Jason Pramas

GE BOSTON DEAL: THE MISSING MANUAL

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Image by Kent Buckley

January 18, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The saga of GE’s flight from Connecticut began with the June 2015 passage of a very much needed package of state tax increases aimed at raising an extra $1.1 billion over the next two years. By extending a temporary 20 percent surcharge on its corporate profits tax and by implementing a more straightforward way of calculating corporate taxes, the Constitution State expects to pull in $700 million of that total from major corporations. The money will be used to fund social programs and improve mass transit. Imagine that.

GE brass immediately flipped out. And followed through on a threat to move their headquarters out of Connecticut. They began publicly courting cities around the US to get the best possible deal. Boston moved to the front of the pack by the fall. Then last week, GE officially announced that they would be moving their HQ to the Hub—specifically the so-called “Innovation District” on our soon-to-be-flooded waterfront.

What followed has been one of the most disgusting spectacles of press release transcription by the Boston mainstream news media in memory. Fulsome praise was lavished on Gov. Charlie Baker, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, and their busy lieutenants like John Barros for literally selling out the people of this city and this Commonwealth. A massive giveaway of $25 million in city “property tax relief” and $120 million in state “grants, tax incentives, infrastructure improvements, and help with real estate acquisition costs” to GE was treated as if it was the product of genius, rather than another nail in the coffin of democracy. The record of one of the most vicious and capricious corporations in world history was soft pedaled by focusing on the supposed benefits of the deal to the people of the Bay State. Which are … what exactly? The 800 predominantly transplanted jobs at the new GE Boston HQ? The up to 600 jobs at the new Marlborough branch of GE Healthcare Life Sciences by 2017? The assertion that the company will “base a new division, focused on lighting and energy, in a to-be-announced location in the Boston area” at some point? Airy claims about GE’s presence attracting other businesses to the state? Blather about “corporate philanthropy to the arts?” And something about “bragging rights?”

Stuff and nonsense. For starters, the vast majority of jobs that will be created locally by GE in the coming years will be professional/managerial level. Worked by the kinds of helicopter yuppies that will then buy some of the expensive condos that are being built all over the region. These few new jobs are not the jobs that are needed. They are not the tens of thousands of regular jobs that are going to help get beleaguered working and middle class families back on their feet after the economic depredations of the last 40-plus years. Depredations that GE pioneered.

The company had 13,000 mostly unionized workers in Pittsfield, MA decades back. Last fall, the Saudi Arabian-owned remnant of the former GE plastics division based there announced that it was leaving for Houston and taking the last significant group of ex-GE jobs, 300 in total, with it. GE had over 12,000 mostly unionized workers in Lynn, MA as recently as the early 1980s. Now there are about 1,400 unionized workers left, and 3,000 workers overall. GE closed its plant in Fitchburg, MA in 1998—taking 600 good jobs with it. GE is closing its Avon, MA plant later this year. Another 300 jobs gone. Cuts that devastated a number of communities, and contaminated the Housatonic River around Pittsfield with PCBs that GE is still fighting to avoid fully cleaning up—an issue capably reviewed by International Business Times last week.

Over the past year, GE leadership has continued such labor “innovations” by cutting medical and life insurance benefits to all non-unionized retirees over 65 on January 1, 2015. And cutting the same benefits to all unionized retirees over 65 at the start of this year. Tossing a mere thousand bucks a year to tens of thousands of GE retirees around the country and telling them to buy their own supplemental medical plans somehow.

Given this disturbing backstory, the claim by feckless pols that property taxes and other taxes that GE will eventually have to pay Boston and Massachusetts will soon outstrip the $145 million being handed to them beggars belief. GE is a vast corporate behemoth that employs hundreds of tax specialists to avoid paying any taxes at all. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2010 and 2014, GE earned $33.5 billion in profits but claimed federal tax refunds of $1.4 billion—an effective tax rate of -4.3 percent. And paid a combined state tax bill of only $530 million—an effective state tax rate of just 1.6 percent for the period.

This is GE. This is the corporate scofflaw that Charlie and Marty and their many business buddies cut a bad deal with. Now what are readers going to do to stop it and #makeGEpay?

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

STOP THE ICE RAIDS: FIGHT FOR THE ‘RIGHT TO THE WORLD’

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Image by Kent Buckley

January 13, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Over 100,000 undocumented immigrants from Central America have entered the US since 2014—seeking to escape what the mainstream media like to vaguely call “violence and political instability.” And they have been living in abject terror since the Obama administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began deportation raids against 121 of their number in December. Raids which come just as right-wing Presidential candidates whip up hysteria against immigrants and refugees. As if these “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are somehow the cause of our many societal woes.

