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Those aren't middle-class people. That's the working class in this country. Most people in this country are working-class people. The work that I've done, it's about 62 percent of the labor force in the United States are just ordinary working people. |
BILL MOYERS: But Obama and McCain keep talking about the middle class, the middle class. Are you saying that middle class is already disappearing? |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, I'm saying that the middle class is there as professional people, as small business owners, as managers. When we talk often about the disappearing middle class, we're talking about good jobs that are disappearing. But those are working class jobs. It isn't that the working class people are disappea... |
BILL MOYERS: You call for more government spending on these people, some $220 billion, in fact. |
BILL MOYERS: What would that do? |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, the study comes out of a desire to understand the stimulus package. As people may remember in the old days before all this Wall Street stuff was happening, people were talking about a stimulus package that could boost the economy. It could take us more towards full employment. |
And the task here was that we took on in the Center for Study of Working Class Life was to design a stimulus package that would take the country towards economic prosperity but would do it in a why that would immediately serve the needs of the low-wage workers in this country or economically distressed workers. So we h... |
We have one piece of about $60 billion that increases the existing income support programs in the country like the earned income tax credit. This is a program very important. Almost no one ever talks about it. Extending employment compensation, extending food stamps and housing subsidies. That would help that community... |
The second piece is to send $50 billion to the states. The states are in desperate trouble here in New York, in California, around the country. And what do they do? They cut Medicaid. They cut the programs that are important for working people. So if we could restore those budgets with the requirement that that money b... |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Fifty-five million households. |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: That's half. And they make $50,000 a year or less. That's who we're talking about. Send that money out. And we would stimulate the economy. You would have time to get infrastructure projects going, which take a year or two to get going. And when those infrastructure projects are in place, some of these o... |
BILL MOYERS: -right? So, I mean, is this really down to earth? Is this really practical? |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Then let's say, okay, a month ago when we were talking about this is when we were first drafting it and writing it up and coming up with these numbers. People said, $220 billion, that's an impossible sum of money. Well, now we just have $700 billion that's been put on the table. And I'd like to point out... |
Well, fine. Let's take the $350 billion that's already on the table, that's already been committed, and say, you know, instead of waiting around with this $350 billion to see if Wall Street really can use it right, why don't we take $220 billion of it, not the whole $350 billion, just $220 billion and use it in a way t... |
BILL MOYERS: Here's something that perplexes me and has for some time. You can have a journalist tell the story of these people, as we've done often. You can have a professional economist and professor advocate for them. But why is there no social movement, no effort by either party, by churches, by unions, by others t... |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, there is. There is a very substantial labor movement still in this country. And as weak as it is and as limited as it is compared to what it has been in the past, there's still 13 million people or 14, 15 million people in the United States who are in unions, whether they're in AFL-CIO or in Change... |
BILL MOYERS: But both parties see these people as voters but not constituents for the permanent coalition of governing. The next president, Obama or McCain, most likely will turn his attention to the middle class, as you say, to the financial system. And what happens to these people if they don't have muscle? |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, they suffer. That's what happens. And until there is organization that comes from below, that comes from the bottom, it's going to be very difficult in people's lives. And we know that is true. And I think when we did this study, one thing that we did in addition to looking at data, census data, is... |
BILL MOYERS: Why do you call them economically distressed instead of that old term we used to us, you and I when we were younger, the working poor? |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: The working poor. Well, that's a good question. And that's something that we learned in doing this study. |
BILL MOYERS: -right now and fear as we are sinking into this recession. |
BILL MOYERS: So why do you think you can organize the larger population to look at the problems of the smaller, more distressed population? |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, that's a task of first mobilizing that distressed population so that there is power there that people will pay attention to. But I also think that it's important for people who are in relatively better circumstances, professional people, let's say, to understand that we need to push back with allie... |
