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Is the Gates Foundation Still Investing in Private Prisons?

by KentMolloy Posted on December 8, 2014

Mother Jones

One year after Mother Jones reported on multi-million-dollar investments made on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that appeared to contradict the foundation’s mission, the philanthropy’s trust will not say if one of its most controversial holdings is still on its books.

In its 2012 tax filing, the Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the foundation’s endowment, reported a $2.2 million investment in the GEO Group, a Florida-based prison company. In its most recent tax forms, the Gates Foundation Trust listed an investment in the GEO Group worth more than $2 million.

In recent years, the GEO Group has faced accusations of detainee abuse and substandard care in multiple states. In 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Detention Oversight reported that GEO Group’s Adelanto facility near Los Angeles had committed “several egregious errors” in administering medical care to detainees. (GEO Group has repeatedly dismissed allegations of mistreatment.) More recently, a group of former immigrant detainees in Colorado sued the company for making them work around the prison for minimal pay, sometimes under the threat of solitary confinement. (The GEO Group said detainees were working under a “volunteer work program” and that its $1-per-day wages met federal standards.) The Gates Foundation Trust did not respond to requests for comment directed through a foundation spokesperson.

According to the Gates Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates—the only members of the trust’s board—have defined areas that the trust will not invest in, “such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that Bill and Melinda Gates find egregious.” Tobacco companies fall into that category.

The trust’s last reported investment in the GEO Group took the form of a $2,148,790 bank loan. (The Gates Foundation Trust did not issue the loan itself. The term “bank loan” refers to a type of corporate debt that companies with low credit ratings occasionally sell through a conventional bank to get extra cash.) The asset was reported in a tax form filed with the Internal Revenue Service this October, but is accurate only through October 2013.

Bank loans can yield higher returns for investors than stocks or bonds, but their ownership is harder to trace independently.

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In April, after demanding Gates divest from the GEO Group, supporters of a coalition of immigrant, Native American, and Latino rights groups rallied outside the foundation’s Seattle headquarters. The foundation eventually accepted more than 10,000 petitions from the activists and promised to submit their grievances to the trust.

“Bill Gates needs to be transparent about whether they’re still investing in GEO Group,” says Mariana Ruiz Firmat, managing director for Presente, which organized that protest. “It’s really problematic for the foundation, which claims to invest in communities of color. By investing in GEO Group now or in the past, that goes against communities of color.”

Christopher Petrella, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, who published a study this year demonstrating that private prisons are disproportionately filled with people of color, sees a similar contradiction between the trust’s investment in GEO Group and its declared mission of “improving the quality of life for individuals around the world.”

“In my estimation, such a contradiction is difficult to justify,” he said in an email.

In an interview with the Seattle Stranger at the time of the April protest, foundation spokesman Jonah Goldman said the staff were sympathetic to the outcry since “everybody at the foundation is deeply committed to social justice and human rights.” Yet, in an instance of what reporter Ansel Herz called “philanthro-splaining,” Goldman rationalized the foundation’s private-prison investments. “The foundation invests in life-saving technologies, in US schools, in making sure people living with AIDS in Africa are less likely to die,” Goldman said. “The trust invests in a lot of things to make sure we have the most money we can have to do that job.”

Last June, after our story ran, the trust pulled its investments in G4S, a United Kingdom-based private security group which operates a number of youth detention centers in the United States, and which had come under fire for maintaining Israeli detention facilities. At the time, a spokesman for the Gates family gave a vague explanation for why the trust had ended its investment: “Like other large foundations, the foundation trust evaluates its holdings regularly, both for performance and fit. As a result of this, the foundation trust no longer holds an investment in G4S.”

The foundation’s investments in the prison industry have been waning. In 2003, three years after the Gates Foundation was formed, tax returns show its trust held more than $23 million in bonds from Corrections Corporation of America and a $7 million bond from Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, GEO’s predecessor. By 2012, the trust had reduced its investment in the GEO Group by 70 percent and no longer retained any investments in CCA.

According to its tax forms, the Gates Foundation’s total assets were worth more than $40 billion in 2013, up from $36 billion at the beginning of the fiscal year. Most of this increase came from investment income.