These latest ICE raids against undocumented immigrants are reprehensible, and anyone who believes in democracy should oppose them. Especially because—as has been pointed out repeatedly by immigrant advocates—many of the people getting deported stand a good chance of being killed by reactionary governments or gangs if they’re forced to “go back where they came from.”

But also because Americans all bear some responsibility for electing governments who have made a series of decisions over the last century that have resulted in the immiseration of the countries that undocumented immigrants have left.

Such immigrants come here largely fleeing poverty—created by US hemispheric policy aimed at increasing profits for American multinational corporations and in maintaining control over the region. Time and time again, in each of the countries at the center of the current crisis—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—and many other countries besides, the US has moved to crush governments that show any sign of pursuing political and economic democracy.

For example, leaders like then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Obama administration backed a coup d’etat in Honduras in 2009 against the popular government of President Manuel Zelaya. To the great benefit of the Honduran military, a small number of elite landowning families, and some huge American corporations.

The country is now essentially run by criminals, and has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Similar processes continue in Guatemala. And in El Salvador. Which finally has a progressive government, but which faces a hostile US Congress, truculent local elites, and greedy multinational corporations. Plus, major gangs like MS-13 that owe their existence to US machinations in the region.

It’s worth noting that once here, undocumented immigrants (and refugees) almost universally work hard, pay taxes, and contribute to their communities. So arguments that they are somehow stealing something or “taking jobs” from American citizens and documented immigrants remain ludicrous on their face.

The only way out of this dilemma is to not only institute a humane and just immigration system—a hard enough challenge in the present political moment—but also to enshrine the “right to move” freely between nations in international law. And ultimately the even more democratic “right to the world” that Vassar College professor Joseph Nevins recently explained as follows:

A right to the world complements a “right to the city”—the right to radically remake places and those who inhabit them in ways that are inclusive and socially and environmentally just and sustainable—that many on the political left champion. A right to the world envisions more than a right for those who already inhabit a place, however. It also seeks a right to a just share of the earth’s resources and to a sustainable “home,” and a right to traverse global space, especially for the globally disadvantaged.

In other words, a right to a world where people mired in structural poverty and violence—like the current wave of immigrants from Central America or the even larger wave of refugees from Syria—would have the freedom to move to countries where they have the possibility of building a new life. And the right to have their basic needs met wherever they go. Without being branded “illegal” and treated like criminals for doing what any one of us would do in the same circumstances.

Readers looking to help stop the latest round of ICE raids, and to work on the long-stalled federal immigration reform process, should get in touch with the Mass Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition and their network of allied immigrant organizations right away.

Those who want to fight for the right to move and the right to the world are going to have a less straightforward path—as they’ll have to help build a new movement for migrants rights from the ground up.

A good start towards that larger goal would be to join the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in pushing the US to ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Steps beyond that will likely take a decades long fight.

For Americans feeling swayed by the anti-immigrant election rhetoric dominating both the news and paid campaign advertisements, I can only say this: take a careful look at the history of US relations with other nations in the Western Hemisphere and around the world. Notice what our political and corporate leaders did to those countries over the last century, and then reflect on where most immigrants and refugees are coming from. And why.

Then you might better understand why I’m saying that Americans owe immigrants and refugees a much better deal than we’ve been giving them of late.

It also wouldn’t hurt to remember that anyone who isn’t Native American is basically descended from immigrants. But please don’t embarrass us all by thinking that every one of your ancestors came here “legally.” Or that this land wasn’t stolen lock, stock, and barrel from its rightful owners.

If you’re looking for a book to read up on these and related matters, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is still a fine choice.

La lucha continua.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

SILENCE IS COMPLICITY: GREATER BOSTON’S WHITE COMMUNITIES NEED TO SUPPORT #BLACKLIVESMATTER

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January 5, 2016

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The #BlackLivesMatter movement is hitting the streets again in a renewed wave of protests for racial justice around Boston and America. Not that it has ever really stopped since Trayvon Martin was gunned down in 2012—as fresh injustices against Black people continue week after week, day after day. The latest being the unconscionable acquittal of the white cop who murdered 12-year-old Tamir Rice in cold blood for playing with a pellet gun in an “open carry” state.

#BLM is an impressive and necessary political phenomenon, led here as elsewhere by young Black activists. Which is as it should be. And there are significant numbers of allies from other communities—including white activists who have learned enough about the profoundly racist history of this country to be inspired to take action as well.

But there aren’t enough white allies. Not by a long shot. Especially in a tremendously segregated region like the Greater Boston area.

So the fact that hundreds of young white college students in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville have marched under the #BLM banner is commendable. Yet not enough of a groundswell to spark a real change in attitude in largely white neighborhoods in the city proper or in the many largely white suburbs.