BILL MOYERS: One reason I want people to read this is because you go on to make a strong case for something more than these direct payments of an immediate stimulus. You talk about fundamental structural reform, universal healthcare, collective bargaining rights, better schools. |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Right, right. The immediate needs are of the sort that we've been talking about here with this stimulus package. But just because people have a job doesn't mean that they're out of the woods. |
Almost all of these economically distressed workers actually do have jobs and they work full time all year round. And they just don't make enough money. And they don't have healthcare. And they don't have good enough education for their kids. One of the things that we found in these conversations that was so interestin... |
So what we talked about was the need to go beyond just the immediate fix, as difficult as that is, to look at some of the more structural issues like universal healthcare programs, like having workers be able to be in unions. So in the United States today polls show that something on the order of 55 or 60 percent of wo... |
BILL MOYERS: You go on to talk about a number of those. Do these people vote? |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: Yes, they do. |
BILL MOYERS: Will they vote two weeks from Tuesday? |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: I have no idea. But people do vote. And working people vote. And, as a matter of fact, union households vote more than non-union households. |
BILL MOYERS: Michael Zweig, I want to thank you for joining me on the Journal. |
MICHAEL ZWEIG: It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. |
BILL MOYERS: Many years ago one of my mentors, Arkansas Congressman Brooks Hays, used to tell of a constituent who was asked how she intended to vote on Election Day. "Oh," she replied, "I never vote. It only encourages them." |
That skepticism may be justified but it's certainly not fashionable this year. Voter turn out all across the country is expected to be at record highs. |
But another kind of skepticism is in order... when you vote, will your vote be counted? Since the fiasco in Florida in 2000 and the questions about Ohio in 2004, fears abound about the security of our election system. |
Just this week, Common Cause and two other public interest groups issued a 50-state report card titled, "Is America Ready to Vote?" It says that vast improvements have been made in voting technologies and procedures but warns that many states still are not ready. |
To help us navigate this electoral minefield, I'm joined by Mark Crispin Miller, He's a leading media studies scholar at New York University, where he's teaching a course this semester on "How to steal an election." |
His new book, LOSER TAKE ALL: ELECTION FRAUD AND THE SUBVERSION OF DEMOCRACY 2000-2008, offers a twelve-step program to save democracy. |
BILL MOYERS: You grew up in Chicago where, it is famously said, four out of every two votes are cast Democratic, right? And whereas we learned in 1960 you never count the votes of the deceased until you know how many need, right? So you have some experience with what can go wrong in elections. What can go wrong this el... |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, it's certainly true that election fraud has a long history in this country. And it's happened on both sides. But I'm afraid that what we've seen in this decade, in this century is unprecedented. What I worry about for this upcoming election specifically is two sets of activities. One is vote ... |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, it means various dirty tricks and tactics and legal devices used to shrink the size of the electorate before Election Day. So here we're talking about, for example, interfering with registration drives or making them vulnerable to partisan challenges or passing laws requiring certain kinds of... |
BILL MOYERS: Why would anybody want to make the turnout small? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, if the large turnout might go against your own particular interests, it makes a certain sense to try to see to it that those voters can't vote. That's one set of activities that I worry about. |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, the other is what we call election fraud. This means using the computerized voting systems which we now have in place in at least 80% of the country. Precisely because it is so technical and it's so opaque and it's all run by private companies, private companies that have close ties to the Re... |
BILL MOYERS: I talked the other day to the former lieutenant governor of Iowa who said that she thinks they have an ideal system out there because they have a two-step system where you fill out a paper ballot. And then you have it scanned so that you have an electronic check on a paper record and vice versa. It - does ... |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, I'm afraid it doesn't. I wish I could say yes. There is a big liberal consensus around the idea that optical scanners are the way to go. Basically, there's two kinds of computerized voting systems. One is the paperless type, the DRE so-called, which trades only in electronic signals. There's ... |
