the full texts of his annual hours-long telephone “talk-ins” with Russian citizens). I’ve been trying to ascertain whether he has changed for the worse since being elevated to the presidency, or whether he is a straight character cast into a role he never anticipated – – and is using sheer wits to try to do the best he can to deal with Washington under extremely difficult circumstances. If the latter is the case, and I think it is, he should get high marks for his performance over the past 14 years. It’s not by accident that Forbes declared him the most Powerful Leader of 2013, replacing Obama who was given the title for 2012. The following is my one personal experience with Putin.
The year was 1992…
Sharon Tennison
It was two years after the implosion of communism; the place was St.Petersburg. For years I had been creating programs to open up relations between the two countries and hopefully to help Soviet people to get beyond their entrenched top-down mentalities. A new program possibility emerged in my head. Since I expected it might require a signature from the Marienskii City Hall, an appointment was made. My friend Volodya Shestakov and I showed up at a side door entrance to the Marienskii building. We found ourselves in a small, dull brown office, facing a rather trim nondescript man in a brown suit. He inquired about my reason for coming in. After scanning the proposal I provided he began asking intelligent questions. After each of my answers, he asked the next relevant question. I became aware that this interviewer was different from other Soviet bureaucrats who always seemed to fall into chummy conversations with foreigners with hopes of obtaining bribes in exchange for the Americans’ requests. CCI stood on the principle that we would never, never give bribes. This bureaucrat was open, inquiring, and impersonal in demeanor. After more than an hour of careful questions and answers, he quietly explained that he had tried hard to determine if the proposal was legal, then said that unfortunately at the time it was not. A few good words about the proposal were uttered. That was all. He simply and kindly showed us to the door. Out on the sidewalk, I said to my colleague, “Volodya, this is the first time we have ever dealt with a Soviet bureaucrat who didn’t ask us for a trip to the US or something valuable!” I remember looking at his business card in the sunlight – – it read Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
1994
Putin as Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg in the early 90s.
U.S. Consul General Jack Gosnell put in an SOS call to me in St.Petersburg. He had 14 Congress members and the new American Ambassador to Russia, Thomas Pickering, coming to St.Petersburg in the next three days. He needed immediate help. I scurried over to the Consulate and learned that Jack intended me to brief this auspicious delegation and the incoming ambassador. I was stunned but he insisted. They were coming from Moscow and were furious about how U.S. funding was being wasted there. Jack wanted them to hear the “good news” about CCI’s programs that were showing fine results. In the next 24 hours Jack and I also set up “home” meetings in a dozen Russian entrepreneurs’ small apartments for the arriving dignitaries (St.Petersburg State Department people were aghast, since it had never been done before – – but Jack overruled). Only later in 2000, did I learn of Jack’s former three-year experience with Vladimir Putin in the 1990s while the latter was running the city for Mayor Sobchak. More on this further down.
December 31, 1999
With no warning, at the turn of the year, President Boris Yeltsin made the announcement to the world that from the next day forward he was vacating his office and leaving Russia in the hands of an unknown Vladimir Putin. On hearing the news, I thought surely not the Putin I remembered – – he could never lead Russia. The next day a NYT article included a photo. Yes, it was the same Putin I’d met years ago! I was shocked and dismayed, telling friends, “This is a disaster for Russia, I’ve spent time with this guy, he is too introverted and too intelligent – – he will never be able to relate to Russia’s masses.” Further, I lamented: “For Russia to get up off of its knees, two things must happen: 1) The arrogant young oligarchs have to be removed by force from the Kremlin, and 2) A way must be found to remove the regional bosses (governors) from their fiefdoms across Russia’s 89 regions“. It was clear to me that the man in the brown suit would never have the instincts or guts to tackle Russia’s overriding twin challenges.
February 2000
Almost immediately Putin began putting Russia’s oligarchs on edge. In February a question about the oligarchs came up; he clarified with a question and his answer: “What should be the relationship with the so-called oligarchs? The same as anyone else. The same as the owner of a small bakery or a shoe repair shop.” This was the first signal that the tycoons would no longer be able to flaunt government regulations or count on special access in the Kremlin. It also made the West’s capitalists nervous. After all, these oligarchs were wealthy untouchable businessmen – – good capitalists, never mind that they got their enterprises illegally and were putting their profits in offshore banks.