And that is by design. The segregation of Black people from white people was the result of a series of racist housing policies starting after the Civil War that culminated in Black people being packed into redlined neighborhoods in cities like Boston—and stopped from moving into most suburbs post-WWII until the Civil Rights Movement forced some improvements. The story was much the same for Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans. These policies continue in various forms to this day. Laws or no laws.

People in the predominantly white neighborhoods, cities, and towns are currently free to ignore #BlackLivesMatter. As long as that is the case, there can be no real justice for Black people in America. Because white people who are able to live apart from Black people will likely never confront the monstrous truths that #BLM—the new Civil Rights Movement—is exposing. Including the fact that their relative privilege is built on legal, political, economic, social and cultural systems designed to subjugate Black people. And in not confronting it, they perpetuate those racist systems. Silence, in this case, is truly complicity.

This situation will only change if the #BlackLivesMatter movement comes to them. Directly. In person. Every damned day from now until justice is won. And that cannot happen unless white allies step up in every white enclave. Beacon Hill. Back Bay. Hingham. Needham. Sudbury. Wakefield. Stoneham. Reading. Danvers. Marblehead. Any local can come up with a much longer list in their sleep.

Walk around these white areas and look for a #BlackLivesMatter or a #JusticeforTamir sign. You will see few—and those mainly outside some progressive houses of worship. And a disturbing number of the signs that you’ll see have been vandalized or otherwise messed with over the last year.

So here’s what has to happen to start to make things right. White people living in predominantly white communities have to start getting a lot more #BlackLivesMatter signs up. Then, when you all hear about major #BLM actions, spread the word to your friends and family. Go to the actions. Watch. Listen. Learn. Go back to your community. Find other local allies and call solidarity protests and vigils in public places. Organize community forums on the core #BLM issues. Always invite #BLM organizers to speak. Be respectful. Build political alliances. Figure out where to go from there.

This is how Americans can change a racist power structure that produces white cops who can cut down a Black child in a hail of bullets without so much as a warning. By tearing it up at the roots, one neighborhood at a time.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

ONE QUESTION FOR 2016

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Image by Tak Toyoshima

December 29, 2015

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

As the new year approaches, it’s the tradition for journalists who have the honor of writing a regular column for the general public to prognosticate about the year to come.

Well I am a journalist. I have a regular column. But I’m not going to make any predictions this year.

I’m just going to ask a single question: Do you want to live in a democracy?

I want you to take some time by yourself, then I want you to sit down and really think about my question. Do you want to live in a country where you have a say about what happens in your daily life? A say about what happens where you live, where you work, and where you hang out. Do you want to live in a country where everyone has that say? Regardless of their race, sex, or sexual identity. Regardless of where they were born. Regardless of whether they are poor or rich. Regardless of whether they believe in a god or gods or none at all.

Do you want to live in a country where everyone has freedom of speech? Freedom of expression? Freedom to participate in politics? Freedom to hold and act on any of a broad spectrum of political views?

Really think about it. Because I’m concerned that too many people don’t think about democracy much lately.

And with a Presidential election looming in which most of the candidates are awful, and with some of the candidates clearly interested in moving away from even the modestly (and highly flawed) democratic form of government we have toward outright fascism—an authoritarian system specifically organized against democracy and equality—I think my question is worth some consideration.

Think about every institution in this society with the tradition of voting. Government at all levels, sure, but also political parties, neighborhood associations, benefit societies, community service organizations, clubs, co-operatives, labor unions, and some significant religious groups. Democratic organization is built into the fibre of this nation. Yet the core democratic impulse to participate in collective decision-making is withering away in many ways—replaced by a sort of dispirited individualism. The internet, ostensibly built to enhance democracy, may actually be harming it by increasing the power of unelected technocrats to determine the direction of key institutions.

Important decisions increasingly get made over our heads by corporate leaders in tandem with government staffers and politicians that are absolutely convinced they know how to “fix” societal problems without meaningful public input. All while allowing a small number of people to make tremendous profits at the expense of the rest of populace. Without genuine discussion, debate, or voting. They are enabled by technology that allows them a degree of social control undreamed of by history’s worst dictators to date.

These developments point to the very real danger that this layer of new oligarchs will use their money, power, and connections to simply drop the pretense of democracy sometime in the near future and start ruling by fiat. Unless Americans—and immigrants and refugees who wish to join us, and allied institutions and nations the world over—decide to revive our democratic traditions and stop the descent into an autocratic abyss. From which humanity may never emerge in this age of ecological crisis.

So after you’ve thought about my question, and talked it over with friends and family, if you decide that you do want to live in a democracy I’d like you to look for people and organizations that share that belief. And to start working to expand democracy in every part of your lives. In 2016, and in every New Year’s Day to come. My simple admonition to you all.

