Categoría: Libertad

¿Cuál es el problema con la Política Migratoria de Donald Trump al Separar Familias en la Frontera con México?

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A view of inside U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention facility shows children at Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Rio Grande City, Texas, U.S., June 17, 2018. Picture taken on June 17, 2018. Courtesy CBP/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. – RC174C9B4E40

Una injusta e inhumana aplicación de las leyes migratorias en los Estados Unidos ha desatado la indignación de un gran sector de la ciudadana estadounidense y mundial durante estas últimas dos semanas. Y no es para menos, ya que la Custom and Border Protection (CBP), agencia que es parte del Department of Homeland Security a cargo de Kirstjen Nielsen , decidió ejecutar una política migratoria antojadiza que separa las familias de aquellos inmigrantes ilegales o de personas que buscan asilo en los Estados Unidos.

Cabe señalar que muchas de estas personas que llegan desde diversos países de Centroamerica y Mexico, escapan de la violencia y amenazas contra su vida y la de sus familias en sus países de origen.

Donal Trump, el presidente de los Estados Unidos, ha declarado que esta política migratoria es producto de las lagunas legales en la legislación migratoria y que son únicamente los demócratas quienes cargan con la responsabilidad de este problema y que su administración esta solamente “aplicando la ley, porque la ley es la ley”.

Sin embargo, lo cierto es que ninguna ley federal señala que los las familias detenidas o que buscan asilo deban ser separadas y menos aun que los hijos menores de edad sean separados de sus padres mientras dure el proceso de deportación o asilo.

Lo mas indignante es que funcionarios de la administración de Trump salieron al frente a declarar su apoyo a esta política que ha sido considerada por muchos como “inhumana” y contraria a los valores de un país que es percibido como defensor de la libertad y los derechos como lo es los Estados Unidos de América.

Por ejemplo, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Secretaria de Prensa de la Administración de Trump tuvo que recibir las criticas de un sector de la prensa americana que había hecho su investigación y descubierto que la política migratoria de separación de familias era un capricho y solo una manera de disuadir a los inmigrantes de no tocar mas las puertas de los Estados Unidos en busca de asilo, porque de hacerlo, les sucedería lo mismo que a estos inmigrantes y “asylum seekers” durante estas semanas, es decir, tomar a sus hijos y llevarlos a establecimientos alejados de ellos.

Cabe señalar que estos establecimientos eran totalmente inadecuados para albergar menores de edad ya que estos eran mantenidos bajo condiciones tan inadecuadas como estar rodeados por rejas como si fueran animales, o dormir cubiertos solo con “space blankets” sobre colchones tirados en el piso, y ni que decir de su exposición a diversos peligros que podrían atentar contra su integridad física, emocional y psicológica (trafico de personas, tocamientos indebidos, abuso sexual, violencia verbal, etc). Al respecto leer el siguiente informe: Neglect and Abuse of Unaccompanied Immigrant Children by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

En medio de esta indignación generalizada, la hija de Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, colgó una foto de ella con su hijo en Twitter, lo cual desato la furia de muchos ciudadanos quienes la criticaron por su indiferencia y falta de empatía en relación con los efectos de la aplicación de la política migratoria de su padre.

Otro funcionario que recibió las peores criticas ha sido el Fiscal General Jeff Sessions (un equivalente a Ministro de Justicia) quien justificó el trato inhumano recibido por las familias de inmigrantes y personas que buscan asilo con pasajes de la Biblia. La opinión publica comenzaba a indignarse aun mas por su parcializada lectura de la Biblia. Asimismo, su nefasta frase “La ley es la ley y nosotros solo la aplicamos” es el resumen de una irresponsabilidad por solucionar un problema tan grave de una manera mas creativa, eficiente y que respete los derechos de todos los involucrados en el problema.