The Gates Foundation first caught flack over its financial holdings in 2007, when the Los Angeles Times published a major investigation showing that the trust’s investments were actually undermining public health gains it was promoting. A Nigerian boy featured in the story had received Gates-funded polio and measles vaccinations yet suffered from a cough made worse by pollution from an oil refinery owned by the Italian company Eni. The Gates Foundation was one of the company’s investors.

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Is the Gates Foundation Still Investing in Private Prisons?

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100-Plus Photographers Capture 49 Cities

by HassanJDVefvwac Posted on December 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Take a quick look at The World Atlas of Street Photography and you’ll see right away that editor Jackie Higgins worked from a rather loose definition of the genre. Which isn’t not necessarily a bad thing for a book billing itself as a “World Atlas.” You want to give readers a full range of what exists under a broad definition of street photography, right?

Like any compilation work, though, the book is a mixed bag. A follow-up to The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti, it pulls together work by living photographers who do street photography in one form or other. Some you’ve undoubtedly heard of, but there are plenty you haven’t, and a number of notable street photographers whose work isn’t included. That’s where the “World Atlas” thing causes a bit of trouble. No Robert Frank? No Anders Petersen or Morten Andersen? No Jacob Aue Sobol? Bruce Davidson? Maybe these people didn’t want to take part. Or maybe the editors didn’t feel they should be included. And really, anyone familiar with the genre would come up with an entirely different lineup. Such is the nature of these sorts of books. Let’s be honest: Part of the draw is the chance to nit pick.

From “A City Refracted,” 2012–2014. Graeme Williams

Mumbai, India, 2007–2013. Maciej Dakowicz


The book is broken down by location, and Higgins makes a valiant effort to truly make it a worldwide survey. With more than 100 photographers shooting in 49 cities, there’s a great geographic and stylistic distribution. You have Martin Parr in Dubai, Wim Wenders in Houston, Pieter Hugo in Lagos, Trent Parke and Narelle Autio in Sydney, Alex Webb shooting Istanbul, David Goldblatt in his native South Africa, and much more.

All of the work is from existing, if not previously published, projects, such as Luc Delahaye’s L’Autre (a series of candid portraits from the Paris Metro), Nikki S. Lee’s performance art “Projects” series masquerading as street photography, and Michael Wolf’s Transparent City project.

From “Ramos,” Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009–2012. Julio Bittencourt

Fenchurch Street, 11 a.m., from “London’s Square Mile,” 2006–2013.
Polly Braden

A few bodies of work feel imitative, or leave you with that feeling of “Hell, I can take photos at least as good!” It’s a refrain you often hear from people who have been to an exhibit of Garry Winogrand, or of any street photographer, for that matter. I wouldn’t say that about Winogrand, but there are enough projects in this book that make me think, “Why was this included?” to leave me with an uneven feeling about the book.

At the same time, some of the work truly inspires. Alex Webb’s groundbreaking juxtapositions and Daido Moriyama’s contrasty explosions of black and white expand the boundaries of the street photography genre. Then there are photographers who push the envelope of what is even considered street photography, like work from Doug Rickard’s “A New American Picture,” a series of images lifted from Google Street View.

Appold Street, 6 p.m., from “London’s Square Mile,” 2006-2013. Polly Braden

The Wall Street Guy, New York City, 2008 (from “Stolen Moments,” 2008–present).
Yasmine Chatila

Shanghai, China, March 2011. Ying Tang

All that said, there’s a lot of amazing photography within these 400 pages. And the brief history of street photography for different cities is a great touch. Some of the best work, however, seems overly familiar—though to a nonphotographer it may not. Aside from that, the range of photographers represented seem to tilt more heavily toward the museum or ArtForum set: fine-art type photography that just happens to be set in the streets. And that’s not really my bag. But there’s also a lot that is totally up my alley. Like I said: mixed bag.

Even if I wasn’t overly wowed by the broad overview, I can understand what the book is trying to accomplish. Like most surveys, it’s a fine enough introduction to the current state of street photography in all its forms. The write-ups offer a quick background on each photographer and their included body of work, enough to provide a great starting point.

But if you’re seeking a deeper dive into the masters of the genre, you might want to check out the truly excellent Bystander: A History of Street Photography, by Joel Meyerowitz and Colin Westerbeck; Leo Rubinfien’s recent, massive Garry Winogrand book; the new Robert Frank book; and the reissue of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s monumental Decisive Moment.