And don’t forget to party, too.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH (THE YEAR IN KRAMPUS)

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Image by Tak Toyoshima

December 21, 2015

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Popular culture always tells us a lot about the spirit of the time in which it was created. So when three movies get released featuring the same little-known supernatural character in the same year, it’s safe to say that something new is running through America’s collective unconsciousness.

And this holiday season, that something is stern. It’s righteous. It’s Krampus.

Yes, St. Nick’s goatlike pal himself. For the uninitiated, in parts of Europe—especially in alpine villages in Austria—Santa Claus is the jolly guy Americans are already familiar with. He gives toys and treats to all the good little girls and boys. But when it comes to naughty kids, it’s all about Santa’s demonic companion Krampus—who hunts them down, whips them with a bundle of sticks, chains up the really bad apples, and drags them off to hell.

Unless you’re from Austria, the first time that you might have heard of Krampus was probably by watching a December 2013 “American Dad!” episode. Still, shortly after the show aired, US awareness of the pugnacious personality seemingly returned to its usual level of zero.

This year, out of nowhere, Krampus is suddenly on America’s radar in a big way (see: “Krampus,” “KRAMPUS: The Reckoning,” and “A Christmas Horror Story”). So I’m thinking all the sudden exposure for an archaic European folk monster could have something to do with the fact that Americans are feeling like there are a bunch of naughty people and institutions in serious need of some festive correction hereabouts.

And why not? Nationally, making a 2015 naughty list is no challenge at all. Just look at most of the Presidential candidates. From open fascists like Trump 2.0 to neoliberals like Clinton—all backed by Wall Street and a bunch of supremely naughty billionaires—it’s like: naughty, naughtier, naughtiest. So Krampus should pretty much drag off the whole lot—and maybe let Sanders off with a light switching for his militarist foreign policy, and keep him here on Earth to do a better job of running the country than anyone else who conceivably has a shot at the Oval Office next year.

Here in Massachusetts, deciding who to turn in actually takes thought. So I checked with friends on social media and quickly drew up a short list of our baddest local apples. And I’m happy to pass it on to the K man right now. In hopes that he’ll appear and apply cloven hooves to backsides later this week.

For starters, anyone who had anything to do with pushing a Boston 2024 Olympics—from John Fish to Shirley Leung—is naughty. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, already naughty for his role in the Summer Games debacle, is also naughty for not acting faster to fully replace the Long Island homeless shelter and affiliated treatment centers that his administration shuttered last year in the midst of a growing homelessness crisis. And for a number of other infractions.

The Boston Police Department is naughty for engaging in racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices that have disproportionately targeted Black and Latino communities for years. Then trying to brush off a damning ACLU report on the matter this summer. And basically succeeding with the help of a very naughty Boston mainstream press. Who just can’t write enough glowing fluff about the BPD to satisfy their naughty (and largely white suburban) audiences.

The Democrat-dominated Mass legislature is naughty for joining Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and paving the way for privatizing the MBTA. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast food giants are naughty for paying their Bay State workers sweatshop wages—and fighting tooth-and-nail to stop them from unionizing. Retail outlets like Primark and Walmart are naughty on the same grounds.

Hardly an exhaustive list. Plus right-wingers won’t find much to agree with. Because there’s good reason to think that the horned one leans left. Both the fascists who ruled Austria between 1934 and 1938, and the Nazis who followed them until 1945, banned Krampus. And they wouldn’t have done that if they thought witches and socialists and free-thinkers were first in line for some magical non-consensual bondage every winter solstice.

But hey, this is fun for the whole family! Make your own naughty list. Have a Krampus party and read it out loud. Then wait for all the sweet holiday retribution to start. And look forward to a much more compassionate (and chastened) Commonwealth in the new year.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director. He has a bundle of sticks and is willing to use it.

GO BIG OR GO HOME: TOWARDS A MASS CLIMATE JUSTICE MOVEMENT

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Image by Kent Buckley

December 16, 2015

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

On Saturday, one important global process ended and another began. The process that ended manifested in the form of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The process that began—or more correctly, accelerated—manifested in cities all over the world. Here in Boston, it took the form of Jobs, Justice and Climate—a rally and march to “defend New England’s future.”

Over 2,000 people attended the action last Saturday. A fine turnout by current standards, and the largest regional climate justice rally in recent memory. The organizers—representing a coalition of nearly 150 labor, social justice and environmental organizations —are to be commended. As are their 600,000-plus colleagues across the globe. Including the Paris climate activists who have been harassed and detained by the French security state in the aftermath of the tragic November 13 attacks by supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. As if people exercising their democratic rights to take to the street to stop capitalism from destroying the planet have anything in common with people who slaughtered dozens to push Western states into precisely that sort of undemocratic reaction.