Four months later Putin called a meeting with the oligarchs and gave them his deal: They could keep their illegally-gained wealth-producing Soviet enterprises and they would not be nationalized …. IF taxes were paid on their revenues and if they personally stayed out of politics. This was the first of Putin’s “elegant solutions” to the near impossible challenges facing the new Russia. But the deal also put Putin in crosshairs with US media and officials who then began to champion the oligarchs, particularly Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The latter became highly political, didn’t pay taxes, and prior to being apprehended and jailed was in the process of selling a major portion of Russia’s largest private oil company, Yukos Oil, to Exxon Mobil. Unfortunately, to U.S. media and governing structures, Khodorkovsky became a martyr (and remains so up to today).
March 2000
I arrived in St.Petersburg. A Russian friend (a psychologist) since 1983 came for our usual visit. My first question was, “Lena what do you think about your new president?” She laughed and retorted, “Volodya! I went to school with him!” She began to describe Putin as a quiet youngster, poor, fond of martial arts, who stood up for kids being bullied on the playgrounds. She remembered him as a patriotic youth who applied for the KGB prematurely after graduating secondary school (they sent him away and told him to get an education). He went to law school, later reapplied and was accepted. I must have grimaced at this, because Lena said, “Sharon in those days we all admired the KGB and believed that those who worked there were patriots and were keeping the country safe. We thought it was natural for Volodya to choose this career. My next question was, “What do you think he will do with Yeltsin’s criminals in the Kremlin?” Putting on her psychologist hat, she pondered and replied, “If left to his normal behaviors, he will watch them for a while to be sure what is going on, then he will throw up some flares to let them know that he is watching. If they don’t respond, he will address them personally, then if the behaviors don’t change – – some will be in prison in a couple of years.” I congratulated her via email when her predictions began to show up in real time.
Throughout the 2000s
St.Petersburg’s many CCI alumni were being interviewed to determine how the PEP business training program was working and how we could make the U.S. experience more valuable for their new small businesses. Most believed that the program had been enormously important, even life changing. Last, each was asked, “So what do you think of your new president?” None responded negatively, even though at that time entrepreneurs hated Russia’s bureaucrats. Most answered similarly, “Putin registered my business a few years ago”. Next question, “So, how much did it cost you?” To a person they replied, “Putin didn’t charge anything”. One said, “We went to Putin’s desk because the others providing registrations at the Marienskii were getting ‘rich on their seats.'”
Late 2000
Into Putin’s first year as Russia’s president, US officials seemed to me to be suspect that he would be antithetical to America’s interests – – his every move was called into question in American media. I couldn’t understand why and was chronicling these happenings in my computer and newsletters.
Year 2001
Jack Gosnell (former USCG mentioned earlier) explained his relationship with Putin when the latter was deputy mayor of St.Petersburg. The two of them worked closely to create joint ventures and other ways to promote relations between the two countries. Jack related that Putin was always straight up, courteous and helpful. When Putin’s wife, Ludmila, was in a severe auto accident, Jack took the liberty (before informing Putin) to arrange hospitalization and airline travel for her to get medical care in Finland. When Jack told Putin, he reported that the latter was overcome by the generous offer, but ended saying that he couldn’t accept this favor, that Ludmila would have to recover in a Russian hospital. She did – – although medical care in Russia was abominably bad in the 1990s.
A senior CSIS officer I was friends with in the 2000s worked closely with Putin on a number of joint ventures during the 1990s. He reported that he had no dealings with Putin that were questionable, that he respected him and believed he was getting an undeserved dour reputation from U.S. media. Matter of fact, he closed the door at CSIS when we started talking about Putin. I guessed his comments wouldn’t be acceptable if others were listening.
Another former U.S. official who will go unidentified, also reported working closely with Putin, saying there was never any hint of bribery, pressuring, nothing but respectable behaviors and helpfulness.
I had two encounters in 2013 with State Department officials regarding Putin:
At the first one, I felt free to ask the question I had previously yearned to get answered: “When did Putin become unacceptable to Washington officials and why? Without hesitating the answer came back: “‘The knives were drawn’ when it was announced that Putin would be the next president.” I questioned WHY? The answer: “I could never find out why – – maybe because he was KGB.” I offered that Bush #I, was head of the CIA. The reply was, “That would have made no difference, he was our guy.”
The second was a former State Department official with whom I recently shared a radio interview on Russia. Afterward when we were chatting, I remarked, “You might be interested to know that I’ve collected experiences of Putin from numerous people, some over a period of years, and they all say they had no negative experiences with Putin and there was no evidence of taking bribes”. He firmly replied, “No one has ever been able to come up with a bribery charge against Putin.”
