When you look in a mirror, what do you see?

No, you don’t see yourself. You inhabit a body—not a mirror. No, you see a projection of yourself. Similarly, we often project ourselves upon others.

Are you diligent and honest? Then you tend to trust others easily: You project on them the traits of diligence and honesty which come naturally to you. If you are a private person, you likely believe others also keep secrets. Or if you often tell small lies, you may readily conclude others are deceiving you.

Name the trait or motivation. We tend to project these on others. This is familiar and natural. The opposite attributes are foreign to us, so we find these more difficult to believe.

The consequences of these beliefs can be disastrous, for ourselves and others. As a landlord, for example, I lost several thousand dollars when I rented to a few tenants despite signs they were untrustworthy. We all need to widen our vision—to see reality—or our mistakes will multiply.

How can we apply this wisdom? How can we challenge our mistaken projections?

Shortly after graduating college in 1977, I discussed farm subsidies with Mark, a church friend. I had just completed a study of economist Milton Freedman, agreeing with his tenet that the free market alone should determine a person’s income. So I opposed farm subsidies.

Mark was shocked. Why would an otherwise caring Christian approve of farmers going bankrupt when farm prices crash? My friend thought I was heartless, having lost both compassion and common sense.

Mark was right.

Why did I fail to care? Despite my business degree, I was ignorant. I knew nothing about farming. Even more pertinent: I had adopted an ideology which shut out the experiences of others.

I also projected on to bankrupted farmers my history of obtaining work easily. I did not consider the hardship of bankruptcy, the trauma of families losing their homes, nor farmers’ ordeals when seeking another profession.

I needed to widen my world. I needed to listen to others’ experiences. I needed to be thoughtful.

Similarly, many leaders project their limited experiences upon others. One politician, “Edward,” laments that so many receive food stamps. Why not? His family never needed food stamps. Why should anyone else?

Instead of projecting his economic abilities upon others, however, Edward could consider their experiences. What about the millions who earn a living yet, due to low wages, experience the continuing agony of poverty? What about the many millions of seniors dependent upon social security and food stamps for survival? What about the many children who, due to food stamp cuts, have some days each month with little or no food?

Edward projects his economic strengths on others. He concludes the US needs to spend more on the military, so our nation should spend less on food stamps. This is a false choice. One does not exclude the other.

Those in need should not be denigrated or starved. Moreover, the US military currently spends as much as China and Russia—as well as the next ten countries combined.

“Supporting our troops” instead of supporting those needing food stamps is ironic: The pay of low-ranking service people requires $100 million in food stamps and $1 billion in subsidies at military grocery stores in 2014. Severe reduction of commissary subsidies brings hardship to many military families. For many, food stamps remain a necessity.

Edward is not alone in projecting his food prosperity on others: A plethora of political leaders hold a variety of heartless viewpoints.

Sometimes, due to our own projections, we too have uncaring positions. What is true for these heartless politicians is also true for you and me: We need to widen our world; we need to listen to others’ experiences; we need to be thoughtful.

However, there remains a certain gap in the show that keeps me from rolling on the floor. Part of it may have to do with the absence of Tim Carvell, the Mad magazine writer who worked on the show from 2004 to 2014 before following John Oliver over to HBO. The Daily Show has had some brilliant moments in the past few years, including its takes on race, gender, and sexuality issues, but it does not have the same zing it did in 2004, when the Bush administration was providing plenty of material. It is also not out of line to notice that the show has been muted in comparison when dealing directly with the Obama administration, a criticism that also can be leveled at the late, great Colbert Report.

But I feel that only scrapes the surface. Noah says he will bring to the show a more internationalized focus, perhaps taking more material from the Global Edition of the show that has been in production since 2002 and broadcast on CNN International. Can we expect future episodes where correspondents cover political conventions of not just the Republicans and Democrats but also the British Tories or the Irish Sinn Fein? Will there be dispatches from the headquarters of Christian fundamentalists in Switzerland?

The fact is that those potentialities fail to address just how bizarre America is. On September 27, The New Yorker magazine carried a story worth remembering, WHY ARE REPUBLICANS THE ONLY CLIMATE-SCIENCE-DENYING PARTY IN THE WORLD? With the help of a survey of the worldwide right-wing parties by the University of Bergen’s Sondre Båtstrand, the periodical points out that every other conservative (read: Tories) to right wing party (read: European neo-Nazis like Greece’s Golden Dawn) on earth has climate change action as part of their campaign platform. The idea that Adolf Hitler fanboys have better policies than Gina Raimondo and Sheldon Whitehouse is simply disturbing. Now, there is a lot to say for these parties in terms of the implications of their policy statements, some of them demonize refugee immigrants from the Middle East and blame them directly for climate change because they were involved in the production of fossil fuels. But the point is clear, Båtstrand says that the GOP is “not representative of conservative parties as a party family” and our culture has become simply insane.

