Here’s a jarring headline: “Economic Populism Is a Dead End for Democrats.”
That’s the title on a recent op-ed piece written by a couple of longtime political flacks for Wall Street and published, naturally, in the Wall Street Journal. When the Barons of Big Money start rolling out such scolding screeds, it’s not because they really think Populism is a loser, but because they’re terrified by the fact that it has already gained mass appeal and is on the move all across grassroots America. Indeed, to put a thin veneer of legitimacy on this op-ed, they had to resort to the fiction that it is a political warning written to Democrats by Democrats – specifically by an inside-the-Beltway outfit calling itself Third Way.
But this group is to authentic Democratic Party principles what near beer is to stout – only, not as close. Third Way is just the same old Wall Street way. While it wears a Democratic mask, it pushes for policies that are Wall Street wet dreams, including gutting and privatizing Social Security.
Why would a group wanting you to believe that it has genuine Democratic genes be an advocate for further enriching Wall Street’s Republican elite at the expense of America’s middle class and the poor? To find out, just peek behind Third Way’s organizational curtain. You’ll see that its funders and governing board include no one from labor, senior citizens, consumers, environmentalists, small farmers, students, African-Americans, Latinos, and other core Democratic constituencies. Instead, of its 29 board members, 20 are Wall Street bankers, hedge fund hucksters, or venture capital vultures.
Third Way dead ends at Wall Street. So, fronting for the selfish interests of its backers, it doesn’t want any party championing economic Populism. But the people do, and that’s who Democrats should heed.
“Cowan and Kessler: Economic Populism Is a Dead End for Democrats,” www.wsj.com, December 2, 2013.
“Wall Street Uses Third Way to Lead Its Assault on Social Security,” www.huffingtonpost.com, November 13, 2012.
“GOP Donors and K Street Fuel Third Way’s Advice for Democratic Party,” www.thenation.com, December 3, 2013.

The Walmartization of higher education

We’ve learned from hard experience that the moral values of corporate chieftains rarely penetrate deeper than the value of their multimillion-dollar pay packages. But shouldn’t we expect more from the chieftains of colleges and universities?
After all, campuses are places of erudition and enlightenment, where we hope students will absorb a bit of our society’s deeper ethical principles, including our historic commitment to fairness and egalitarian justice. Yet, community college officials in my town of Austin, Texas, recently issued an edict that could’ve come straight out of Walmart. The headline on a newspaper story about the college’s edict reads: “Adjuncts at ACC face cut in hours/ School seeks to avoid paying for health care.”
Of nearly 2,000 faculty members at ACC, three-fourths are “adjunct professors” who get low pay and no health care benefits. But the new Obamacare law would’ve finally given them a break by requiring colleges to provide health coverage to employees who work 30 hours or more a week. But the honchos of ACC – a school with the word “community” in its name – have snatched this basic element of human decency out of the adjunct faculty’s hands by arbitrarily decreeing that none can work more than 28 hours a week.
That’s a double-whammy: Not only are the college chiefs denying needed health care for the people who carry ACC’s teaching load, but the sneaky cut in hours means that these poorly-paid professors will also suffer a pay cut. It’s is the Walmartization of higher education, and it’s happening at all levels all across the country.
Did I mention that ACC provides full health coverage for the college’s president and other well-paid administrators who’re nixing coverage for the adjuncts? Now isn’t that a fine ethical lesson for students to absorb?
“Adjuncts at ACC face cut in hours School seeks to avoid paying health care for some faculty,” Austin American Statesman, November 26, 2013.
“Adjunct professors in dire straits with low pay, lack of full-time jobs,” www.america.aljazeera.com, October 15, 2013.
“Adjunct Project,” www.adjunct.chronicle.com 2013.