Asimismo, tenemos la declaración de la Secretaria del Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kirstjen Nielsen. La cabeza de este Departamento trató de justificar la separación de las familias alegando que no hay ningún problema en llevar a los niños a estos establecimientos que pueden compararse con “summer camps” o campamentos de verano temporales para ellos, o que “hay una vía legal abierta para todos los que quieran ingresar al país”. Esto último no convenció a muchos y las criticas no tardaron en llegar por parte de todo el mundo señalando que si dichas instalaciones eran como un “summer camp”, ella debería enviar a sus hijos a pasar un fin de semana bajo esas mismas condiciones.

Por último, en la cumbre de la indignación tenemos a un tipo que fue ex-asistente de Donald Trump llamado Corey Lewandowski, quien en una entrevista en Fox News utilizo una expresión de burla (“Womp, womp”) cuando se le indicaba sobre el caso de una niña inmigrante con síndrome de Down afectada por la política de inmigración de “cero tolerancia” de la administración Trump. Ese tipo de expresiones no se hacen, no hay justificación para ello. Eso es simplemente deprimente y bajo.

Mi posición sobre este problema:

1. En cuanto a las declaraciones de Jeff Sessions, considero que esta política de separar familias por el simple hecho de cruzar la frontera o para solicitar asilo es inhumana, sin justificación legal y solo demuestra una falta de creatividad del gobierno de Trump para solucionar el problema. Están metiendo en el mismo saco a inmigrantes ilegales y aquellos que buscan asilo en el país porque igual los separan de sus hijos mientras dure su procedimiento. Y para dejarnos estupefactos, el Fiscal General de los EE.UU.  ha señalado que la Biblia justifica este trato inhumano contra quienes quiebran las leyes migratorias de los EE.UU. Personalmente, creo que el Fiscal General esta tergiversando a su beneficio lo que sea que la biblia diga. Esto no es una cuestión de religión o enseñanzas de la biblia, sino una cuestión moral con claras guías de solución.

2. Mas allá de las posiciones políticas que enfrentan a republicanos y conservadores, existen reglas éticas básicas que al revisarlas nos indican claramente que es es erróneo utilizar niños como elemento punitivo para ejecutar una ley o política pública. Eso simplemente no se hace. Lo peor de todo es que las políticas americanas siempre tienen eco en otros países. Me preocupa mucho el impacto que este tipo de política conservadora y autoritaria basada en una lectura religiosa pudiera ser peligrosamente considerada el Perú en unos años. Recordemos quien lleva las de ganar en las próximas elecciones presidenciales en el Perú, pero peor aún, quienes apoyan su candidatura (grupos ultraconservadores y homofóbicos). Espero que nunca ocurra eso y que la religión no sea jamás la base o justificación para decidir los derechos de las personas.

3. Por otro lado, es incierto el futuro de muchos niños que han sido colocados en las mencionadas instalaciones donde, según el gobierno, son bien acogidos y alimentados. Sin embargo, eso no quita que continúen viviendo en condiciones infrahumanas encerrados en celdas, llorando y preguntando en todo momento por sus padres, ni que decir de su exposición a peligros contra su integridad física y emocional.

4. Entre muchos de esos migrantes existen personas que están solicitando asilo. ¿Por qué? Los motivos son diversos pero muchos de ellos provienen de Centro América. En algunos países de esa región existe violencia de todo tipo (doméstica, urbana, criminal, política). Muchos están escapando de situaciones que son peligrosas para su vida y la de sus familias, por ejemplo, violencia domestica, la violencia de la MS-13, pandillas, trabajo forzado, abusos sexuales, carteles de la droga que te hacen trabajar para ellos y dejar de lado tus planes, conscripción obligatoria a grupos paramilitares, pago de cupos para vivir tranquilo. Muchos padres no quieren seguir en esa situación y menos quieren ese futuro para sus hijos. En los EEUU muchos republicanos critican a estas personas de la siguiente manera: “Por que vienen acá! si saben que los van a separar de sus hijos! como los exponen! Oh por Dios!”. Lo que mas indigna es que lo hacen desde la comodidad de sus hogares, sin darse cuenta que son privilegiados, cuentan con seguro social, con ciudadanía, con un trabajo, con un sueldo y seguridad económica, sin mayores amenazas contra su vida. Ellos jamas han pasado por lo que estos migrantes están viviendo, y no se les pasa por la cabeza pensar que estas personas prefieren probar suerte de esta manera que seguir viviendo en sus lugares de origen bajo esas condiciones de amenaza contra sus vidas y la de sus familias. Es cierto que existe inmigración ilegal y esta debe ser sancionada. Sin embargo utilizar a niños como elemento punitivo es algo erróneo. Simplemente esta mal. Eso no se hace.