Does Trevor Noah have the intention or hope to take on this paradigm and try to shift it? Can he?

I do not believe so. Jon Stewart said in interviews leading up to his departure that he was exhausted by the specter of going through another election season. He was on the air for just over sixteen years, having replaced the terminally unfunny (and reportedly piggishly sexist) Craig Kilborn. After four presidential elections, several published books, and the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, co-hosted with Stephen Colbert, American politics are essentially the same as when Stewart’s first episode lampooning the Lewinski scandal aired. Indeed, we are in the midst of yet another Clinton scandal and about to crown Hillary in a farcical primary that would be called bad government, if not outright treasonous, by any other population on earth!

When we look at the last year of Stewart’s work, we see material terminally lacking in real value. For instance, he barely had the nerve to take on the murderous behavior of the IDF in Gaza during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge. The farthest he could bother going was spoofing Israel’s policy of dropping a mortar on the roofs of houses they intendeded to bomb in the next few minutes. Meanwhile, the equally-Jewish Max Blumenthal is able to write this in his recent book THE 51 DAY WAR: RUIN AND RESISTANCE IN GAZA:

The Gaza Strip is a ghetto of children. Of its 1.8 million residents, a majority are under the age of 18. Most have never left the 360 square kilometers where they were born, raised and confined. There is no discernible future for them beyond the Israeli military occupation that has endured nearly 50 years and a siege that was officially proclaimed in 2007. The formative years of these young people have been marked by three major military assaults. These are their rites of passage. The Palestinians of Gaza have no reason or experience to believe that a fourth war will not arrive soon.

There are certain places where Mr. Blumenthal and I have differences about advocacy of Palestinian rights, but if the son of Sidney Blumenthal, who wrote for the Boston Phoenix and became an aid in the Clinton White House, can be this honest, why can we not see that same treatment from Jon Stewart?

Perhaps the answer is to be gleaned from the ownership. Comedy Central is owned by Doug Herzog’s Viacom, who has a history of donating to both the Obama Victory Fund 2012 and McConnell Senate Committee ’14, helping to keep Kentucky’s favorite Foghorn Leghorn impersonator in the Congress.

This kind of ownership, despite being palpable to liberals with support of abortion and gay rights, has no interest in the essential element of any critique of society, discussion of class. Of course, Marxism itself is not fully capable of such a critique of our neoliberal capitalist system, post-structural and post-colonial studies have shown us the gaps regarding the intersectionality of identity, as in the case of racism, gender bias, or homophobia. One cannot look to the Labor Theory of Value and hold DAS KAPITAL with the same level of surety that defines the religious fanatic. But in our cultural deficit in this area is so pronounced that just the cover of one of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks would seem like an oasis in our desert of the real, where our celebration of Labor Day is one of mourning a return to the grind of work and our holiday praising the democratic socialist Martin Luther King, Jr., a holiday signed into law by Ronald Reagan, dares not even mention the words ‘Vietnam War’, let alone King’s evolution towards a united front with labor union against capital in his final year.

We need comedy that skewers our pathetic news media. We need comedians who are willing to speak truth to power about the abuses of the mighty. But it remains to be seen if Trevor Noah or any other televised personality dependent on ad revenues or cable subscription profits will have the bravery to tell the truth, that America is not the greatest country in the sum total of human existence, that our so-called progressive President is in fact a deeply conservative politician, and that our hyper-bloviating notions of patriotism are seen as buffoonish, reactionary, and ecologically dangerous by people in Europe who enjoy reading MEIN KAMPF.

Until then, the joke is really on us.

Last year, after the General Assembly stole away the power of cities and towns in Rhode Island to set their own minimum wages, Providence City Councillor John Igliozzi told a packed room of disappointed hotel workers that the city was not prohibited from imposing higher minimum wage standards via tax stabilization agreements (TSAs), which are contracts between cities and private industry, and cannot be interfered with by the General Assembly.

Igliozzi said then that all future TSAs should include strong minimum wage requirements and many other worker protections and rights.

Igliozzi is the chair of the Providence City Council Finance Committee, so one would expect that he would follow up on this proposal, but so far, nothing like this has been incorporated into the new TSAs being cooked up in City Hall and expected to be voted on this week.