Moorgate Station, London, UK, 2005. Matt Stuart

From “Rio: Entre Morros,” Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2010. Claudia Jaguaribe

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100-Plus Photographers Capture 49 Cities

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Meet the Family Behind Latin America’s Version of Planned Parenthood

by MariettS62 Posted on December 4, 2014

Mother Jones

People in the United States have been going to Planned Parenthood for nearly a century, ever since Margaret Sanger opened her first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916. But it wasn’t until 1977, after the US had already celebrated Roe v. Wade, that Colombian women had any equivalent organization to turn to. That was the year Dr. Jorge Villarreal started Oriéntame, a women’s reproductive health clinic now credited with inspiring more than 600 outposts across Latin America “and for reshaping abortion politics across the continent,” writes Joshua Lang in a story about the Villarreal family, out today in California Sunday.

Jorge Villarreal Mejía graduated from medical school in 1952 and soon took the reigns of the obstetrics department at Colombia’s national university. During that time, botched abortions caused nearly 40 percent of the country’s maternal deaths. “Women in slum areas were putting the sonda (catheter) inside of them without any sonography,” his daughter Cristina Villarreal told Lang. “They used ganchas de ropa (coat hangers), anything.” When these women showed up at general hospitals, they were shamed and quickly given basic medical attention at most.

So in 1977, Jorge opened a stand-alone health clinic in Bogotá called Oriéntame. Abortions were illegal, so Oriéntame had to focus on helping women who were already suffering from bad abortion attempts, or “incomplete abortions.” Colombians had to wait another thirty years before their mostly Catholic country legalized abortion, under pressure from a coalition that included Cristina Villarreal. (Abortion is now legal in Colombia when a mother’s physical or emotional health is in danger.) In the meantime, Oriéntame continued its mission to heal and empower women, using a sliding-scale payment model in order to reach poorer clients. In 1994, Cristina assumed leadership of the organization, which had grown to include a second nonprofit to help doctors around Latin America open their own Oriéntame clinics.

Lang’s story, an eye-opening and educational read, details the Villarreals’ persistence in the face of police and priests, health administration raids, legal battles, money troubles, and social stigma. Not unlike the volatile abortion politics in the US, across Latin America, writes Lang, “for every political action, there seems to be an equal but opposite reaction,” making Oriéntame’s success “all the more unlikely.” Today, the organization continues to struggle for funding. But fortunately for the estimated 4.5 million women seeking abortions every year across Latin America, and countless others looking for reproductive guidance, Oriéntame’s network has already laced together a much-needed safety net that will be difficult to undo.

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Meet the Family Behind Latin America’s Version of Planned Parenthood

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Thurgood Marshall Blasted Police for Killing Black Men With Chokeholds

by LiamF34ixjhgs Posted on December 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Early on the morning of October 6, 1976, 24-year-old Adolph Lyons was pulled over by two Los Angeles police officers for driving with a burned-out tail light. As the facts of the incident were later recounted by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, “The officers greeted him with drawn revolvers as he exited from his car. Lyons was told to face his car and spread his legs. He did so.” After an officer slammed his hands against his head, Lyons complained that the keys in his hand were hurting him.

What happened next nearly killed him:

Within 5 to 10 seconds, the officer began to choke Lyons by applying a forearm against his throat. As Lyons struggled for air, the officer handcuffed him, but continued to apply the chokehold until he blacked out. When Lyons regained consciousness, he was lying face down on the ground, choking, gasping for air, and spitting up blood and dirt. He had urinated and defecated. He was issued a traffic citation and released.

Lyons, who was African-American, sued the Los Angeles Police Department for damages and asked a federal judge to enjoin the further use of chokeholds except in circumstances where they might prevent a suspect from seriously injuring or killing someone. Lyons also argued that his constitutional rights had been violated by being subjected to potentially deadly force without due process.

His case, Los Angeles v. Lyons, eventually made it to the Supreme Court. In April 1983, the justices ruled against Lyons 5 to 4. The majority punted on the question of whether chokeholds are constitutional, instead finding that Lyons lacked standing to sue the LAPD since he could not prove that he might be subjected to a chokehold again.