5. La declaración de Kirstjen Nielsen: “Hay una forma legal de ingresar al país” es indignante porque es una media verdad debido a que no señala cuán caro y lento es el proceso de residencia o asilo Si, medias verdades. No todos los inmigrantes y solicitantes de asilo tienen los mismos antecedentes.

No todos son miembros del MS-13, o inmigrantes ilegales que llegan a los EE.UU. con la intención de dañar a las personas en este país o recibir bienes y servicios de forma gratuita, es decir, vivir de la ayuda del gobierno. No. Hay personas que vienen a los Estados Unidos desde sus países por diferentes motivos, como salir de purgas, violencia de pandillas, actividades forzadas a pandillas, cárteles de drogas, trabajos forzados, participación en grupos paramilitares, violación sexual, narcotráfico, pago de cuotas a delincuentes a cambio de vivir en paz. Algunos de ellos solo buscan seguridad pero a cambio están recibiendo un tratamiento inhumano.

6. Es necesario un análisis con mayor detalle con relación a los principales agentes de este problema: Los niños. Una serie de matices existen entre ellos y es necesario tomarlos en cuenta para que aquellos que apoyan la política migratoria de separación de familias puedan entender los difícil que es separar a una madre de su hijo, a saber, existen niños con problemas de salud, síndrome de down, habilidades especiales, asperger, depresión, problemas de conducta, etc. Como dije lineas arriba, es un error garrafal utilizar niños como elemento punitivo con tal de hacer cumplir cualquier ley o política migratoria.

7.  Toda persona goza de derechos inherentes a su condición humana y estos derechos deben ser respetados. Los derechos humanos siempre estarán por encima de la ley o política publica de cualquier país y deben ser estrictamente respetados bajo responsabilidad y sanción de aquellos que se atrevan a vulnerarlos.

8. El hecho de que seas un contribuyente y votante registrado no te da el derecho a decirle a otros que hacer, que no hacer, o como pensar. Para muestra, pueden escuchar al tipo llamado “Tony” que interviene en este podcast en 23:31 – NPR: Your Feelings On Family Separations At The Border.

9. Siempre es bueno colocarse en los zapatos del otro. Pensar siempre en el concepto de “alteridad” para derribar prejuicios que solo llevan a situaciones tan nefastas como esta. Tomar en cuenta los detalles, los matices y los motivos de toda decisión que haga una persona nos podrá hacer ver mas allá de las ideas que fundamentan escollos del desarrollo humano como son la xenofobia, el racismo, y la injusticia.

Conclusiones:

  • La política de separación de familias en la frontera con México es a todas luces una táctica que utiliza el miedo y la incertidumbre como elemento disuasivo para aquellos que crucen la frontera ilegalmente o para aquellos que buscan asilo en los Estados Unidos. Es una política antojadiza de la administración de Donald Trump que envía la siguiente advertencia: “Si tocas nuestra puerta o ingresas ilegalmente, te sucederá lo mismo”.
  • La inmigración ilegal debe ser sancionada, pero utilizar a los niños y hasta bebes como elemento punitivo contra los padres es un error muy grande. El solo hecho de afectar negativamente la libertad, los derechos parentales y el interés superior del niño en pro de la ejecución de una política migratoria irregular es una decisión equivocada e inconstitucional.
  • La religión y la Biblia nunca deben ser utilizados para justificar un trato inhumano o injusto. Creas o no creas en ella, la separación de familias no es una cuestión de religión o lectura de pasajes de la biblia, sino de moralidad.
  • La ética parlamentaria debe de estar por encima de cualquier enfrentamiento político, especialmente en asuntos donde esta involucrada la protección del interés superior del niño.

