It's the Poor Folks' Fault

Not.

Go read this clear-eyed, pulls-no-punches article by the good folks at McClatchy:

As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height vrom 2004 to 2006.

Federal Reserve Board data show that:

_ More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.

_ Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.

_ Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

"Read the whole thing," as bloggers are wont to say. The piece demolishes the conservative canard that places the blame for the crisis on working class people and on the Clinton Administration for making it easier for them to get credit. And while you're at it, go read Anglachel's post, which makes explicit how restricting credit to the poor and working class (except on the most onerous terms) is yet another tactic in movement conservatives' class warfare.

(H/T to Corrente, another fave on my rapidly dwindling political blogroll)

Picket Fences

For the first time in my life, I've had to cross picket lines, and I'm not liking it much. The Writers Guild of America is on strike. There's no threat or expectation that non-Guild members shouldn't cross; it's not that kind of picket line. Yet there is an odd resonance with labor movements past that I hadn't expected. The picketers wear snappy red T-shirts with WGA logos; there are special "strike" editions that I wish I could buy. The signs are good too, especially the 30s style with a lightning bolt ending in a fountain pen and the word "Strike!" superimposed over it. Reminds me of the old RKO logo.

The writers ask for drivers to honk in support. All day long I hear the horns, and when I have to cross the street, I see who is responding: drivers in Prius and MINIs and even BMWs. Toyotas and Focus and all variety of beaters. Truckers in particular blast their air-horns. The writers cheer.

I'm on the writers' side too, and I've honked when I've driven past. How could I not? The writers look like me. If my life had gone a different way, I could have easily been one of them.

Most of the people I work with support the writers as well. We all know what's at stake. As one Guild spokesperson put it, this isn't about the Rich versus the Richer, and there's a reason that truckers are honking in support.

Hollywood creates a lot of wealth, and what's focused on in the popular media are the extremes — the mega-salaries, the superstars, the cartoon excesses. What gets lost in such stereotypes is the reality for most people who work in the Industry. Hollywood creates a lot of decent-paying jobs that allow for reasonable middle-class to upper middle-class lifestyles. That's the bulk of the industry.

I found the following numbers in yesterday's Dead Tree edition of the Los Angeles Times and am thus far unable to find a link, but have a look:

Total paid in DVD/VHS residuals to WGA members in 2006: $56.6 million.

Severance package of Viacom's outsted chief Tom Freston: $60 million

Average production cost (excluding marketing) of studio movie in '06: $65.8 million

Compensation paid to CBS chief Leslie Moonves in 2006: $28.6 million.

Needless to say, it's tough to take management's pleas of poverty seriously when they pay a guy more than the annual total of all residuals paid to the WGA — for fucking up.

The writers' strike is about being fairly compensated in a very lucrative industry. It is about having some small ownership over the fruits of one's labor.

I've watched with increasing dismay, anger and outright horror the economic trends in this country. No less an expert than Warren Buffet feels that there is fundamental unfairness in our current tax structure. And this fundamental unfairness goes well beyond taxes.

We live in an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. It's a rigged game, designed to funnel money out of the middle class (and upper middle class for that matter) and divert it instead to a handful of very wealthy people. Once you have that much wealth and power concentrated in so few people, it becomes very difficult for "ordinary" peoples' interests to be represented in any meaningful way.

Marx's notion of "wage slavery" seems all too descriptive these days.

I've never been a Marxist, and I believe in capitalism as an efficient mechanism to organize a society. But there's another necessary component, and that is social justice. There are as well values that transcend the marketplace — abstract notions of community that are not always easily quantified. I've never understood why so many social conservatives are market fundamentalists when unfettered capitalism is so destructive to traditional values. There are communal interests that both consist of and transcend the aggregate of individual ones.

So, go Writers Guild of America! Strike a blow for decent wages and the ownership of one's own labors! And let's all hope the strike ends soon. Otherwise we are faced with a season of "reality" shows like Farmer Takes a Wife and Clash of the Choirs.

Really. No one wants to see that.