The natural inclination to simplify public reality to suit private interests is amply illustrated by the attempts of successive waves of scholars to present America’s founders as the standard bearers for one favorite idea or another to the exclusion of all the rest. In the 1960s and 1970s, the founders were credited with laying the foundations for liberal pluralism and interest group politics by establishing a constitutional framework for the competition among a multiplicity of factions. Later, proponents of civic republicanism discovered that the founders put a premium on classical virtue and community and regarded the corruption that came from commercial life as the great enemy of liberty. Meanwhile, higher law and natural rights theorists argued vigorously that the Constitution represents an exemplary modern embodiment of a politics grounded in transcendent moral truths. Most recently, democratic theorists have found in the American Constitution a blueprint for a form of political legitimacy that altogether dispenses with higher law and natural rights.

Just as often, and perhaps more these days, scholars have portrayed the founders as in urgent need of deflating and debunking. Early twentieth-century progressives thrilled to the indictment put forward by Charles Beard. In his great work, An Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution, he set out to overthrow the nineteenth-century idolization of the founders by demonstrating that they had crafted a constitution whose guiding purpose was to advance their economic interests. Recently, scholars have been eager to go much further. George Washington, for example, has been depicted as a bumbling oaf and ineffective military commander who never had an original idea or uttered a memorable word. Another favorite target is Thomas Jefferson, who has been sneered at as a colossal hypocrite who showed his true beliefs by keeping his slaves and using one of them, Sally Hemings, for his sexual pleasure. Nor is there any shortage of angry historians and political theorists blaming the founders for sowing the seeds of American imperialism and preparing the ground for the endless offenses based on race, class, and gender allegedly perpetrated by the nation across the centuries.

The scholarly battle over the founders takes place against the backdrop of — and is fueled by — a larger contest among politicians and the people in America to lay claim to the founders’ enduring prestige and affirm their abiding authority. In this continuing fascination with the "generation that fought the Revolution and created the Constitution," there is something peculiar, observes Pulitzer Prize winning historian Gordon Wood. Indeed,

No other major nation honors its past historical characters, especially characters who existed two centuries ago, in quite the manner we Americans do. We want to know what Thomas Jefferson would think of affirmative action, or George Washington of the invasion of Iraq. The British don’t have to check in periodically with, say, either of the two William Pitts, the way we seem to have to check in with Jefferson or Washington. We Americans seem to have a special need for these authentic historical figures in the here and now.

In the introduction to his new book, a collection of previously published and newly revised essays, Wood observes that our "special need for these authentic historical figures" does not have its source in our concern with "constitutional jurisprudence and original intent," or even in the determination to "recover what was wise and valuable in America’s past." The true source, he says, is the peculiar manner in which the nation was constituted:

The United States was founded on a set of beliefs and not, as were other nations, on a common ethnicity, language, or religion. Since we are not a nation in any traditional sense of the term, in order to establish our nationhood, we have to reaffirm and reinforce periodically the values of the men who declared independence from Great Britain and framed the Constitution. As long as the Republic endures, in other words, Americans are destined to look back to its founding.

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By F. John Duresky
Wednesday, July 5, 2006

A few days ago, as I do every day in Iraq, I listened to the commander’s battle update. The briefer calmly and professionally described the day’s events. Somewhere in Iraq, on some forgotten, dusty road, an insurgent fighting an occupying army detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) under a Humvee, killing an American soldier. The briefer fielded a question from the general and moved to the next item in the update.

The day before that, in America, a 15-year-old’s incredibly rich parents planned the biggest sweet 16 party ever. They will spend more than $200,000 on an opulent event marking a single year in an otherwise unremarkable life. The soon-to-be-16 girl doesn’t know where Iraq is and doesn’t care. That same day an American soldier died in Iraq.
   
Two days earlier, a 35-year-old man went shopping for home entertainment equipment. He had the toughest time selecting the correct plasma screen; he could afford the biggest and best of everything. In the end, he had it installed by a specialty store. He spent about $50,000 on the whole system. He has never met anybody serving in the military nor served himself, but thinks we should "turn the whole place into a parking lot." That day, another American soldier died in Iraq.

Three days earlier, some college students had a great kegger. There were tons of babes at the party, the music was awesome. Everybody got totally blitzed, and many missed class the next day. The young men all registered for the draft when they were 18, but even though our nation is at war, they aren’t the least bit worried about the draft. It is politically impossible to conscript young people today, we are told. That day, another American "volunteer" died in Iraq.

Four days earlier, a harried housewife looked all over town for the perfect accessory for her daughter’s upcoming recital. Her numerous chores wore her out, but she still found herself preoccupied. Her oldest son is having trouble in his first year of college, and he has been talking of enlisting in the Army. She is terrified that her child will go off to that horrible war she sees on TV. She and her husband decide to give their son more money so he doesn’t have to work part-time; maybe that will help with his studies. That day, another soldier died.