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Department of Homeland Security planning to collect social media info on all immigrants

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The Department of Homeland Security has moved to collect social media information on all immigrants, including permanent residents and naturalized citizens.

A new rule published in the Federal Register last week calls to include “social media handles and aliases, associated identifiable information and search results” in the department’s immigrant files.

BuzzFeed News first reported the new rule on Monday. It is set to go into effect on Oct. 18 after a public comment period.

According to BuzzFeed, the new rule could also affect U.S. citizens who communicate with immigrants on social media by making their conversations the subject of government surveillance.

Read more at: thehill

Trump Moves to End DACA and Calls on Congress to Act

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WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, calling it an “amnesty-first approach” and urging Congress to pass a replacement before he begins phasing out its protections in six months.

As early as March, officials said, some of the 800,000 young adults brought to the United States illegally as children who qualify for the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, will become eligible for deportation. The five-year-old policy allows them to remain without fear of immediate removal from the country and gives them the right to work legally.

Mr. Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who announced the change at the Justice Department, both used the aggrieved language of anti-immigrant activists, arguing that those in the country illegally are lawbreakers who hurt native-born Americans by usurping their jobs and pushing down wages.

Mr. Trump said in a statement that he was driven by a concern for “the millions of Americans victimized by this unfair system.” Mr. Sessions said the program had “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”

Protests broke out in front of the White House and the Justice Department and in cities across the country soon after Mr. Sessions’s announcement. Democrats and some Republicans, business executives, college presidents and immigration activists condemned the move as a coldhearted and shortsighted effort that was unfair to the young immigrants and could harm the economy.

“This is a sad day for our country,” Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, wrote on his personal page. “It is particularly cruel to offer young people the American dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it.”

Former President Barack Obama, who had warned that any threat to the program would prompt him to speak out, called his successor’s decision “wrong,” “self-defeating” and “cruel.”

“Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn’t threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us,” Mr. Obama wrote on Facebook.

Both he and Mr. Trump said the onus was now on lawmakers to protect the young immigrants as part of a broader overhaul of the immigration system that would also toughen enforcement.

But despite broad and longstanding bipartisan support for measures to legalize unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children, the odds of a sweeping immigration deal in a deeply divided Congress appeared long. Legislation to protect the “dreamers” has also repeatedly died in Congress.

Just hours after the angry reaction to Mr. Trump’s decision, the president appeared to have second thoughts. In a late-evening tweet, Mr. Trump specifically called on Congress to “legalize DACA,” something his administration’s officials had declined to do earlier in the day.

Mr. Trump also warned lawmakers that if they do not legislate a program similar to the one Mr. Obama created through executive authority, he will “revisit this issue!” — a statement sure to inject more uncertainty into the ultimate fate of the young, undocumented immigrants who have been benefiting from the program since 2012.

Conservatives praised Mr. Trump’s move, though some expressed frustration that he had taken so long to rescind the program and that the gradual phaseout could mean that some immigrants retained protection from deportation until October 2019.

The White House portrayed the decision as a matter of legal necessity, given that nine Republican state attorneys general had threatened to sue to halt the program immediately if Mr. Trump did not act.

Months of internal White House debate preceded the move, as did the president’s public display of his own conflicted feelings. He once referred to DACA recipients as “incredible kids.”

The president’s wavering was reflected in a day of conflicting messages from him and his team. Hours after his statement was released, Mr. Trump told reporters that he had “great love” for the beneficiaries of the program he had just ended.

“I have a love for these people, and hopefully now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly,” he said. But he notably did not endorse bipartisan legislation to codify the program’s protections, leaving it unclear whether he would back such a solution.