When Jesse Strecker, executive director of RI Jobs with Justice, testified before the Finance Committee of the Providence City Council, he presented a short list of proposals to ensure that whatever TSAs were adopted would truly benefit not just the investors and owners of billion dollar corporations but also the working people and families of Providence.

Strecker’s list included the following:

1. Provide good, career track jobs for Providence residents most in need by utilizing apprenticeship programs and community workforce agreements, hiring at least 50% of their workforce from the most economically distressed communities of Providence, with a substantial portion of that workforce made up of people facing barriers to employment such as being a single parent or homeless, or having a criminal record, offering job training programs so local residents are equipped with the skills necessary to perform the available jobs and hiring responsible contractors who do not break employment and civil rights law;

2. Pay workers a living wage of at least $15 per hour, provide health benefits and 12 paid sick days per year, and practice fair scheduling: offering full time work to existing employees before hiring new part time employees, letting workers know their schedule two weeks in advance, and providing one hour’s pay for every day that workers are forced to be ‘on call’;

3. For commercial projects, create a certain number of permanent, full-time jobs, or for housing developments, ensure that 20% of all units are sold or rented at the HUD defined affordable level. Or, contribute at an equivalent level to a “Community Benefits Fund,” overseen and directed by community members providing funding to create affordable housing, rehabilitate abandoned properties, or finance other community projects such as brown field remediation; and

4. Present projected job creation numbers before approval of the project, and provide monthly reporting on hiring, wages and benefits paid, and other critical pieces of information, to an enforcement officer, overseen by a Tax Incentive Review Board comprised of members of the public and appointees of the city council and mayor, to make sure companies are complying with their agreements, and be subject to subsidy recapture if they do not follow through.

Mayor Jorge Elorza submitted an amendment mandating that under the new TSAs, “projects over $10 million will be eligible for a 15-year tax stabilization agreement that will see no taxes in the first year, base land tax only in years 2-4, a 5% property tax in year 5 and then a gradual annual increase for the remainder of the term.”

In return, the “agreements include women and minority business enterprise incentives as well as apprenticeship requirements for construction and use of the City’s First Source requirements to encourage employment for Providence residents.”

But that short paragraph above contains few of the proposals suggested by Strecker.

Supporting the Jobs with Justice proposals are just about every community group and workers’ rights organization in Providence, including RI Building and Construction Trades Council, Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), UNITE HERE Local 217, IUPAT Local 195 DC 11, District 1199 SEIU New England, RI Progressive Democrats of America, Teamsters Local 251, Fuerza Laboral / Power of Workers, Environmental Justice League of RI, RI Carpenters Local 94, Restaurant Opportunities Center RI (ROC United), Mount Hope Neighborhood Association, American Friends Service Committee, Occupy Providence, Olneyville Neighborhood Association (ONA), Fossil Free RI, Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), Prosperity for RI, and the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School Prison Health Interest Group.

One of the problems reformers run into is the opaqueness of the financial world. Not only are the systems that govern financial transactions intentionally byzantine and unnecessarily complex, financial actors working within the system do everything they can to obscure who owns what assets, who is paying how much to whom, and by what pathways money tends to flow. Everyone who has seen a movie is familiar with the idea of “shell corporations” and “offshore accounts” as a way of hiding financial assets for nefarious purposes, but few of us are aware of how pervasive these and similar practices are in reality.

If we seek to put an end to ever increasing economic and political inequality and prevent future economic crises similar to or worse than our recent recession, then economic transparency is of the utmost importance. As Thomas Piketty says in his landmark (but far from perfect) Capital in the Twenty-First Century, “there should be clarity about who owns what assets around the world.” (page 518)

Piketty argues that the debate around growing inequality and the management of global capitalism is operating in the dark. We have no reliable data about who owns what and how much money they are making. A significant portion of the world’s wealth seems to be squirreled away into secret black market accounts. Without accurate data, we are flying blind and suggesting solutions to problems we don’t fully understand.

It is in this light that I see the actions of Treasurer Gina Raimondo as contrary to the public good. Raimondo, far from fighting for the rights and economic prosperity of all Rhode Islanders, seems more interested in veiling herself and her allies from financial scrutiny. For instance, Raimondo’s use of a blind trust, to hide her investments and income from scrutiny during her gubernatorial campaign, flaunts economic clarity and openness.