The UN-brokered climate justice process launched at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro ended in failure. The so-called Paris Agreement that 195 participating countries negotiated this month at best still leaves the door open to the possibility of a real climate pact in the future, and at worst is just an empty PR move by powerful nations and multinational corporations intent on continuing their carbon-burning business as usual at any cost. Built, as it is, on non-binding voluntary commitments without real enforcement mechanisms.

If there is ever to be a real pact to stop global warming, it will only come about if the grassroots democratic process—which started years before the 1992 Earth Summit—makes it happen. That process must take center stage now, and should only finish when its activists come home “with their shields or on them”—to paraphrase an old saying attributed to ancient Spartan women by Plutarch.

That is a tall order to be sure.

Here in New England, in addition to the work by a growing number of climate justice organizations and institutions that goes on day-to-day—collecting solid climate research, conducting popular education, training new activists, reaching out through the media, pressuring climate criminals and lobbying the government at all levels—there must be a constant and ever-larger series of public political actions to demand the swift transition to a carbon-free economy before it’s too late.

It’s important to keep the scale of the task in mind. There were over 14,000,000 people in New England in 2010. There are more now. There will be more still every year until at least mid-century—assuming food supplies remain stable, which we cannot assume as the impact of global warming worsens. A significant percentage of those people need to be mobilized and kept mobilized for years if there is to be a climate justice movement strong enough to overcome the vast panoply of money and political power arrayed against it. Those growing numbers must then be deployed to push through binding local, state, and regional climate agreements that pave the way for binding national and global climate agreements.

So, a rally of 2,000 is great. But let’s put that in perspective. One can see 2,000 people at the average high school football game. Or at a large religious service. Or at a large nightclub. It’s just not a very large gathering by the standards of our era. Even if each of those 2,000 people directly influenced 10 people to become (or remain) activists—no mean feat—that’s only 20,000 people. Not an unreasonable figure considering the many organizations endorsing the Boston rally. But not enough to fill Fenway Park either. Let alone Gillette Stadium.

It’s true that those 2,000 rally attendees influenced many more through the press coverage they got for the rally. And that 20,000 people can influence many many more with available digital media. But spreading ideas does not automatically impel people to act with the necessary speed, frequency and force to forestall the climate disaster that even now—in this hottest year on record—is starting to take hold as science predicted.

Political organizing is tough work … until it isn’t. Until a movement that dwarfs anything ever seen in human history rises and sweeps through the entire population. Getting to the point where organizing isn’t tough is very difficult indeed. And it’s impossible to predict the arrival of such a mass movement. It will either happen or it won’t. There’s no telling when. Making it all the more important that today’s environmental activists think really really big going forward.

New England is only one small region of the United States with less than 5 percent of its population. And the US has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But much of its political and economic power. Therefore, the work that climate activists do in this region and nation today is potentially more effective than work their counterparts do outside such centers of power. That is cause for hope. And it should encourage activists in Boston and around our region to redouble their efforts towards a future where New England—and the world—will no longer have to be defended against global warming. Because global warming will have been stopped by human action. As it was started by human action.

Maybe then humanity will be able to survive to the next stage of our evolution … a global civilization built on principles of democracy, equality, social justice, peace, and ecology. Ad astra per aspera. Through hardship to the stars.

It is that vision that has kept me politically active since the 1980s. Perhaps it will inspire some of you, too. If fellow climate justice activists would like to talk in more depth about the issues I’m raising here, I can be reached—as ever—at jason@binjonline.org.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director. He is a longtime climate justice activist.

GROUNDED MONKEYS: MILLIONAIRES UNLIKELY TO FLEE COMMONWEALTH IF RAISE UP MASS WINS TAX ON 1 PERCENT

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Image by Kent Buckley

December 8, 2015

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Boston Business Journal’s Craig Douglas made an interesting criticism of Raise Up Massachusetts last week (“Excited about the proposed millionaires tax? Cut off your nose while you’re at it,” Dec. 4). For those who missed it, RUM is a progressive labor-community coalition that just collected over 155,000 signatures to field a constitutional amendment referendum in 2018 that will create an additional 4 percent income tax for residents who make more than $1 million a year.

RUM initially estimated that the new tax would generate $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion of new revenue a year if enacted in 2019. Then the state Department of Revenue recently did their own analysis, and projected that the additional revenue will be significantly higher—$1.6 billion to $2.2 billion a year.