From 2001 up to today, I’ve watched the negative U.S. media mounting against Putin …. even accusations of assassinations, poisonings, and comparing him to Hitler. No one yet has come up with any concrete evidence for these allegations. During this time, I’ve traveled throughout Russia several times every year, and have watched the country slowly change under Putin’s watch. Taxes were lowered, inflation lessened, and laws slowly put in place. Schools and hospitals began improving. Small businesses were growing, agriculture was showing improvement, and stores were becoming stocked with food. Alcohol challenges were less obvious, smoking was banned from buildings, and life expectancy began increasing. Highways were being laid across the country, new rails and modern trains appeared even in far out places, and the banking industry was becoming dependable. Russia was beginning to look like a decent country – – certainly not where Russians hoped it to be long term, but improving incrementally for the first time in their memories.
My 2013/14 Trips to Russia
Modern Russia, thriving
In addition to St.Petersburg and Moscow, in September I traveled out to the Ural Mountains, spent time in Ekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and Perm. We traveled between cities via autos and rail – – the fields and forests look healthy, small towns sport new paint and construction. Today’s Russians look like Americans (we get the same clothing from China). Old concrete Khrushchev block houses are giving way to new multi-story private residential complexes which are lovely. High-rise business centers, fine hotels and great restaurants are now common place – – and ordinary Russians frequent these places. Two and three story private homes rim these Russian cities far from Moscow. We visited new museums, municipal buildings and huge super markets. Streets are in good repair, highways are new and well marked now, service stations looks like those dotting American highways. In January I went to Novosibirsk out in Siberia where similar new architecture was noted. Streets were kept navigable with constant snowplowing, modern lighting kept the city bright all night, lots of new traffic lights (with seconds counting down to light change) have appeared. It is astounding to me how much progress Russia has made in the past 14 years since an unknown man with no experience walked into Russia’s presidency and took over a country that was flat on its belly.
So why do our leaders and media demean and demonize Putin and Russia???
Like Lady MacBeth, do they protest too much?
Psychologists tell us that people (and countries?) project off on others what they don’t want to face in themselves. Others carry our “shadow” when we refuse to own it. We confer on others the very traits that we are horrified to acknowledge in ourselves.
Could this be why we constantly find fault with Putin and Russia?
Could it be that we project on to Putin the sins of ourselves and our leaders?
Could it be that we condemn Russia’s corruption, acting like the corruption within our corporate world doesn’t exist?
Could it be that we condemn their human rights and LGBT issues, not facing the fact that we haven’t solved our own?
Could it be that we accuse Russia of “reconstituting the USSR” – – because of what we do to remain the world’s “hegemon”?
Could it be that we project nationalist behaviors on Russia, because that is what we have become and we don’t want to face it?
Could it be that we project warmongering off on Russia, because of what we have done over the past several administrations?
Some of you were around Putin in the earlier years. Please share your opinions, pro and con …. confidentiality will be assured. It’s important to develop a composite picture of this demonized leader and get the record straight. I’m quite sure that 99% of those who excoriate him in mainstream media have had no personal contact with him at all. They write articles on hearsay, rumors and fabrication, or they read scripts others have written on their tele-prompters. This is how our nation gets its “news”, such as it is.
There is a well known code of ethics among us: Is it the Truth, Is it Fair, Does it build Friendship and Goodwill, and Will it be Beneficial for All Concerned?
It seems to me that if our nation’s leaders would commit to using these four principles in international relations, the world would operate in a completely different manner, and human beings across this planet would live in better conditions than they do today.
As always your comments will be appreciated. Please resend this report to as many friends and colleagues as possible.
Sharon Tennison
About the author
Sharon Tennison ran a successful NGO funded by philanthropists, American foundations, USAID and Department of State, designing new programs and refining old ones, and evaluating Russian delegates’ U.S. experiences for over 20 years. Tennison adapted the Marshall Plan Tours from the 40s/50s, and created the Production Enhancement Program (PEP) for Russian entrepreneurs, the largest ever business training program between the U.S. and Russia. Running several large programs concurrently during the 90s and 2000s, funding disappeared shortly after the 2008 financial crisis set in. Tennison still runs an orphanage program in Russia, is President and Founder, Center for Citizen Initiatives, a member of Rotary Club of Palo Alto, California, and author of
The Power of Impossible Ideas: Ordinary Citizens’ Extraordinary Efforts to Avert International Crises. The author can be contacted at sharon@ccisf.org
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