This Week:

Quote of the Week

Late-Breaking News; Three Events

Why Bother Reading the Newspaper?

Congratulations to Dakota Foods Workers
What's The Story: What He Said, Or What He Couldn't Say?

Greetings,

This issue of the Notes is almost entirely about events within the borders of the U.S., except for a couple of timely events. This may seem a little odd at a time when a foreign war is looming, but not to worry. Next week I plan to focus on the war and, especially, the myriad ways we can respond to help turn the tide toward peace and its prerequisite, justice.

Lots of new readers this week. Welcome! I probably am about due to run a little "Nygaard Notes Decoder Chart," explaining some of the idiosyncracies you'll see in these pages. Such as the word "President" being in quotation marks when referring to the current illegitimate one in the White House, or my use of the initials "IC" in place of the misleading term "conservative," or any number of other little inside jokes and things. In the meantime, I always encourage new readers to read a few issues before you make up your mind about the Notes, since every issue is different, they're unpredictable (even to me!), and they all sort of fit together. Well, you'll see. In any case, welcome aboard!

Unpredictably yours,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

When in need of comic relief, turn to the advertising press, I always say. And once again this week, they have come through. The Advertising column of the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of November 21st, focused on the cranking up of a new advertising campaign to resurrect the neglected product known as "Mr. Coffee." In this column, amid much tedious advertising minutiae (such as how to "contemporize" the product and deal with the "sexist" name of "Mr. Coffee"), we find the following gem from one Jonah Disend, who is a "corporate-identity consultant":

"We forget that coffee is like a drug for many people."

So much like a drug, it IS a drug, some might say.

Late-Breaking News; Three Events

Next week I plan to have a whole bunch of information on the current efforts to head off the planned escalation of the ongoing war against Iraq. In the meantime, there are a couple of timely events that can't wait, so I have to let people know this week.

Event #1: "War on Iraq What Can Labor Do?" Monday, December 9th, at 7:30 p.m. I realize that some of you will not see this edition the Notes until after that date – Sorry! But, for those of you who can go, the meeting will be held at 411 Mahoney Street (aka Main St.) in the Minnesota state capital of St. Paul. This should be uplifting, as we will hear about resolutions passed by the Washington State AFL-CIO, the San Francisco Central Labor Council, SEIU 250 (healthcare workers in San Francisco-Oakland), SEIU 1199 (Wisconsin), and other labor bodies. It's sponsored by the St. Paul Labor Speakers Club and the Meeting the Challenge Labor Education Committee, and it's Free! For more information, call 651-696-6371.

Event #2: "Resisting the Call to War; Town Meeting with Martin Sabo," Sunday, December 15, 2-4 p.m. Martin Sabo, U.S. Representative from Minnesota's Fifth District, will speak at Lyndale United Church of Christ, 810 W. 31st St. (at Aldrich), in Minneapolis. Following a brief presentation, "Sabo will answer questions and work with participants to devise effective strategies for communicating with Congress," my press release says, adding that "Opportunities to network with one another and to discuss future actions will follow Sabo's presentation." The meeting is free and open to the public. For more info, call 612-825-3019 or e-mail lyndaleucc@juno.com.

Event #3: "Stop The Detentions, Deportations and Racial Profiling for Our Communities." Press Conference and Community Protest Monday, December 9th, 2002 5:00 p.m. Held at the Immigration and Naturalization Services Offices in Bloomington, Minnesota, 2901 Metro Drive Suite 100 (one block east of the Mall of America) Car Caravans will be leaving from North Country Co-op in Minneapolis at 4:15 p.m.. Sponsored by the Somali Justice Advocacy Center contact Omar Jamal (651) 917-0383 or e-mail shabeelj@yahoo.com.

Why Bother Reading the Newspaper?

I realize that many of you can't stomach the endless stream of trivial and sensationalized "news" that we find in the daily papers. Yet, I think there are, nonetheless, two basic reasons to read the mainstream press.

The first is that the newspapers are a constant barometer of the "conventional wisdom" of our political classes. That is, the reporters and editors who shape our understanding of the news are highly educated members of the small segment of our society that actually participates in political decision-making. Once you learn to read between the lines, the papers are loaded with important information about the nature of the society in which we live. That's pretty interesting stuff to learn about, for anyone; for activists, an accurate "reading" of the political culture is essential if we wish to keep our work on target and effective.

The second reason to read the mainstream press is—Surprise!—there's some good information there. Some activists tend to want to throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to the media, choosing to read only "alternative" media for information. I think you miss a lot this way. The major media have enormous resources to devote to watching, listening, and writing down the activities of important and powerful institutions and people. Once you learn how to filter, decode, prioritize, analyze, and re-think the miscellaneous facts that appear who-knows-where in the press, it becomes a limited but important source of information about what is going on in this wacky, terror-obsessed world.

I know that, no matter what I say, some of you still can't stand to read the papers. Hence my unofficial slogan: "Nygaard Notes: Reading the Newspaper So You Don't Have To."