Mr. Trump’s aides were negotiating late into Monday evening with one another about precisely how the plan to wind down the program would be executed. Until Tuesday morning, some aides believed the president had settled on a plan that would be more generous, giving more of the program’s recipients the option to renew their protections.

But even taking into account Mr. Trump’s contradictory language, the rollout of his decision was smoother than his early moves to crack down on immigration, particularly the botched execution in January of his ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

In addition to the public statement from Mr. Sessions and a White House question-and-answer session, the president was ready on Tuesday with the lengthy written statement, and officials at the Justice and Homeland Security Departments provided detailed briefings and distributed information to reporters in advance.

Mr. Trump sought to portray his move as a compassionate effort to head off the expected legal challenge that White House officials said would have forced an immediate and highly disruptive end to the program. But he also denounced the policy, saying it helped spark a “massive surge” of immigrants from Central America, some of whom went on to become members of violent gangs like MS-13. Some immigration critics contend that programs like DACA, started under Mr. Obama, encouraged Central Americans to enter the United States, hoping to stay permanently. Tens of thousands of migrants surged across America’s southern border in the summer of 2014, many of them children fleeing dangerous gangs.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, indicated that Mr. Trump would support legislation to “fix” the DACA program, as long as Congress passed it as part of a broader immigration overhaul to strengthen the border, protect American jobs and enhance enforcement.

“The president wants to see responsible immigration reform, and he wants that to be part of it,” Ms. Sanders said, referring to a permanent solution for the young immigrants. “Something needs to be done. It’s Congress’s job to do that. And we want to be part of that process.”

Later on Tuesday, Marc Short, Mr. Trump’s top legislative official, told reporters on Capitol Hill that the White House would release principles for such a plan in the coming days, input that at least one key member of Congress indicated would be crucial.

“It is important that the White House clearly outline what kind of legislation the president is willing to sign,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said in a statement. “We have no time to waste on ideas that do not have the votes to pass or that the president won’t sign.”

The announcement was an effort by Mr. Trump to honor the law-and-order message of his campaign, which included a repeated pledge to end Mr. Obama’s immigration policy, while seeking to avoid the emotionally charged and politically perilous consequences of targeting a sympathetic group of immigrants.

Mr. Trump’s decision came less than two weeks after he pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who drew intense criticism for his aggressive pursuit of unauthorized immigrants, which earned him a criminal contempt conviction.

The blame-averse president told a confidante over the past few days that he realized that he had gotten himself into a politically untenable position. As late as one hour before the decision was to be announced, administration officials privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would change his mind, according to a person familiar with their thinking who was not authorized to comment on it and spoke on condition of anonymity.

But ultimately, the president followed through on his campaign pledge at the urging of Mr. Sessions and other hard-line members inside his White House, including Stephen Miller, his top domestic policy adviser.

The announcement started the clock on revoking legal status from those protected under the program.

Officials said DACA recipients whose legal status expires on or before March 5 would be able to renew their two-year period of legal status as long as they apply by Oct. 5. But the announcement means that if Congress fails to act, immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children could face deportation as early as March 6 to countries where many left at such young ages that they have no memory of them.

Immigration officials said they did not intend to actively target the young immigrants as priorities for deportation, though without the program’s protection, they would be considered subject to removal from the United States and would no longer be able to work legally.

Officials said some of the young immigrants could be prevented from returning to the United States if they traveled abroad.

Immigration advocates took little comfort from the administration’s assurances, describing the president’s decision as deeply disturbing and vowing to shift their demands for protections to Capitol Hill.

Marielena Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, called Mr. Trump’s decision “nothing short of hypocrisy, cruelty and cowardice.” Maria Praeli, a recipient of protection under the program, criticized Mr. Sessions and Mr. Trump for talking “about us as if we don’t matter and as if this isn’t our home.”

The Mexican foreign ministry issued a statement saying the “Mexican government deeply regrets” Mr. Trump’s decision.

As recently as July, Mr. Trump expressed skepticism about the prospect of a broad legislative deal.