More problematic is the outrageous letter Raimondo sent to the RI Attorney General’s office, in which the treasurer maintains that revealing the amount of money Rhode Island pays to its hedge fund managers might put hedge fund managers at risk of kidnapping! From David Sirota at the International Business Times:

Citing the case of Eddie Lampert, an investor who was abducted in 2003 by ransom-seeking kidnappers, the letter to Assistant Rhode Island Attorney General Michael Field from Raimondo’s office further argued that disclosing too much information about financial fees and compensation could endanger the lives of hedge fund managers.

The amount of money people like Treasurer Raimondo make from their jobs as elected officials pales to insignificance when compared to the amount of money they generate from their capital investments. If people were given a true picture of how wealth is distributed, there would be outrage. This is why financial transactions and the ownership of assets is hidden, and why a new era of financial transparency is mandatory if we wish to preserve our democracy.

Otherwise, the only viable financial plan for those wishing to avoid economic serfdom may be the realization of Treasurer Raimondo’s worst fears: the kidnapping and ransoming of the 1%.

The new vision for a modern and vibrant downtown does not include a busing hub. So Kennedy Plaza has been fenced off and is being destroyed as quickly as possible, before an outraged public can mount any kind of coordinated defense. Already the shelters have been taken down and trucked away, and the expensive heating system that automatically melts the snow is being dug up and scrapped. This work is leaving a giant pit in the center of downtown, even though there is no money allocated to completing the project. The plan seems akin to digging a hole in the hopes that someone will come along and build a house there.

Simply stated, this is class warfare being waged against the most vulnerable populations in our state, and it is being done with taxpayer money. Instead of walking across a plaza replete with convenient shelters to transfer from one bus to another, bus riders are now required to walk several blocks from one bus to another. In the winter, when Burnside Park is effectively one giant sheet of ice, the walk will become more treacherous or even impossible, especially for the handicapped and the elderly.

Yesterday the RIPTA Riders Alliance held a press conference calling on officials to allow the public to have real input into the redesign of Kennedy Plaza. They demanded that construction be halted pending the swearing in of a new Mayor of Providence and a review of the plan. Forty-five people attended the event, including members of the Sierra Club, the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats, Occupy Providence, The George Wiley Center and others.

Tonya Withers, a homeless woman who sleeps in Kennedy Plaza on the hard stones of the Civil War Monument, also spoke out against the construction and in favor of greater public services for the poor and homeless.

Of course, Tonya is exactly the kind of person this new plan seeks to eliminate from downtown, so what are the chances that city or RIPTA officials will give her words any weight?

RIPTA Riders Rochelle

RIPTA Riders Elaine

RIPTA Riders Patricia Raub

Sierra Club Barry Schiller

Tonya Withers

Joe Buchanan

RIPDA Jed

Occupy Providence Randall Rose

RIPTA Riders Ele

Deborah Wray

RIPTA Riders Ingrid

RIPTA Riders Ralph

Rhode Island’s economy is recovering. But not for the 99 percent it isn’t.

A new report by the Economic Analysis and Research Network shows that between 2009 and 2011, the 99 percent – those Rhode Island’s who make on average $41,958 a year – saw an average decline of 4.1 percent in their earnings.

On the other hand, the one percent in Rhode Island – those who make at least $287,311 a year – did quite well in the same two years. Their earnings increased by 17.3 percent from 2009 to 2011.

“Rhode Island has not escaped the disturbing trend of growing inequality over the past decades,” said Kate Brewster, executive director of The Economic Progress Institute. “Today, the average income of the top one percent is 20.3 times the average income of the bottom 99 percent.  We call on leaders in Washington and here at home to put in place policies that increase income for the majority and help close the income gap.”

Only in four other states – North Dakota, Massachusetts, Texas and Colorado – did the one percent fare better from 2009 to 2011. And only the 99 percent in Nevada fared worse than the 99 percent in Rhode Island did from 2009 to 2011.

Conversely, there was less income disparity between the one percent and the 99 percent in Rhode Island from 1979 and 2007, and Rhode Island had less income disparity than the national average. The richest one percent of Rhode Islanders income grew by 170.3 percent from 1979 to 2007 compared to 40.4 percent for the poorest 99 percent of Rhode Islanders. Nationally during that same time frame, the richest one percent increased their earnings by 200.5 percent and the poorest 99 percent increased by only 18.9 percent.

The change in income distribution coincided with not only the economic collapse but also broad income tax cuts for the top tax bracket in Rhode Island proposed by former Governor Don Carcieri, a tea party Republican, and approved by the General Assembly, which took a hard turn to the right on economic policy during and after the Carcieri era.