Writing in dissent, Marshall blasted this as absurd: “Since no one can show that he will be choked in the future, no one—not even a person who, like Lyons, has almost been choked to death—has standing to challenge the continuation of the policy.” Lyon’s lawyer said the ruling turned any encounter with the police into a deadly game of chance. “The LAPD regulations mean Lyons everyday plays a game of roulette,” Michael Mitchell said. “The wheel has 100,000 slots. If the ball should fall in your slot, you die.”

In his opinion, Marshall presented a clear-eyed appraisal of the reckless use of chokeholds—a pattern of abuse most recently illustrated by the choking death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York City cop. Marshall noted that three-quarters of the 16 people killed by LAPD chokeholds in less than a decade were black. Despite their dangers, LA cops applied chokeholds with indifference: One officer described suspects “doing the chicken” while being deprived of oxygen. Officers did not recognize that chokeholds induce a flight response that may be perceived as willful resistance, and trainers did not tell rookie cops that chokeholds can kill in less than a minute.

Some excerpts from Marshall’s findings:

Although the city instructs its officers that use of a chokehold does not constitute deadly force, since 1975 no less than 16 persons have died following the use of a chokehold by an LAPD police officer. Twelve have been Negro males …

It is undisputed that chokeholds pose a high and unpredictable risk of serious injury or death. Chokeholds are intended to bring a subject under control by causing pain and rendering him unconscious. Depending on the position of the officer’s arm and the force applied, the victim’s voluntary or involuntary reaction, and his state of health, an officer may inadvertently crush the victim’s larynx, trachea, or hyoid. The result may be death caused by either cardiac arrest or asphyxiation. An LAPD officer described the reaction of a person to being choked as “doing the chicken,” in reference apparently to the reactions of a chicken when its neck is wrung. The victim experiences extreme pain. His face turns blue as he is deprived of oxygen, he goes into spasmodic convulsions, his eyes roll back, his body wriggles, his feet kick up and down, and his arms move about wildly. …

The training given LAPD officers provides additional revealing evidence of the city’s chokehold policy. Officer Speer testified that in instructing officers concerning the use of force, the LAPD does not distinguish between felony and misdemeanor suspects. Moreover, the officers are taught to maintain the chokehold until the suspect goes limp, despite substantial evidence that the application of a chokehold invariably induces a “flight or flee” syndrome, producing an involuntary struggle by the victim which can easily be misinterpreted by the officer as willful resistance that must be overcome by prolonging the chokehold and increasing the force applied. In addition, officers are instructed that the chokeholds can be safely deployed for up to three or four minutes. Robert Jarvis, the city’s expert who has taught at the Los Angeles Police Academy for the past 12 years, admitted that officers are never told that the bar-arm control can cause death if applied for just two seconds. Of the nine deaths for which evidence was submitted to the District Court, the average duration of the choke where specified was approximately 40 seconds.

While the case was being considered, the LAPD temporarily suspended its use of the bar-arm hold, where pressure is applied to the windpipe, and the carotid chokehold, where pressure is applied to the carotid artery. (Lyons had been subjected to a carotid hold.) LAPD Chief Daryl Gates also announced that his department was investigating whether carotid chokeholds were more likely to kill African-Americans for physiological reasons. As the chief explained in November 1982, “We may be finding that in some blacks when it the hold is applied, the veins and arteries do not open as fast as they do in normal people.”

Gates hailed the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling in Lyons as vindication that “this hold is not cruel and inhuman.” The court has yet to reconsider the constitutionality of chokeholds.

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Thurgood Marshall Blasted Police for Killing Black Men With Chokeholds

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A Big-Picture Conversation With David Corn on What the 2014 Elections Really Mean

by MargareKorth Posted on December 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones DC bureau chief David Corn spoke at the Chicago Humanities Festival in November, touching on the aftermath of the midterm elections, what lies ahead in 2016, and the continued fallout from the 47% video. Watch here:

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A Big-Picture Conversation With David Corn on What the 2014 Elections Really Mean

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No, the Garner Case Doesn’t Show That Body Cameras Are Useless

by HeleneScorfield Posted on December 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Very quick note: ever since last night, a lot of people have been making the point that Eric Garner’s killing produced no grand jury indictment even though the whole incident was captured on video. So maybe the whole idea of body cameras on police officers is pointless.