“What I’d like to do is a comprehensive immigration plan,” he told reporters. “But our country and political forces are not ready yet.”

As for DACA, he said: “There are two sides of a story. It’s always tough.”

In: nytimes

Mercosur suspende membresía de Venezuela

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Los cancilleres de los países fundadores del Mercosur aplicaron la cláusula democrática de la organización y suspendieron la membresía de Venezuela alegando que el Gobierno de ese país rompió el hilo constitucional.

Imagen: http://www.mercosur.int/innovaportal/file/3862/2/mapa-web-es-min.jpg

Este sábado (5.8.2017), el canciller brasileño, Aloysio Nunes, informó desde Sao Paulo, que los Estados fundadores del Mercado Común del Sur (Mercsour) –Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay y Uruguay– habían optado por cancelar indefinidamente la membresía de Venezuela, que se había unido a ese bloque en 2012. Nunes habló de una “suspensión de naturaleza política, por consenso; una sanción grave de naturaleza política contra Venezuela”. Los ministros de Exteriores del Mercosur aplicaron la cláusula democrática del organismo –el Protocolo de Ushuaia– alegando que el “hombre fuerte” de Caracas, Nicolás Maduro, ha roto el hilo constitucional de Venezuela.

Aunque la cláusula en cuestión permite la aplicación de sanciones económicas a los países en los que se arremeta contra el Estado de derecho, Nunes subrayó que “no está prevista una sanción comercial”, sino una medida de “aislamiento político”. Analistas de la crisis venezolana dudan que esta medida u otras de carácter comercial ejerzan presión efectiva sobre Maduro para obligarlo a retornar a la vereda democrática. La razón: el comercio entre Mercosur y Venezuela ya ha caído un 66,7 por ciento desde su ingreso en 2012, al pasar de un volumen total de 9.742 millones de dólares a 3.240 millones a cierre de 2016, según un informe de la consultora privada Abeceb publicado este mismo 5 de agosto.

De acuerdo a los datos del reporte de Abeceb, en el último lustro las exportaciones del Mercosur hacia Venezuela descendieron un 63,8 por ciento, de 7.761 millones de dólares a 2.807 millones; mientras que las importaciones desde el país caribeño sufrieron un desplome aún mayor, del 78,14 %, de 1.981 a 433. Las cifras ofrecidas por Abeceb muestran que el retroceso de la actividad comercial se produjo principalmente en los últimos dos años, debido a la crisis económica vivida en el país, que según las previsiones de la consultora provocará este año una caída del PIB de más del 10 por ciento.

Dentro de Mercosur, los principales exportadores hacia Venezuela en 2016 fueron Argentina y Brasil, con el 52 por ciento y el 45 por ciento de las ventas totales, respectivamente, mientras que las de Paraguay y Uruguay apenas representaron el 2 por ciento y el 1 por ciento, respectivamente. En cuanto a las importaciones, Brasil fue con diferencia el mayor comprador de bienes venezolanos, con el 96 por ciento del total; en tanto que Argentina supuso el 3 por ciento; Paraguay, el 1 por ciento y Uruguay, un porcentaje cercano al 0 por ciento. Los alimentos totalizaron más de la mitad de las exportaciones de Mercosur hacia Venezuela, y de 2012 a 2016 descendieron un 53,7 por ciento.

Por otro lado, los productos más demandados a Venezuela por los socios del bloque comercial, con casi dos terceras partes, fueron los relacionados con los combustibles y lubricantes –especialmente el petróleo–, que en los últimos cinco años experimentaron un retroceso del 83,7 por ciento.

