Real fortunes are made by robbing the rest of us

October 27

Guest: Daniel Atonna, political activist and New York City Coordinator of For the Many, talks about his recent focus, Homes Are Not Hotels, the campaign to expose the role of absentee investors and AirBnB in the scarcity of affordable housing.

For The Many

In the 1980s, many of us used to house exchange for a cheap and intimate way of visiting foreign countries. I exchanged houses at least five times during those years, making lasting friendships with the families that stayed in my house while I and my family enjoyed theirs. We even exchanged cars for the summer. 

Part of the enjoyment was reading about all the homes that were being offered for exchange. For $15 you could post pictures and descriptions of your own house, and gain access to the hundreds of foreign house owners eager for an inexpensive vacation in the US. Matching was all done the old fashioned way, with an exchange of letters and pictures of the family. And living in someone else's house had its own rewards. You often ended up meeting their friends, and shopping in the stores that they recommended. 

House exchanges have gone the way of the web these days. There are web publications of homes being offered, and instantaneous offers readily available. What used to take weeks of planning, now can be done in an afternoon.

Like many successful programs, however, house and apartment exchanges have become commercialized. Services like Air BnB make connections with other families a breeze. And you are often more protected by a long list of previous tenant evaluations. Now you can book a couple of days stay in a foreign country in less time than it used to take writing one letter. 

But turning the process over to large corporations has its downsides. Air Bnb are not exchanges; they are short term rentals. You don't get to know anyone, and even your access to a foreign home is little more than a six digit code that you enter into a designated locked box. Soon, investors were buying up whole buildings to turn all their apartments into rentals. Halls were filled with tourists towing their luggage for a two night's stay. And what parties could be thrown if you didn't have to pick up all the broken dishes in the morning. 

Soon tourist areas in some the the major cities were all Air BnB. Parts of Rome, Venice, and Florance ceased being real neighborhoods. The buildings were owned by distant investors, who drove up prices while they were converting more and more homes into cash paying rentals. The process made real estate more valuable, and working families just couldn't compete.  

Looking at the Hudson Valley, we see the same process at work. Families can't afford to buy property that is owned by distant landlords and reserved for short term rentals. And this is where public good is destroyed for private gain. For fortunes are rarely made by simply providing necessary services. The real profit comes from destroying some measure of the public good. Whether you are warming the planet by oil production, addicting whole segments of society by selling opioids, or turning millions of homes into short term rentals to the affluent, the payoff is the same. The real fortunes are made by robbing the rest of us.

How close does fascism have to come to our shores?

October 20

Guest: Michael Leonardi, Italian activist and author of the Counterpunch article “Introducing Giorgia Meloni: How the US opened the door for Fascism’s Return to Italy" talks about the ascendency of the right in Italy. He currently lives on the island of Procida in the Gulf of Naples.

How the US opened the door for fascism's return to Italy

Michael did a Zoom meeting with me, so I got to see the Gulf of Naples through an open window of his office. Italy has such charm and warmth, that it is almost impossible to believe that a fascist leader has returned to power after all these years.

Maybe it is an example of the fact that fascism never really goes away. In tough economic times, people look for scapegoats. Fascist leaders gain power by directing hate towards minorities, immigrants, and those with non-binary relationships. The wealthy elite like it that way, because they can keep raking in billions while workers suffer. Like many Western democracies, Italy is going through a crisis of inequality. 

What Michael does is to go beyond the obvious to trace US covert operations in Italy's decades long shift to "corporatization," the term Mussolini gave to his brand of fascist leadership. The US and the CIA fought a particularly dirty war, both in Greece and in Italy at the end of World War II. Worried that both countries might fall into the Soviet sphere of interest, the CIA sided with the defeated fascists; Together, they massacred those on the left who were advocating for a new society based on justice and equality. Both Greece and Italy bear the scares of these wars, as well as the ever present US military bases that just never fly home. That's the hidden story that most American never really understand. The idea that the CIA worked with the Italian Mafia to assassinate progressive politicians just seems beyond the pale. 

But to understand Fascism anywhere, we must take an unflinching look at our neoliberal system, one that fosters inequality wherever in the world US combat boots hit the ground. How close does fascism have to come to our shores before we take notice?