This is ridiculous. There are pros and cons to body cameras, but only in the rarest cases will they capture a cop killing someone. Even if, arguendo, they make no difference in these cases, they can very much make a difference in the other 99.9 percent of the cases where they’re used. The grand jury’s decision in the Garner case means a lot of things, but one thing it doesn’t mean is that body cameras are useless.

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No, the Garner Case Doesn’t Show That Body Cameras Are Useless

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Can We Please Kill Off the Kabuki in the Press Room?

by QuinnHeavener Posted on December 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Things are a bit slow this morning, so I want to replay for you a Twitter conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper. The subject is Jonathan Karl of ABC News, who harassed press secretary Josh Earnest earlier this week over President Obama’s picks as ambassadors to Argentina and Hungary. Neither one has any special diplomatic experience, and one of them is a former producer for a soap opera:

Jake Tapper: meant to give props to @jonkarl for his Bold and Beautiful ambassador questions to @PressSec the other day

Kevin Drum: Why? Is anything really gained by this daily kabuki in the press room?

JT: why what? why is it worth challenging people in power about questionable decisions?

KD: It’s kabuki. Everyone knows the answer. It’s happened forever. Earnest wasn’t going to answer. Why waste the time?

JT: i guess i dont think trying to hold those in power accountable is a “waste of time.” have a great day

Tapper’s point is pretty easy to understand, and my colleague Nick Baumann agrees with him. There’s a long tradition of rewarding big campaign contributors with cushy ambassadorial posts in spite their fairly visible lack of qualification. There’s not much excuse for this, so why not demand to know why Obama is doing it?

But here’s my point. This is yet another example of a bad habit that the White House press corps engages in constantly: faux confrontation over trivia that gets them camera time and kudos from late-night comedians, but is, in reality, completely pointless. Jonathan Karl knows perfectly well why these two folks were appointed. They raised lots of money for Obama. Josh Earnest knows it too. This stuff has been going on forever. But Karl knows something else: Earnest is a spokesman. He’s flatly not allowed to fess up to political stuff like this, and he’s just going to dance around it.

This is why I called it kabuki. If this were actually an important topic where there was some uncertainty about the answer, then confrontation would be great. I’d like to see more of it for truly important stuff. But is Karl’s investigative reputation really enhanced by an inane kindergarten round of “let’s pretend” with whatever poor schmoe happens to be at the press room podium? Is this truly an example of “holding those in power accountable”?

I really don’t see it. Then again, maybe Karl is working on a whole segment about the ridiculous practice of rewarding supporters with cushy diplomatic posts in fashionable countries. Or maybe even a segment asking why countries even bother having ambassadors in high-profile capitals where they serve precious little purpose anymore. If that’s the case, then maybe the questions made sense.

But purely as confrontation? Please. Dignifying this silliness as “challenging people in power” is like calling a mud fort an infrastructure project. It really doesn’t deserve any props.

UPDATE: Hmmm. Apparently Tapper and some others interpreted my initial tweet as referring to the entire concept of the press briefing. So to some extent, this is a misunderstanding. Obviously I don’t object to the general practice of holding briefings (though I wish reporters would boycott all the “background” briefings). I just object to the habit of peppering White House flacks with questions about trivial topics that everyone knows the answer to. It seems more designed to get YouTube kudos than to truly challenge anyone in power.

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Can We Please Kill Off the Kabuki in the Press Room?

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Some Fair and Balanced Race Baiting at Fox News

by HoracioMansell Posted on December 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Andrew Sullivan is heartened that even most conservatives seem to be shocked by yesterday’s grand jury decision not to return an indictment in the killing of Eric Garner. But “most” is not quite all:

The exception to all this was Fox News last night. Megyn Kelly’s coverage proved that there is almost no incident in which a black man is killed by cops that Fox cannot excuse or even defend. She bent over backwards to impugn protesters, to change the subject to Ferguson, to elide the crucial fact that the choke-hold was against police procedure, and to imply that Garner was strongly resisting arrest. Readers know I had very mixed feelings about Ferguson. I’m not usually inclined to slam something as overtly racist. But there was no way to interpret Kelly’s coverage as anything but the baldest racism I’ve seen in a while on cable news. Her idea of balance was to interview two, white, bald, bull-necked men to defend the cops, explain away any concerns about police treatment and to minimize the entire thing. Truly, deeply disgusting.