En: DW

Contra el ecumenismo del odio

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El Vaticano critica a los fundamentalistas xenófobos e islamófobos en un artículo de la revista de los jesuitas visado por el propio Papa y por el secretario de Estado

El papa Francisco, entre Ivanka (izquierda) y Melania Trump (derecha), en una audiencia en el Vaticano el 24 de mayo pasado. ALESSANDRA TARANTINO (REUTERS)

¿Quién se acuerda de Charles Maurras? Murió hace más de 60 años mientras cumplía cadena perpetua por complicidad con el enemigo alemán durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Fue extraordinaria su influencia intelectual sobre las derechas más extremas europeas, incluidas las españolas, a través de su partido antisemita, ultra y monárquico, Action Française, sobre todo entre las dos guerras mundiales. Igual de extraordinaria fue su tormentosa relación con la Santa Sede, que terminó con su excomunión y las de su seguidores y con la inclusión de un puñado de sus escritos y de la propia revista que dirigía en el Índice de Libros Prohibidos.

El tiempo de las excomuniones y del Índice de los Libros Prohibidos queda lejos, olvidado ya. Roma ya no hace cosas así, al menos desde el Concilio Vaticano II. Pero si las hiciera, no hay duda de que ahora tendríamos algo parecido a un caso Maurras a propósito de las turbulentas ideas y propuestas políticas del presidente Trump y más concretamente de su consejero estratégico Steve Bannon,un príncipe de las tinieblas que inspira las políticas más extremistas de la actual Casa Blanca, como el muro con México y el muslim ban o prohibición de entrada en EE UU a ciudadanos de seis países musulmanes.

Steve Bannon es católico, mientras que Donald Trump nació en una familia presbiteriana. La religiosidad personal de ambos es más que dudosa, como le sucedía a Maurras, hasta el punto de que fue el agnosticismo del escritor francés el que le condujo a la condena eclesial. Bannon se ha divorciado dos veces a pesar de la indisolubilidad del matrimonio católico, y de Trump se desconoce si practica o si tiene siquiera alguna idea religiosa. Pero en ambos cuenta la religión como visión política del mundo, y ahí es donde el Vaticano tiene algo que decir y lo ha dicho, uniendo además en una misma crítica al catolicismo integrista y al fundamentalismo evangelista que tan buen servicio les ha rendido al Partido Republicano para ganar en las elecciones presidenciales.

Aunque el mensaje es bien claro, en cuanto a quien lo emite y a lo que dice, la vía escogida por el Vaticano es sutil e indirecta. Ha sido la revista de los jesuitas Civiltà Cattolica la que lo ha transmitido, a través de un artículo, titulado ‘Fundamentalismo evangélico e integrismo católico en Estados Unidos, un ecumenismo sorprendente’, firmado por su director, el italiano Antonio Spadaro, y por el protestante argentino Marcelo Figueroa. Un católico y un protestante denuncian precisamente la colusión de católicos y protestantes extremistas estadounidenses en un mismo pensamiento al que califican de “ecumenismo del odio”. Según el diario italiano La Repubblica, el papa Francisco en persona, el secretario de Estado Pietro Parolin y el secretario para las Relaciones con Estados Unidos, Paul Richard Gallagher, han corregido y visado el artículo.

El papa Francisco rechaza la narrativa del miedo y de la inseguridad, sobre la que Trump y su derecha alternativa construyen muros ideológicos

La primera característica de esta desviación teológica es el maniqueísmo, un “lenguaje que divide la realidad entre el Bien absoluto y el Mal absoluto”, cuestión en la que los autores citan al propio presidente Trump y que sitúa a los inmigrantes y a los musulmanes entre las amenazas al sistema de vida de Estados Unidos.Una segunda característica que denuncian Spadaro y Figueroa es el carácter de Teología de la Prosperidad que comparten los dos extremismos católico y evangelista. Su evangelio para ricos, difundido por organizaciones y pastores multimillonarios, predica una idea autojustificativa de que “Dios desea que sus seguidores tengan salud física, sean prósperos y personalmente felices”. La tercera característica es una defensa muy peculiar de la libertad religiosa, en la que extremistas católicos y protestantes se unen en cuestiones como la oposición al aborto y al matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo o la educación religiosa en la escuela, y propugnan un sometimiento de las instituciones del Estado a las ideas religiosas e incluso a la Biblia muy similar al que inspira al fundamentalismo islámico.