Yesterday millions of Americans celebrated Independence Day. They attended parties and barbecues. Families came together from all across the country to celebrate the big day. Millions of dollars were spent on fireworks. At public events, there were speeches honoring the people who served and those who made the ultimate sacrifice. These words mostly fell on bored ears. While the country celebrated its own greatness, other Americans were still fighting in Iraq.

Today Americans go back to their normal business. The politicians in Washington have made sure the sacrifices of the war are borne by the very smallest percentage of Americans. They won’t even change the tax rates to prevent deficits from running out of control. Future generations will pay the cost of this war.

Many Americans feel strongly about the war one way or another, but they aren’t signing up their children for service or taking the protest to the streets. What can they do? It is they whom we in the military trust to influence our leaders in Washington.

Today, as on every other day in Iraq, American servicemen are in very real danger. Our country is at war. Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and children are worrying about their loved ones in a faraway land. They all hope he or she isn’t the one whose luck runs out today.

The writer is an Air Force captain stationed in Iraq.

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President George W. Bush’s "ownership society" is a seductive idea: who wouldn’t want to become the owner of their home, health care, retirement, and destiny? From the "home on the range" to the adulation heaped on high-tech entrepreneurs, the concept is rooted in the American experience. No other nation places more value on the importance of individual autonomy. Ultimately, however, Bush’s promise of an ownership society is an empty one. In exchange for ownership, we receive increased risk while the wealthy and corporate interests benefit, as in his Social Security privatization plan. In Bush’s world, everyone gets a little piece of the pie, but at the cost of giving the wealthy extremely large helpings. Bush has, in fact, exacerbated a long-running trend: not only is income inequality greater in the United States than in any other advanced society, but the ownership of wealth is literally feudal in nature–and getting more so. The top 1 percent garners more income than the bottom 100 million Americans taken together. A mere 1 percent of wealth-holders, however, own just under half of all financial assets. A slightly larger group, the top 5 percent, own roughly 70 percent of all business assets. In 2003, the top 1 percent alone received 57.5 percent of all capital gains, rent, interest, and dividend income.

With recent rollbacks of the estate tax, incentives for retirement savings from which the well-off disproportionately benefit, and tax cuts that reward wealth, these inequities will only deepen. Morally, this is offensive to progressives and anyone with even a semi-serious conception of justice. Practically, this is troubling–and should be–to people across the political spectrum, because societies in which wealth disparities are so great are unstable societies. Divisions are magnified. The bonds of citizenship and brotherhood are weakened. The social fabric is frayed. A nation that begins down this path ends up with a country that begins to look more like a developing nation in Latin America and Africa: high walls keeping a restless and poor population out of sight and out of mind.

Decrying such inequities is nothing new. Yet, unfortunately, the progressive response of the twentieth century–redistributive tax structures and public assistance–no longer has the capacity to alter the dominant trends. Not only has income inequality continued to expand despite large-scale entitlement programs like Medicaid and Social Security, but there is little prospect that significant new programs will come into being any time soon. In a world of deepening deficits, an aging population, global competitive pressure, and persistent public skepticism of government, the appetite for the tax hikes and entitlement programs needed to rebalance these inequities is weaker than ever.

Although the redistributive door is largely closed, the ownership door is, in fact, open. Not ownership in Bush’s skewed sense, but rather ownership in a democratic sense through the possibility of community-based investment in, and control over, wealth creation. Employees, companies, non-profits, cities, and states are using diverse and innovative strategies to create community wealth. It is wealth that improves the ability of communities and individuals to increase asset ownership, anchor jobs locally, expand the provision of public services, and ensure local economic stability, rather than just boost corporate profits and shareholder fortunes. A common thread runs through the employee-owned firms, community development corporations, and even the traditional co-ops: the idea that real wealth equality can only be built by communal involvement in the means by which that wealth is produced. Such approaches provide ownership for millions of Americans–in many cases, through a tangible asset that can appreciate and be passed on to subsequent generations. Others create community wealth by enabling businesses and jobs to stay in the United States.

But more than that, these ownership strategies give people a real stake in their community, strengthening the bonds of citizenship and the connections between people, institutions, and places. These are not incidental by-products of a progressive ownership society; they lie at its core. A country where more people have a tangible stake and believe they can create better lives for themselves and their children is a strong society–and a strong democracy. "Necessitous men are not free men," Franklin Roosevelt urged. Or as an earlier President, John Adams, reminded a young nation: "The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property."

Interestingly, the idea of using investment strategies to benefit non-elites has been difficult for some progressives to grasp–it sounds too much like the other side’s programs. However, properly structured, such strategies can be a practical and effective way to combat wealth inequalities. Indeed, at the grassroots level, a progressive ownership society is already quietly taking shape–one that enables the poor, blue- and white-collar workers, and the middle class in general (broadly, the vast majority of perhaps the bottom 95 percent of American society) to create and gain the benefits of wealth ownership. These various strategies, and they are indeed very diverse, are beginning to change who gains from wealth ownership and investment. Some do it directly, helping low-income individuals increase savings and asset-holding. Others do it indirectly, but nonetheless importantly, by increasing the numbers of non-profit corporations that have established businesses to help finance neighborhood development or various social missions. Still others use municipal and state strategies to build community wealth. And all of these efforts are found throughout the country, in states "red" and "blue."