A lot to ask

 

October 13

GUEST: Sarahana Shrestha, first generation immigrant from Nepal, surprise winner of a Democratic primary for NY State Assembly, and committed reformer who does not take corporate money, talks about her strong focus on working families and climate. 

Surprise Democratic State Assembly primary winner

Sarahana Shrestha was good enough to give us this 20 minute interview. She is a busy candidate, having just defeated a long time corporate funded Democrat to run for NYS Assembly. 

Is Sarahana the future of the Democratic Party? Will the party pass on to newer, more progressive candidates who care about racism, global warming and workers' rights? Can social change still happen within our corrupted political system?

First we will have to see if she wins. Not taking corporate money is a handicap, even though it scores points with progressives. But some of her opinions are not mainstream ones, especially her emphasis on human rights for all. She is a staunch supporter of Black Lives Matter, and insists that our criminal justice system be reformed. This might make her vulnerable, since she will be attacked as an immigrant who is weak on crime. In fact, the right wing Republican Party has long ago given up running on anything that doesn't incite racial hatred. Candidates like Sarahana should beware. 

Sarahana's success so far, however, says more about the Democratic Party than it does about the Republican. Her organizing skills, and her idealism show us all what the mainstream Democratic Party has become: a corrupted and ineffectual foil for the right wing fascism we see on the horizon. Dare we hope that the Democratic Party can kick out its old guard, the Clintons, Obama and Pelosi? And what about their warmongering? Can we turn the party into one that doesn't keep pushing us to World War III? I know its a lot to ask from a new candidate for state assembly. 

Learning about these United States

 

October 6

GUEST: Jeffrey Sommers, Professor of Political Economy & Public Policy in Global Studies and a Senior Fellow, Institute of World Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, talks about how Gorbachev became the most reviled man in Russia.

How Gorbachev became the most reviled man in Russia

Gorbachev is one of the most interesting figures to come out of the Cold War. A brilliant and hard working idealist, he was both a Communist and and a champion of his people. In fact, he displayed a moral compass that most international leaders have jettisoned long ago. Did that make him unfit for the realpolitik that he faced as the head of the Soviet Union?

Perhaps his biggest failure was to believe that the United States wanted to spread democracy and free speech to his country. He was conned into giving up his power and dismantling his country for a few verbal agreements that the US had no intention of following through on. He was a country boy, a rube to the imperial powers that wanted to make Russia a neoliberal colony. Gorbachev's failure was the end of Soviet power, for good or for evil.

But the warning remains. The US in its present form is a highly aggressive military machine, interested in corporate power and the domination of the rest of the world. With our hundreds of military bases and our hundreds of billions spent on weaponry every year, we are the behemoth that Gorbachev should have been worrying about. In fact, the US has become the global empire that Americans have always been taught to fear in foreign nations. Studying Gorbachev's life is to learn about these United States.  

At the bottom of a mostly hidden caste system

 

September 29

GUEST: Steve Early, writer for the Jacobin, longtime union representative for the Communications Workers of America, and author of several books, discusses his latest one, Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs.

Our Veterans Duke University Press

Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon: Our Veterans

Jacobin articles by Steve Early

I really liked Steve Early's book on veterans. Maybe that is because I am an antiwar veteran myself. Or because I spent a number of years working in a high school, doing my best to frustrate Army recruiting. It could also be the year I spent in Korea, in the 7th Infantry. 

I am still fascinated by soldiers, and how they are manipulated to pay the price for US imperialism. I paid that price, drafted out of my first teaching job because the Army needed cannon fodder in Vietnam. There I was teaching students about the roots of folk music, while in my briefcase were letters from my draft board. 

So veterans have a special sense of what war and occupation look like. It is a view rarely shared with the public, probably because it would undermine the image of noble war-making so popular in the empire. Veterans can be truth tellers, especially in times when the empire is on the move. Times like this New Cold War.

Veterans also go through a racist and classist selection process, one that middle class whites have little knowledge of. Many inner city schools are in fact militarized charter schools that have inspections, marching drills and war making in the curriculum. To the poor in America, the message is we will feed and house you, give you some skills that may or may not help you get a job later on, and show you at least some respect in our Jim Crow society. 

Our Veterans pries into all these realities. In some way, it is a mirror of what life is really like for those at the bottom of a mostly hidden caste system. The empire has many secrets.