Jeez. A thinly veiled appeal to racist sentiment at Fox News? I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.

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Some Fair and Balanced Race Baiting at Fox News

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The Fracking Boom Could End Way Sooner Than Obama Thinks

by AidenLoche Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama is fond of touting America’s vast trove of natural gas—and the energy (read: economic growth) it can provide—as a reason to support fracking. “Our 100-year supply of natural gas is a big factor in drawing jobs back to our shores,” he told a gathering at Northwestern University in October.

You can hear that same optimism about US natural gas production from Democrats, Republicans, and of course, the industry itself. The conviction that America can fuel its economy by churning out massive amounts of natural gas for decades has become a core assumption of national energy policy. But what if it’s wrong?

Those rosy predictions are based on official forecasts produced by the Energy Information Administration, an independent federal agency that compiles data on America’s energy supply and demand. This spring, EIA chief Adam Sieminski told a Senate hearing that he was confident natural gas production would grow 56 percent between 2012 and 2040. But the results of a series of studies at the University of Texas, reported today in an article in the journal Nature, cast serious doubt about the accuracy of EIA’s forecasts.

The UT team conducted its own analysis of natural gas production at all four of the US’s major shale gas formations (the Marcellus, Haynesville, Fayetteville, and Barnett), which together account for two-thirds of America’s natural gas output. Then, they extrapolated production into the future based on predicted market forces (the future price of gas relative to other fuels) and known geology. Their analysis suggests that gas production will peak in 2020, 20 years earlier than the EIA predicts. What’s more, the UT researchers project that by 2030, gas production levels will be only half of EIA’s prediction.

The difference in opinion stems from a difference in the scale of the analyses. The UT team’s grid for each shale play studied was at least 20 times finer than EIA’s, according to Nature:

Resolution matters because each play has sweet spots that yield a lot of gas, and large areas where wells are less productive. Companies try to target the sweet spots first, so wells drilled in the future may be less productive than current ones. The EIA’s model so far has assumed that future wells will be at least as productive as past wells in the same county. But this approach, UT-Austin petroleum engineer Ted Patzek argues, “leads to results that are way too optimistic”.

Why do these numbers matter? The federal government, states, and the private sector all base their energy investments—research and development, infrastructure construction, etc.—on forecasts of where our energy will come from in the future. If natural gas really is super-abundant, there may be less urgency to invest in renewables like solar and wind to replace coal plants as they age or are regulated out of existence. But if there’s less recoverable natural gas than we think, we’ll need to change our strategy to avoid coming up short on power 20 years down the line. At the same time, there are international repercussions: Many countries are taking cues from the United States on how to develop their own natural gas resources, so what happens here will shape those plans as well. And a series of massive natural gas export facilities are already being proposed across the US to ship our gas overseas; what will happen to global markets if those run dry prematurely?

Because they rely on informed guesses about future market conditions, these forecasts can never be bulletproof, and the UT study doesn’t close the book on how much natural gas the US really has in store. But it’s an important reminder that we should treat politicians’ promises about fossil fuel wealth with skepticism.

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The Fracking Boom Could End Way Sooner Than Obama Thinks

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Tell Me, Chuck: What Should Dems Do To Win Back the Middle Class?

by EltonUfdutqsxc Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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A longtime reader writes: “Hope you’ll weigh in on Edsall on Schumer and the Dems ‘destroying’ the party over Obamacare.”

Well, OK. But I don’t have an awful lot to say. Basically, Sen. Chuck Schumer thinks it was a mistake to focus on Obamacare in 2009. Instead, Democrats should have focused like a laser on the economy, and in particular, on helping the working and middle classes. Instead, Dems passed yet another social welfare program that mostly helps the poor, demonstrating yet again that they don’t really care much about the middle class.

Yesterday, Tom Edsall weighed in on this. He didn’t really take a political position of his own, but he did present a bunch of evidence that Schumer was substantively correct. That is, Obamacare really does help mainly the poor, and Democrats really have done very little for the middle class lately.