BILL MOYERS: This is the sort of thing that would lead to fraud, which carries very serious penalties. |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, you would think so. But the fact is that the oversight on this whole system is lax to non-existent. I mean, there are essays about this in "Loser Take All". What we have in this country, for voting purposes, is a system that is nothing short of scandalous. I mean, we don't want a voting syste... |
BILL MOYERS: It is old fashioned and time consuming, right? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, certainly time consuming. I think we could take a couple of days for the sake of democracy to count the votes. |
BILL MOYERS: Do you think the capacity for fraud today is greater than it was, for example, in 1948 when one of my mentors, Lyndon B. Johnson, became "Landslide Lyndon" because he was elected to the Senate on the basis of 87 disputed votes in a single county in Texas? Went on to become President of the United States? I... |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Oh, the capacity for stealing an election is infinitely greater today than it was then. But it does not involve individual voters stuffing ballot boxes. That's what you might call retail fraud, you know? That's old-fashioned voter fraud of the kind that we are now being told - thunderously - is rea... |
BILL MOYERS: What do you make of the ACORN case? I mean, even as we are talking there's an investigation, the Department of Justice, the FBI, they started investigating ACORN. Fox News has been beating the ACORN issue over and again for the last week or so. John McCain brought it up Wednesday night in his debate with O... |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, I make of it what it is a first-class propaganda drive. The entities you've mentioned are all participating in it - Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, John McCain, the McCain campaign, despite the inconvenient fact that John McCain gave the keynote speech at ACORN's annual conference in 2006. We won't ... |
Well, filling out voter registration forms dishonestly to pick up a couple of bucks, which is what the ACORN volunteers had done, is not voter fraud. What ACORN does is it pays people to register others. So naturally there are people who will turn in funny forms because that's the incentive system, that's a way to make... |
BILL MOYERS: And it's done that. I mean, ACORN admits that some of these registration cards are problematic, such as the name "Mickey Mouse." "Mickey Mouse" is registered, and ACORN has pointed that out. The entire Dallas Cowboy football team was registered in Las Vegas, Nevada. So, so that part of the argument is true... |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Yeah. And ACORN turned them in. That's the point I'm making. These are infractions by grass-roots volunteers who do the wrong thing. That's not voter fraud, however. Voter fraud would be if somebody showed up to vote and said, "Hi, I'm Mickey Mouse. May I vote now?" That's not going on. |
BILL MOYERS: And does that happen very often? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: It never happens. Let's just talk statistically about this, okay? As of 2007 the Department of Justice had prosecuted - are you ready for this? This number? 120 cases of voter fraud. |
BILL MOYERS: Over what period? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Over, well, this is, like four years. Okay? 120 cases. And there were 82 convictions. Now, I think the republic will probably withstand that attack, right? We're talking about voter fraud that's being perpetrated in the tens. And I can tell you, moreover, that not one of those cases of fraud actual... |
The point I'm making to you here, Bill - and this is the most important thing I'm going to say to you tonight - is that this is a pretext being used by a party, okay, that is itself committing election fraud and vote suppression on an enormous scale. In other words, we have a party that is itself engaged in disenfranch... |
BILL MOYERS: What's the evidence that say the Republican Party is disenfranchising millions of people? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, first of all, all of these voter purges, the caging of voters, as I described before. |
BILL MOYERS: Well, I mean, the Brennan Center report two weeks ago said perhaps hundreds of thousands of people have been improperly purged from the rolls without even knowing about it. But they didn't talk about millions. |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, I, in the aggregate, it does and could easily add up to millions of voters because we're talking about a very, very broad range of devices, you know, both legal and illegal that will have a dramatic effect and that will add up. If hundreds of thousands of people are disenfranchised nationwide... |
BILL MOYERS: This term "caging," what's a simple understanding of that? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: It's really very simple. The Republican Party, in a particular state, will get a list of the names and addresses of Democrats and send them letters that look sort of like junk mail, you know? Often they'll have windows in the envelope, the kind of thing that people are going to be inclined to throw... |