Community Wealth Strategies

Several proposals have emerged in recent years that move government policy beyond conventional redistribution and toward wealth creation. For example, prompted by the Clinton Administration, a bipartisan coalition came together in the late ’90s to provide federal backing for Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). In the typical IDA, the government directly matches the savings of poor families or individuals up to a certain level, thereby doubling their efforts and allowing them to benefit from the ownership of capital. Although IDAs are still very much in the experimental stage, roughly 400 community-based organizations currently administer some 20,000 individual accounts; in the San Francisco Bay Area, participants have consistently saved 5 percent or more of gross income despite averaging less than $20,000 per year in household income.

Bush has committed only modest federal funding to the initiative, but it has nevertheless spawned a number of proposed variations in recent years, many with bipartisan backing. In 2005, for instance, the America Saving for Personal Investment, Retirement, and Education, or ASPIRE Act, was jointly introduced by two Republicans and two Democrats: Senators Rick Santorum, Jim DeMint, Jon Corzine, and Charles Schumer. ASPIRE would provide every child with a starter deposit of $500, with children from households below the national median income eligible for an additional $500. In Great Britain, a similar "baby-bond" measure is now law, with the first "Child Trust Funds" opened last year.

The most far-reaching effort so far proposed, however, is that of Yale Professors Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott. This would provide every young person a "capital stake" of $80,000 on reaching adulthood, to be used for any purpose they chose. An interesting wrinkle here challenges existing wealth inequality directly: the program would be financed through a 2 percent wealth tax. Bill Gates, Sr. and Chuck Collins of United for a Fair Economy have suggested an additional angle of attack that, like the Ackerman-Alstott approach, also simultaneously challenges existing wealth inequality through the tax code. They propose a revised estate tax to begin at $2.5 million in assets, with the proceeds used to support a "wealth-building" fund to finance a variety of individual and community-benefiting strategies.

These programs and proposals, while noteworthy, are in some ways old wine in new bottles: they focus on wealth creation, but still mainly rely on the redistribution of funds through government policy as their means of doing so. But beyond Washington, in the "laboratories of democracy" that are the states, leaders in the private, public, and non-profit sectors are exploring even more creative ways to build community assets for broader groups and for communities.

Employee-Owned Firms

The most intriguing and instructive approach in the new mix is the employee-owned firm. "Worker ownership of the means of production" used to be a hoary radical demand; today it is increasingly an accepted reality. Few realize that roughly 11,500 U.S. businesses are now wholly or substantially owned by their employees–up from fewer than 300 a generation ago. The 10 million individuals involved in employee-owned firms include more people than the entire membership of private-sector labor unions.

Take, for example, the 7,500 employee-owners of W. L. Gore and Associates, manufacturer of Gore-Tex fabric, who control facilities in 45 locations around the world. Management is both sophisticated and participatory: workers may lead one task one week and follow other leaders the next week; teams disband after projects are completed, with team members moving on to other teams. The firm, which regularly ranks on Fortune’s "Best Companies to Work For" list, enjoyed revenues of $1.84 billion last fiscal year.

Other enterprises range in size and impact. Appleton Co. in Appleton, Wisconsin, is a world leader in specialty-paper production and is owned by roughly 3,300 employees. Reflexite is an optics company with approximately 420 employee-owners in Avon, Connecticut. In Harrisonburg, Virginia, ComSonics–owned by its 200 employees–makes cable television (CATV) test and analysis devices and boasts the largest CATV repair facility in the United States. These companies were not birthed from some sort of commune or communal movement. Rather, the typical employee-owned company is established when a retiring owner of a medium-sized business decides to sell to his workers, taking advantage of special tax incentives for firms organized through employee stock option plans (ESOPs).

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Alphonso Jackson says deal was scuttled after contractor admits not liking Bush

Posted by Brooke Shelby Biggs on May 17th, 2006


Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson may think he’s Steven Colbert, but his blunt brand of "humor" is a little too, er, observational for a laugh.

The secretary was at a forum in Dallas earlier this month and told this hilarious story of an advertising contractor who had just been selected to receive a contract from HUD:

    "He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years. He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something … he said, ‘I have a problem with your president.’

    "I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t like President Bush.’ I thought to myself, ‘Brother, you have a disconnect — the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn’t be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don’t tell the secretary.’

    "He didn’t get the contract. Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don’t get the contract. That’s the way I believe."

Jackson later said the conversation had never happened, that it was a joke, and that political leanings do not figure into the contract award system. Qualifications and competitiveness of bids are the only criteria, he insists.

He needs to work on his delivery.