So what’s my view? Well, I’ve written about this before, and I’d say that on a technical level Edsall is exactly right. Obamacare does help the working and middle classes a bit, partly because its subsidies are available even to those with relatively high incomes and partly because of its other provisions. For example, its guarantee that you can get affordable coverage even if you have a preexisting condition is something that helps everyone. If you’re middle class and you lose your job, that provision of Obamacare might be a lifesaver.

Still, there’s no question that Obamacare helps the middle classes only at the margins. Most of them already have employer health coverage, and the ones that end up buying coverage through the exchanges get only small subsidies. I happen to think that Obamacare will eventually be the foundation for a program of universal health care that genuinely appeals to everyone, the same way that Social Security does, but that’s in the future. It doesn’t really help Democrats now.

So I agree with Edsall about the technical distribution of Obamacare benefits. And I also agree with Schumer that Democrats need to do more to appeal to the working and middle classes. So that means I agree with their basic critique. Right?

Nope. Not even slightly. You see, the core of the critique isn’t merely that Democrats should do more for the middle class. It’s specifically that Democrats should have done more in 2009 for the middle class. But this is the point at which everything suddenly gets hazy. What should Obama have done in lieu of Obamacare? Paul Krugman has it exactly right:

When people say that Obama should have “focused” on the economy, what, specifically, are they saying he should have done?….What do they mean? Obama should have gone around squinting and saying “I’m focused on the economy”? What would that have done?

Look, governing is not just theater. For sure the weakness of the recovery has hurt Democrats. But “focusing”, whatever that means, wouldn’t have delivered more job growth. What should Obama have done that he actually could have done in the face of scorched-earth Republican opposition? And how, if at all, did health reform stand in the way of doing whatever it is you’re saying he should have done?

In broad terms, I agree with Schumer’s critique. Democrats need to do more to appeal the working and middle classes, not just the poor. But Schumer is maddeningly vague about just what that means. And as it relates to 2009, in particular, he’s full of hot air. In the first few months of the year, Obama passed a big stimulus. He rescued the auto industry. He cut everyone’s payroll taxes.

Should Obama have done more? Oh my, yes. His pivot to the deficit in mid-2009 was dumb. And by far the biggest smoking gun of unfinished business was something to rescue underwater homeowners. But let’s be serious: even if Obama had supported a broad rescue effort, it wouldn’t have mattered. Congress wasn’t on board, and I doubt very much that anything could have gotten them on board. The politics was just too toxic. Never forget that the mere prospect of maybe rescuing underwater homeowners was the issue that set off Rick Santelli’s famous CNBC rant and led to the formation of the tea party movement. I wish things were otherwise, but bailing out underwater homeowners was simply never in the cards.

Beyond that, Democrats have a much bigger problem than even Schumer acknowledges. It’s this: what can they do? That is, what big ticket items are left that would buy the loyalty of the middle class for another generation? We already have Social Security and Medicare. We have Obamacare. We have the mortgage interest deduction. What’s left?

There are smallish things. Sometime people point to college loans. Or universal pre-K. I’m in favor of those things. But college loans are a stopgap, and the truth is that the rising price of college for the middle class is mainly a state issue, not a federal one. And universal pre-K simply doesn’t yet have enough political support. (It’s also something that would most likely benefit the poor much more than the middle class, but leave that aside for the moment.)

So I’ll ask the same question I’ve asked before. I’m all in favor of using the power of government to help the middle classes. But what does that mean in terms of concrete political programs that (a) the middle class will associate with Democrats and help win them loyalty and votes, and (b) have even a snowball’s chance of getting passed by Congress? Expansion of Social Security? Expansion of Medicare? Bigger subsidies for Obamacare? Universal pre-K? A massive infrastructure program? Let’s get specific, and let’s not nibble around the edges. Little programs here and there aren’t going to make much difference to the Democrats’s political fortunes. Nor will heroic but vague formulations about rescuing unions or raising taxes on the wealthy by a few points.

So tell me. What should they have done in 2009 that was actually feasible? What should they do now? Let’s hear it.

See the original article here:

Tell Me, Chuck: What Should Dems Do To Win Back the Middle Class?

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