Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks at First Redeemer Church while on a campaign tour in Cumming, Georgia, February 26, 2012. REUTERS/Tami Chappell
John Nichols on February 28, 2012 - 7:29 AM ET
Much is being made, and appropriately so, about the extremism of the Republican presidential field when it comes to reproductive rights and ripping down Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation [ http://www.usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html ] between church and state.
It is not just Rick Santorum. Three of the four Republican contenders for the presidency—the sometimes exception is Ron Paul—are running campaigns that position them as theocratic extremists [ http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/theocracy-and-rick-santorum/ ] of a far more radical bent than religious-right contenders such as Pat Robertson in 1988 or Gary Bauer in 2000.
But there was an ever more arch fundamentalism on display among the Republican contenders as they battled across Arizona and Michigan in anticipation of today’s critical primaries in those states.
Like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Ohio Governor John Kasich and Maine Governor Paul LePage, they are anti-labor extremists [ http://www.thenation.com/article/165592/gop-anti-labor-zealotry ] whose opposition to free trade unions goes to extremes not seen since southern segregationists sought to bar unions because of their fear that white workers and people of color were being organized into labor organizations that would threaten “Jim Crow.”
When the candidates debated last Wednesday night in Arizona—a state where Republican Governor Jan Brewer and her legislative allies are advancing a package of anti-union measures—there was no mercy for working Americans or the unions that represent them.
The former Speaker of the House—and noted advocate for overturning child-labor laws—compared unions that represent public-school teachers with rouge nations that attack the United States.
“It’s increasingly clear [education unions] care about protecting bad teachers. If you look at [Los Angeles] Unified, it is almost criminal what we do to the poorest children of America,” he said. “If a foreign nation did this to our children, we would declare it an act of war because they are doing so much damage.”
That’s a typically incendiary remark from Gingrich—he’s even condeming Santorum as a “big-labor Republican”—whose bombast is exceeded only by his inaccuracy [id.].
The union that represents teachers in the country’s second-largest school district, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) [ http://www.utla.net/ ], is not at war with the United States. Nor is it damaging the poorest children of Los Angeles, or America. It’s advocacy over the past four decades has been on behalf of stronger curriculums, safer classrooms and the best interests of those poorest kids
That’s what bothers Gingrich. The union proudly notes that it has “successfully backed candidates for the school board who have vowed to place top priority on students and the classroom.” And it says: “UTLA is determined to do what’s best for the classroom and the kids in them and will protect the budget axe from falling on the classroom.”
By advocating in the workplace and in the electoral process on behalf of budget priorities that favor low-income children, UTLA and unions like it upset the anti-government agenda of the political and economic elites that form the base of the Republican Party Gingrich and his compatriots have forged.
So Gingrich is striking out at the unions, using language usually reserved for condemnations of rogue states and international terrorists.
And, while Gingrich is a little bit more extreme than his fellow contenders, the distinction is of scant consequence.
In Phoenix on Thursday, sometimes front-runner Mitt Romney declared [ http://www.c-span.org/Campaign2012/Mitt-Romney-Meets-with-Builders-and-Contractors/10737428514/ ] he would pursue so-called “Right to Work” legislation, while forbidding unions from using dues money to advocate for pro-worker polices and candidates. He’s also promising to eliminate requirements that federal contracts go to firms that treat their workers with respect.
Romney also promised to stop listening to organizations that represent working people during negotiations over trade policy.
Accusing President Obama of dragging his feet on our free trade agreements—a comic charge regarding a president who has led the charge for major deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea—Romney said Obama was slow to advance free trade “because organized unions didn’t want it, don’t want it, and so bowing to them he holds off on trade. We’re going to have to change that policy and make sure that instead of having a president that bows to the demands of special interests, in this case union interests, that we have a president that bows to the interests of the American people.”
Free-trade pacts, which clear the way for the offshoring of US jobs and manufacturing facilities, are not popular with the American people. And for good reason. They favor the interests of Wall Street speculators while undermining the economic stability of traditional manufacturing centers.
To his credit, Rick Santorum was once skeptical about these sorts of deals—and modestly sympathetic to the concerns of working Americans. Santorum has abandoned his former principles, becoming a GOP “team player.” But Romney continues to attack him as an insufficiently anti-worker candidacy.