This led BBJ’s Douglas to call foul on both the RUM numbers and the DoR numbers. The problem? BBJanalysis shows that projections by amendment advocates and the DoR aren’t taking into account that the number of Mass millionaires fell in 2013 and 2014—leading him to point out that the amount of tax money the amendment will raise could be far lower than expected.

Certainly food for thought. And if Douglas had stopped there he would probably have landed on solid ground. But then he overplayed his hand, arguing that if the amendment passes we can “expect more millionaires—and their earnings—to flee the state like a bunch of flying monkeys.”

That’s just a truism. The kind of spectre that anti-tax jihadis are fond of raising whenever there’s the slightest danger of tax equity in America. And Douglas offered no citation to back up the claim.

Turns out the Commonwealth’s very own UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute did a study called “Raising Revenue from High-Income Households: Should States Continue to Place the Lowest Tax Rates on Those with the Highest Incomes?” in 2012 that states “… the research reviewed in this study suggests that modest tax increases on affluent households are unlikely to make substantial changes in their work effort or entrepreneurship or make them any more likely to leave the state.”

Also, Douglas seems to have forgotten his own article from Oct. 22, “The BBJ Wealth Report: The towns and cities with the most millionaires,” in which he stated that the falling numbers of millionaires in the state were the result of rich people accelerating “income-related activities in 2011 and 2012 in anticipation of the pending rate hikes on high-income earners” and “deferred asset sales and related income-triggering events to avoid the higher rates, hoping instead for a more-favorable tax climate following the 2016 national elections.”

In other words, they played games to make sure that they could report as little income as possible after 2012. Nowhere did he say they left the state, however. Or even that they really lost money.

And that’s basically what I would expect rich people to do if the amendment passes. They’ll play games that allow them to report as little income as possible. Some will drop off the millionaire rolls for a time. But the state will gain a good chunk of desperately needed extra income we’re not getting from any of the various neoliberal shell games that legislators have been playing to avoid taxing the rich. The flying monkeys, meanwhile, will remain safely in their roosts.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

BARGAINING AGAINST OURSELVES: MEANS TESTING MBTA FARES WILL DECREASE PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR MASS TRANSIT

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Image by Kent Buckley

November 30, 2015

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

As the latest round of the ongoing neoliberal campaign to shift the cost of mass transit in Massachusetts from state government to individual riders gets in gear—a necessary step along the road to privatizing the MBTA—regular readers will be unsurprised to find that I am in agreement with progressive transportation advocates like Alternatives for Community and Environment that are against T fare hikesof any kind next year.

However, there is a related fare reform proposal being floated that also needs to be vigorously opposed early in the game: The idea of means testing T riders and giving poor people lower fares.

Supporters of the proposal include Monica Tibbits-Nutt and Brian Lang—two members of the powerful new MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board that is tasked with bringing public transit costs to heel in the Bay State at a time when the T’s annual operating deficit is expected to rise from a projected $170 million this year to $240 million next year to $427 million by 2020. Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack has also voiced support for the idea.

I don’t doubt that Lang (president of Boston’s hotel and food service union UNITE HERE Local 26), Tibbits-Nutt (executive director of the 128 Business Council), and Pollack (former associate director for research at the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University and onetime Conservation Law Foundation staffer) are well-meaning in their concern for low-income riders in the face of constant pressure for regular fare hikes.

But I think their push will create a two-tier system that undercuts the core principle of public services: universality. As the tremendous success of the Social Security program informs us, society as a whole does better when public services like mass transit contribute to the common good. If we start giving a better deal to one relatively powerless group like poor riders, then other more entitled groups like middle class riders will stop seeing support for the T as being in their best interest. Driving another nail in the coffin of the idea of public transportation as a human right and a critical public service when the governor’s seat is held by a Pioneer Institute privatizer like Charlie Baker and when a Democratic legislature has just suspended the anti-privatization Pacheco law for the T for the next three years.

Also, such a weak policy initiative can be undone as easily as it is enacted. Poor riders can have their discount taken away in a political heartbeat. And that’s the danger of mass transit advocates inside and outside government trying to forestall a necessary battle in the public interest with piecemeal reform. That’s the danger of hewing solely to politics of the “possible”—the politics of least resistance—and of buying into Maggie Thatcher’s dictum that “there is no alternative” to the neoliberal capitalist ideology. To forgetting about democracy. To absolving corporations and the rich of their responsibility to pay taxes, and privatizing government. Thus killing off public services while guaranteeing ever greater profits for the one percent.