Congratulations to Dakota Foods Workers

I reported in Nygaard Notes #s 80 and 159 on the mighty struggle of the mostly-immigrant workers at Dakota Premium Foods—a St. Paul meat-packing company—to bring in a union to represent them. Despite voting overwhelmingly in favor of the union back in July 2000, Dakota Premium proceeded to do everything in its power to prevent a contract from being signed. As I reported in #159, their efforts succeeded for more than two years, despite the National Labor Relations Board rejecting every argument the company ever made. Finally the battle is over, and the workers have won. On October 15th the workers ratified—149-21—the first contract ever between Dakota Premium and Local 789 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

It's a qualified success, as I reported earlier, since many of the original workers who struck for the right to be represented became disillusioned with the absurdly-slow process; many of the original union-hungry workers are no longer with the company. Still, as reported in the local newspapers, the new contract means that "Most workers at the South St. Paul plant will see their wages increase from $8-$9 per hour to $10-$13.50. The four-year contract also provides for a worker signing bonus, participation in a health care fund, a grievance/arbitration process, and language on seniority and job bidding."

Congratulations to the workers at Dakota Premium!

What's The Story: What He Said, Or What He Couldn't Say?

The Wall Street scandals have made it possible to use the word "greed" in polite company again, and yet the public inclination to deal with the scandals—and the greed—is being undermined by use of a highly-effective strategy on the part of our political "leaders" who are pursuing a reactionary agenda of freeing the wealthy from any constraints on their power. The part of the strategy that can be seen in the papers lately, if you look closely enough, is the tactic of "shrinking" government in ways that make government incapable of doing its job.

As one example, here's what USA Today reported on October 28th:

"The Securities and Exchange Commission [the federal agency in charge of policing the financial sector] is in line to receive at least $567 million in funding for the fiscal year that began Oct.1, a 29% increase from last year's level. That's still well short of what SEC advocates in Congress wanted, and it won't allow the commission to hire enough accountants and lawyers to adequately carry out last summer's Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform law."

There's the pattern—pass a law, take political credit, then don't enforce the law you "supported." It works pretty much every time.

As an added bonus, the increasing ineffectiveness of government reinforces the idea that people who resist paying—or cheat to avoid paying—taxes are justified in their resistance to paying their share. It's a complex strategy, carefully conceived and pursued relentlessly on many fronts by political elites. The following mini-case study will help to illustrate how successful the strategy continues to be, and how the media contributes to the problem.

"The Wealthiest and Most Sophisticated"

An article in the November 5th New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") headlined "Departing Chief Says the IRS Is Losing Its War on Tax Cheats," summarized the comments of the departing Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Charles Rossotti, as follows: "[The IRS] is steadily losing the war with tax cheats, especially the wealthiest and most sophisticated among them." The amount of uncollected taxes that the IRS knows about comes to $30 billion per year, and is likely more than that. Meanwhile, as I reported in Nygaard Notes #151, audits of the working poor were up almost 50 percent last year. It's a lot cheaper to audit the poorest and most unsophisticated, after all.

The current problem—a dramatic decrease in funding resulting in a 28 percent decline in the number of IRS auditors since 1995—is largely the result of laws passed in the wake of dramatic testimony before Congress in 1998. The newspapers at the time dutifully reported the dramatic testimony about "A Vast Range of Abuses," to use the Times's words, on the part of jack-booted IRS thugs. A year later that testimony (delivered for the most part by people who owed millions of dollars in taxes but reported as if they were The Common Man) was discovered to be mostly false, but the official government report that found this out was not reported in the press until a year after that. Too late then, as legislation dramatically weakening the IRS's enforcement powers had already been passed. (I reported on this in Nygaard Notes #74; if you're interested, go to the NN website.)

Now, to most of us, failing to enforce the law and losing $30 billion a year doesn't seem like a good idea, and the legislation causing the problem could be repealed, if enough people understood what is going on. This is where the Times failed to do its job.

In its November 5th story, the Times reported that "the House Ways and Means Committee was to have held its first hearing on sophisticated tax cheats on October 1. But the hearing was called off at the request of Mr. Rossotti, who [three senior IRS] officials said had been ordered by the Bush administration not to testify" about the inadequate funding for his agency. This is a pretty serious abuse of presidential power, but the Times didn't highlight it in the headline or the lead.

In contrast, the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants headlined their version of the Commissioner's remarks (which was based largely on this very Times report), "Rossotti Muzzled by White House on Tax Cheats." That's a different angle from the Times, and a much more appropriate one for those who are trying to understand the nature of this administration.

So, here's the picture that we can get if we pull together dozens of media reports scattered over 10 years or so:

• Starting in the early 1990s, the economy booms, increasing incomes dramatically among the wealthy. Tax liabilities go up, since higher incomes—especially non-wage income like stock dividends—are taxed at a higher rate than low incomes.
• 1997-1998: Hearings are conducted to show that the IRS is abusing taxpayers.
• Later in 1998: A series of laws are passed to weaken the IRS's enforcement powers
• 1999: Government report showing that the testimony upon which the legislation was based was false. The report remains essentially secret, since it is not reported in the press until a year later.
• 2000-2002: The mainstream press runs a variety of stories detailing how the IRS has become a joke, how wealthy people are cheating on their taxes to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year, and explaining that the IRS knows about all this but lacks the funds to correct the known problem. One recent story pointed out that every dollar spent on IRS enforcement would bring in 15 dollars in tax revenue.
• The last 90 days: The IRS Commissioner wants to testify before Congress about the problem of "sophisticated" (i.e. wealthy) tax cheats, most likely with the hope of generating political support for taking the obvious and easy steps to solve what most of us (other than "sophisticated" taxpayers) see as a problem. The Bush administration forbids him from presenting that testimony.

So, there's your example of how consent is manufactured for reactionary policies in the post-Reagan era in the United States. In summary: Pump up the "news" that supports your agenda, minimize the "news" that doesn't, count on the media to follow your lead, and seize the resulting political support to pass the laws you want. What does that spell? D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y!