When it comes to the anti-union orthodoxy of what remains of the party of Lincoln—who famously declared that labor is always superior to capital—there is no forgiveness for past sins.
The economic fundamentalism of the new Republican Party is every bit as absolute as its religious fundamentalism. And every bit as unsettling.
Wealthy, motivated by greed, are more likely to cheat, study finds
A study found that people behind the wheels of the priciest cars were four times as likely as drivers of the least expensive cars to enter the intersection when they didn't have the right of way. (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times)
People of higher status are more prone to cheating, taking candy from children and failing to wait their turn at four-way stops, a UC Berkeley experiment finds.
By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times
February 27, 2012, 7:07 p.m. The rich really are different from the rest of us, scientists have found — they are more apt to commit unethical acts because they are more motivated by greed.
People driving expensive cars were more likely than other motorists to cut off drivers and pedestrians at a four-way-stop intersection in the San Francisco Bay Area, UC Berkeley researchers observed. Those findings led to a series of experiments that revealed that people of higher socioeconomic status were also more likely to cheat to win a prize, take candy from children and say they would pocket extra change handed to them in error rather than give it back.
Because rich people have more financial resources, they're less dependent on social bonds for survival, the Berkeley researchers reported Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As a result, their self-interest reigns and they have fewer qualms about breaking the rules.
"If you occupy a more insular world, you're less likely to be sensitive to the needs of others," said study lead author Paul Piff, who is studying for a doctorate in psychology.
But before those in the so-called 99% start feeling ethically superior, consider this: Piff and his colleagues also discovered that anyone's ethical standards could be prone to slip if they suddenly won the lottery and joined the top 1%.
"There is a strong notion that when people don't have much, they're really looking out for themselves and they might act unethically," said Scott Wiltermuth, who researches social status at USC's Marshall School of Business and wasn't involved in the study. "But actually, it's the upper-class people that are less likely to see that people around them need help — and therefore act unethically."
In earlier studies, Piff documented that wealthy people were less likely to act generously than relatively impoverished people. With this research, he hoped to find out whether wealthy people would also prioritize self-interest if it meant breaking the rules.
The driving experiments offered a way to test the hypothesis "naturalistically," he said. Trained observers hid near a downtown Berkeley intersection and noted the makes, model years and conditions of bypassing cars. Then they recorded whether drivers waited their turn.
It turned out that people behind the wheels of the priciest cars were four times as likely as drivers of the least expensive cars to enter the intersection when they didn't have the right of way. The discrepancy was even greater when it came to a pedestrian trying to exercise a right of way.
There is a significant correlation between the price of a car and the social class of its driver, Piff said. Still, how fancy a car looks isn't a perfect indicator of wealth.
So back in the laboratory, Piff and his colleagues conducted five more tests to measure unethical behavior — and to connect that behavior to underlying attitudes toward greed.
For instance, the team used a standard questionnaire to get college students to assess their own socioeconomic status and asked how likely subjects were to behave unethically in eight different scenarios.
In one of the quandaries, students were asked to imagine that they bought coffee and a muffin with a $10 bill but were handed change for a $20. Would they keep the money?
In another hypothetical scenario, students realized their professor made a mistake in grading an exam and gave them an A instead of the B they deserved. Would they ask for a grade change?
The patterns from the road held true in the lab — those most willing to engage in unethical behavior were the ones with the highest social status.
One possible explanation was that wealthy people are simply more willing to acknowledge their selfish side. But that wasn't the issue here. When test subjects of any status were asked to imagine themselves at a high social rank, they helped themselves to more candies from a jar they were told was meant for children in another lab.
Another experiment recruited people from Craigslist to play a "game of chance" that the researchers had rigged. People who reported higher social class were more likely to have favorable attitudes toward greed — and were more likely to cheat at the game.
"The patterns were just so consistent," Piff said. "It was very, very compelling."
Piff, who is writing a paper about attitudes toward the Occupy movement, said that his team had been accused of waging class warfare from time to time.
"Berkeley has a certain reputation, so yeah, we get that," he said.
But rather than vilify the wealthy, Piff said, he hopes his work leads to policies that help bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots.
Acts as simple as watching a movie about childhood poverty seem to encourage people of all classes to help others in need, he said.
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