Last spring, the Boston Globe‘s Shirley Leung predictably tried to put a positive spin on the means tested fare discount plan by inferring that it is somehow akin to progressive taxation—the opposite of Thatcher’s vision—where the poor pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes and the wealthy pay a higher percentage. But while declaring that the single fare system is a regressive tax on the poor, she tripped lightly past the fact that if we had a genuinely progressive income tax in Massachusetts we’d not only have plenty of money to properly fund the T without regular fare hikes, but would also be able to significantly expand the system. And get all those suburban SUV cowboys and cowgirls on a public bus or train once in awhile—which would be good for both the environment and for reminding conservative suburbanites that they live in a democratic society. Not a Randian individualist dystopia.

The constitutional amendment campaign by the labor-backed Raise Up Massachusetts coalition would go part way towards that goal if enacted by raising state income tax on just the rich and by dedicating some of the funds to mass transit. Which is helpful. But, absent a public groundswell an order of magnitude larger than the Occupy movement, we’ll apparently have to wait for a progressive coalition with the political will to fight for a full progressive taxation amendment that will really solve the problem of properly funding public services like the MBTA.

Meanwhile, former Transportation Secretary James Aloisi (a sometimes controversial figure himself) amply demonstrates what could be done to save the T without major tax reforms in a recent article in Commonwealth—starting with forcing state government to take back the billions in “legacy” and Big Dig debt it dumped on the T years back, shifting up to 10 percent of highway dollars to mass transit each year for five years, and committing the billions in freed-up revenue toward desperately needed system maintenance.

Aloisi points out that the highest possible fare hikes under the law passed in 2013 that limits T fare hikes to 5 percent every two years would only result in an additional $20-23 million in new annual revenue when its operating deficit is rising and the bill for deferred maintenance—that will allow the system to reach a “state of good repair”—is $7 billion (and rising). And that even the 10 percent fare hike that some legislators insist the 2013 law allows would only bring in around $40 million in new annual revenue. So fare hikes are only going to alienate more people from the T in an era when it needs strong public support more than ever.

There’s lots more political drama to come over the next few months before anything is set in stone, but my general admonition to transportation activists would be to echo what a mentor of mine, longtime labor activist Tim Costello, told me over and over again in situations like this years before he passed away: “Don’t bargain against yourselves!”

In other words, mass transit advocates should not start the current fight with a weak political proposal like trying to give low-income T riders lower fares and exposing a lot of other better off—but still economically vulnerable—riders to a stiff hike. They should fight to defend and expand public transportation on democratic principle.

If it becomes necessary to make political accommodations along the way during the hard grassroots fight it will take to make that goal a political reality, then at least public transit advocates will be bargaining from a position of strength … and will end up winning more than they started with.

Rather than less.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

REMEMBRANCE AND PROTEST: THANKSGIVING THEN & NOW

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November 23, 2015

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The following passage is excerpted from a piece I wrote in 2005. It recounts the story of King Philip’s War—which was fought across southern New England 340 years ago, and started not far from where I attended a Thanksgiving dinner that year at my cousin’s place in North Attleborough. Read it. Think about it. Discuss it with friends and family. And, if you can make it, join the United American Indians of New England and allies for a day of remembrance and protest at the 46th National Day of Mourning on November 26 at noon at Coles Hill in Plymouth. Get all the information, and a more accurate version of the history of “Thanksgiving” at the UAINE website.

In 1675, a Wampanoag sachem named Metacomet (or King Philip to the English) launched—somewhat reluctantly—a war against English colonists in what is now Massachusetts that came closer than any other war launched by America’s native peoples to ending European domination in at least one corner of the “New World.” It was the last colonial war in which the two sides had relatively equal numbers, and used basically equivalent technology.

Had not disease already decimated the native population of the area decades before, the English never could have won.

The grievances of the faction of the Wampanoags that began the war—and the other nations that joined them including the Narragansetts, Pocumtucks, and Nipmucks—were fairly straightforward. The English unceasingly attempted by foul means and fair to convert the native nations to Christianity. And they continually overstepped the bounds of various treaties and contracts with native peoples in taking land that wasn’t theirs for their own exclusive use.

Two years later, roughly 800 colonists and 6000 Native Americans were dead. Dozens of towns and settlements on both sides were wholly or substantially destroyed. Atrocities were committed by all parties to the conflict—though the English outdid their opposition in that respect, unsurprisingly.

Most of the fighting took place in what are now Plymouth and Bristol Counties in southeastern Massachusetts, in much of Rhode Island, and in the Connecticut River Valley in both western Massachusetts and Connecticut—but it raged throughout modern day New England, and smouldered on for over 100 years with no official end date marked. No treaty, broken or otherwise, was ever signed by either side.

A number of Native American nations were for all intents and purposes destroyed—at least as political entities. The rest were assimilated or marginalized.

The war forever cast Native Americans into the role of “savages”—a subhuman status fit only for subjugation or extermination. For 300 years after the war, most American historians gave short shrift to native justifications for the conflict, and exulted in the glory of a holy war won against the forces of darkness.