BILL MOYERS: Have we made improvements since the fiasco of 2000 and the shenanigans that allegedly took place in Ohio in 2004? Are things better today, our ability to scrutinize and check this desire to influence the outcome of elections fraudulently? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, certainly more people are more aroused to try to keep an eye on what's happening. And that's a very good thing. And in this upcoming election we will have an unprecedented voter protection effort being carried out by all kinds of great organizations. That's a good thing. However, I cannot say... |
BILL MOYERS: So what's a voter to do? Here you are talking about voter suppression, intimidation, voter challenges, machines we can't trust. I mean, what do you want voters who are watching to do two weeks from next Tuesday? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: I think that voters, first of all, should ensure that there be as large a turnout as possible. The larger the turnout, the harder the theft, okay? And what I mean by this is that people themselves should not only turn out to vote, but those who have decided to vote early, should still go out on Ele... |
BILL MOYERS: Poll watchers become poll watchers? |
BILL MOYERS: How? What can a voter do to be a monitor? |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, there's an organization called "Video the Vote", VideoTheVote.org, which is providing people with free cameras. The idea is to interview people who come from the polls and say, "They wouldn't let me vote although I'm registered." Or they'll say, "I pressed the button to vote for Obama, and th... |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, I'm as na�ve as you are, Bill, in this regard. Listen, for people who haven't heard the facts about what's been going on, on the election front, to suddenly encounter all the evidence of what's really been happening at every level can be staggering. Okay? So people can feel a little bit despa... |
BILL MOYERS: The book is LOSER TAKE ALL, 12 steps to saving U.S. democracy. Mark Crispin Miller, thanks for being with me. |
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Thanks, Bill. |
BILL MOYERS: Both PBS and YouTube are part of the "Video the Vote" initiative that Mark talked about. You can learn more about it at our Web site, pbs.org. |
On Election Day, take your camera with you when you go to vote, then submit your video, especially if you see any problems. But be careful to respect state laws about filming in or near polling places. |
That's it for the JOURNAL, I'm Bill Moyers. See you next week. |
In addition, donation boxes are placed at various locations in Cambria and Cayucos, including Cookie Crock Market, Texaco station and Ace Hardware. |
Please show your support for these extraordinary young men and women and purchase your tickets today. |
Our 50 ninth- through 12th-grade art students were attentive, polite, inquisitive and engaged during the 90-minute docent-led tour through “What is Modern about Modern Art?” and while on their own exploring the museum for a couple hours after lunch. |
Many hours went into planning for the day-long excursion, from choosing which museum to visit (which museum had the most variety of exhibits and school group accommodations for tours), no conflict with other school activities, bus charter, dinner stop, arranging lunch (we made 50 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), ch... |
Thank you to the parents of the 50 participating students for making sure their kids were at school promptly by 5:15 a.m. and our chaperones Shannon Jackson, Wade Lawrence, Sue Nash and Erich Marthaler for spending the day with us. |
None of this would have happened if it weren't for the generous support of our Booster Club. |
To be a community volunteer is easy in this village that we love and to be recognized is much appreciated. |
Thank you, Cambria Chamber of Commerce, for this esteemed honor: “2013 Citizen of the Year”. |
My gratitude is beyond definition. |
Thank you friends and family for your love and support, for attending the ceremony or expressing good wishes in numerous other ways. |
As founder of the Cambria Scarecrow Festival, I am aware that a big part of this award belongs to our community. Without your participation we would not have a festival. The scarecrow festival brings us and binds us together. |
I am proud to share this award with all of you. |
The immediate family of Tracy Baumberger Covell — mother, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and companion — would like to send a heartfelt thank you and appreciation to all those who attended the memorial service on Monday, Jan. 20, at the Presbyterian Church. We felt a tremendous love for the overwhelming amoun... |
Although Tracy’s remains are not under the control of our immediate family we all know she was there in spirit. We love her beyond words and will miss her dearly. |
We want to extend our deepest gratitude and thanks to Tracy’s special friends who worked tirelessly in helping us locate a new venue for our reception when the Sheriff’s Office advised the church not to allow us use of their facilities. |
No one knew Tracy Covell better than those who loved her. She was beautiful inside and out, full of life, happy and looking forward to a positive new future. |
Please know there is no formal ruling or determination as to the cause of death of our beloved family member at this time. Please keep Tracy and her family in your prayers. |
Once again, a heartfelt thank you to the good people of Cambria who donated their love, time and energy in helping our family create a wonderful good-bye to a loved one who will NEVER be forgotten. |
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