From 2005 to 2011, the highest income tax rate in Rhode Island dropped from 9.9 percent to 5.99 percent. And during that same time frame that taxes were lowered on Rhode Island’s richest residents and they simultaneously started to earn a higher percentage of the state’s overall income, the unemployment rate creeped up to among the highest in the nation, further eroding the talking point from the far right and conservative Democrats that tax cuts help create new jobs.

The new report released today does not breaks down the data only into the one percent versus the 99 percent. You can read the full report here. Or check out the online version here. Here’s the Rhode Island-specific data.

In 2007, the one percent in Rhode Island accounted for 18.1 percent of all income. That was up from 1979, when the one percent only accounted for 10.3 percent. In 1928, the one percent in Rhode Island were responsible for 23.6 percent of all income.

But at least we know they will be listening!

The op/ed documentary is being screened at Statehouses across the country to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson announcing the war against poverty (which many say America lost but others say has been a “mixed bag”). Here in Rhode Island, it’s being sponsored by the Economic Progress Institute and General Assembly leadership. It will be shown in the House lounge (popcorn permitted) after the session commences for the day (approximately 4:30 or 5)

Before the session there will be an “Interfaith Vigil” to call attention to the plight of the homeless in America – talk about income inequality – some people slept outside last night in Rhode Island! (please think about that for at least one minute today) The vigil begins at the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, located at 15 Hayes Street (across from the Providence Place Mall) at 2:30 and participants will make their way to the State House by 3pm, where they will be joined by Fox, Paiva Weed and Governor Chafee.

On March 13, the day he was first elected CEO of the Catholic Church by its Board of Directors, I posed this question to twitter: “Is Pope Francis a progressive?”

Yesterday the Pope provided pretty conclusive evidence that I was right.

Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.

In his exhortation, Pope Francis makes direct references to income inequality and how it erodes the social fabric.

When a society – whether local, national or global – is willing to leave a part of itself on the fringes, no political programmes or resources spent on law enforcement or surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility. This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root.

In chapter 4 of his address, he adds:

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.

He writes about the concept of “dignified sustenance for all people.”

We are not simply talking about ensuring nourishment or a “dignified sustenance” for all people, but also their “general temporal welfare and prosperity”. This means education, access to health care, and above all employment, for it is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labour that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives.

At times, he seems to speak about issues that matter m0st to Rhode Island progressives, like income tax structure and minimum wage:

It must be reiterated that “the more fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods more generously at the service of others”

And:

A just wage enables them to have adequate access to all the other goods which are destined for our common use.

These are the principles the Catholic Church in Rhode Island should spend its time and resources advocating for too. This blog again calls on RI Bishop Thomas Tobin to follow the Pope’s lead in abandoning the politics of discrimination in favor of the politics of lifting people up.

In 2011, Vecchione made $7.88 million as the chief executive of Lifespan, a WPRI investigation revealed recently. Meanwhile, Gesterling helped organize a protest at the Wendy’s in Warwick where she works in hopes of calling the media’s attention to her hourly wage of $8.20 an hour. In other words, Vecchione made almost twice as much in one day (~$30,300)  as Gesterling will make all year (~$17,000).

But perhaps it is unfair to compare a free enterprise fast food economy with that of a non-profit, regulated for consumer health. So instead let’s use Wendy’s internal pay grades. At $16.5 million in 2011, CEO Roland Smith made more than twice running Wendy’s as Vecchione made leading Lifespan. Here’s how his salary compares to Gesterling’s:

He’s backing a bill that would kick parents off of government assistance programs if their children don’t have good attendance records at school. The bill only applies to welfare recipients, and not parents who receive tax breaks from the state. In other words, it targets poverty and exempts affluence.

Such legislation is becoming more commonplace in the General Assembly as class politics increases here in the Ocean State. Last year Rep. Doreen Costa introduced a bill that required social service recipients to be drug tested before receiving benefits but did not put similar conditions on those who get tax breaks from the state.

Advocates say the idea is to incentive better behavior. I think this line of reasoning ranges from being flawed logic to disingenuous debate. If poverty increases the likelihood of truancy or drug use, which it does, increasing poverty won’t decrease truancy or drug use.  If this worked, fire fighters would carry flame throwers instead of water hoses! Casey, a Woonsocket fire fighter, should know you don’t fight fire with fire.

Whatever the stated purpose of such legislation is, they function best at stigmatizing government assistance to the poor.

Truancy is an issue in Rhode Island. But divesting from the families of those who aren’t showing up for class won’t increase attendance. It will, on the other hand, make being poor a little bit more onerous on both the poor and by extension the rest of the economy as well.