After you absorb that Native American history, I recommend you delve into some local Black history that activists at Harvard Law School have unearthed. It seems the school was founded with money from a vile family of slavers by the name of Royall. Making matters worse, Harvard Law then adopted the Royall family coat of arms as its crest. The protesters are calling for the decolonization of their campus, the symbols, the curriculum and the history of Harvard Law School. Readers can find out more by following #RoyallMustFall on Twitter and Facebook.

And a big shout out to the #ConcernedStudents2015 student activists at Brandeis University occupying their administration building for racial justice on their campus as we go to press. Stay strong!

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

LEFT BEHIND: THE PARIS ATTACKS AND THE NEED TO FUND A MASS INDEPENDENT AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA

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Image by Kent Buckley

November 17, 2015

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Shortly after the Paris attacks on Friday, I flipped on the TV and saw that Fox 25 was feeding Fox News live during its normal evening entertainment slot. I was not surprised to find that News Corp HQ was taking full advantage of Americans’ understandable outrage about the tragic slaughter of more than 100 innocent people to foment hysteria against immigrants, refugees, Muslims and any other convenient target in the service of a raft of hard-right policy agendas. From calls to shut all European and American borders against people fleeing the horrific Syrian civil war, to demands that government increase surveillance and expand military and police budgets.

All par for the course. Fox will be Fox after all.

But that’s not what bugged me in this case. What bugged me was that the rest of the major American news media was not much better than Fox in its early reportage of the Paris crisis, and that we do not have a mass independent news media representing the positions of the broad left (and much of the populace) in this country: democracy, equality, peace, human rights, and social justice.

There are many interesting “humane and sane” independent news projects around the US—like theBoston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism that I’m helping organize. They’re just not large enough to reach masses of people during periods when global politics is fast-moving and when—as with this latest crisis—reactionary demagogues are given days of constant exposure to rehearse their racist colonialist Islamophobic fantasies unchallenged to audiences of millions on Fox and allied outlets. Which means that News Corp succeeds in pulling public discourse far to the right in the absence of major outlets willing to confront them when it matters most. The comedian journalists of The Daily Show excepted.

The politics of major American news organizations—conservative protestations to the contrary—now generally run from right to center. With editorial lines that are beholden to the rich and powerful. There are a few large outlets like the Boston Globe that lean left in select political economic and cultural debates, but they are slow to challenge powerful government officials and corporate leaders in dangerous moments like this (and the run-up to various recent imperial wars, the railroading of numerous anti-democratic “trade” treaties like NAFTA since the early 1990s, the defeat of several landmark global warming treaties in the same period, etc., etc.).

In many other countries, however, the media spectrum is much broader. There are mass news media of the left, right, and center. The left press is fairly large, influential, and far more likely to be critical of elite responses to political crises like the Daesh (ISIS) orchestrated killings in Paris. And to inspire their audiences to act politically to prevent such crises from being used by the hard right as an excuse to clamp down on civil liberties or rush headlong into armed hostilities. Especially, as with the Syrian civil war, when a multinational conflict and related refugee crisis is already ongoing.

This independent progressive news media has often been funded by donations from trade unions, non-governmental organizations, protest movements and—significantly—by subscribers who are sometimes organized into consumer co-operatives. Employees may also hold a stake in such publications through employee co-operatives. Examples of this kind of progressive mass independent news outlet include Die Tageszeitung in Germany and WOZ Die Wochenzeitung in Switzerland. There are others like Dagbladet Information in Denmark that have more traditional ownership arrangements.

But there has been nothing like these major news publications of the left in the US since the weeklyAppeal to Reason folded in 1922 and the NYC daily PM folded in 1948. Even the smaller city-based alternative weeklies that were founded in the 1960s and 1970s—like the Boston Phoenix—have been in rolling collapse for some time.

Working on BINJ, and having run the left-wing metro news weekly Open Media Boston for seven years before that, I have no doubt that there is more than enough talent in cities like Boston to build the kind of professional mass progressive news operations that this country desperately needs if we are going to remain a democracy in the coming decades.

The question is: Will the remaining progressive institutions with deep enough pockets to bankroll such major news operations step forward while there’s still time? The labor unions, the major nonprofit community organizations, the progressive businesses, religious denominations, foundations and wealthy donors. And will you—the audience that agrees we need such a left news media complex—step forward and donate to projects like BINJ, and to consortia of such projects?

I hope so. At BINJ, we’d like to work with any institution or organization that is forward-thinking enough to see the need for a mass progressive news media. And that is willing to put their money where their aspirations are. Email me at jason@binjonline.org to start that conversation today.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.