Esta visión del mundo proporciona una justificación teológica a la guerra y alienta la esperanza religiosa con la expectativa de un enfrentamiento apocalíptico y definitivo entre el Bien y el Mal. Las afinidades con la idea islamista radical de la yihad son bien claras. El artículo denuncia la web de extrema derecha Church Militant, que atribuye la victoria de Trump a las oraciones de los estadounidenses, propugna la guerra de religiones y profesa el llamado dominionismo, que es una lectura literalista del Genésis en la que el hombre es el centro de un universo a su entero servicio. Los dominionistas consideran anticristianos a los ecologistas y observan los desastres naturales y el cambio climático como irremediables signos escatológicos de un final de los tiempos apocalíptico, que no hay que obstaculizar, sino todo lo contrario.

No es posible comprender esta fuerte arremetida del Vaticano contra la extrema derecha estadounidense sin recordar la intervención de Steve Bannon en una conferencia celebrada en el Vaticano en 2014, en la que denunció la secularización excesiva de Occidente y anunció “la proximidad de un conflicto brutal y sangriento, (…) una guerra global contra el fascismo islámico”, en la que “esta nueva barbarie que ahora empieza erradicará todo lo que nos ha sido legado en los últimos dos mil o dos mil quinientos años”. También hay que situarlo en el marco de tensiones entre la Casa Blanca y el Vaticano a propósito de Oriente Próximo, especialmente tras el primer viaje de Trump en el que pretendió conectar con las tres religiones, islam, judaísmo y catolicismo, pero terminó convirtiéndose en un reforzamiento de la alianza con Arabia Saudí y un estímulo al enfrentamiento con Teherán, con consecuencias inmediatas en el bloqueo a Qatar.

El pontífice no solo discrepa de sus propuestas sobre ecología, inmigración o impuestos, sino que rechaza su estrategia en favor de Riad

Curiosamente, Spadaro y Figueroa defienden las raíces cristianas de Europa, pero con una argumentación inversa a la que se escuchaba en tiempos de Ratzinger, de la que ha desaparecido el supremacismo cristiano y blanco. “El triunfalismo, la arrogancia y el etnicismo vengativo son exactamente lo contrario del cristianismo”, aseguran. El artículo termina recordando que el papa Francisco combate la narrativa del miedo y la manipulación de la inseguridad y de la ansiedad de la gente, evita la reducción del Islam al terrorismo islamista y rechaza la idea de una guerra santa contra el islam o la construcción de muros físicos e ideológicos. Con la denuncia del ecumenismo del odio, el Vaticano sitúa a Steve Bannon y Donald Trump en un infierno ideológico análogo al que abrió las puertas a Maurras en 1927, ahora hace justo 90 años, en el que se encuentran condenados los políticos que utilizan la religión para dividir en vez de unir a los seres humanos.

En: elpais

 

A reporter pressed the White House for data. That’s when things got tense.

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Wednesday’s White House news briefing began not with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders but with senior adviser Stephen Miller, whose nationalist immigration positions have been highly influential in the administration. Miller was at the lectern to discuss the Raise Act, legislation crafted by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) and introduced by President Trump earlier in the day.

During his brief stint addressing the White House press corps, Miller got into two serious arguments with reporters, an impressive if not surprising accomplishment. One, with CNN’s Jim Acosta, included accusations of Acosta having a “cosmopolitan bias” in his thinking about immigration. (Worth noting: Acosta is the son of immigrants.) But the other, a dust-up with the New York Times’ Glenn Thrush, was more significant.

Before getting into that, though, it’s worth isolating part of Miller’s introduction to the topic, the sentence that formed the crux of his rhetoric in defense of a bill that will slice legal immigration in half if it is enacted into law.

“You’ve seen over time as a result of this historic flow of unskilled immigration,” Miller said, “a shift in wealth from the working class to wealthier corporations and businesses, and it’s been very unfair for American workers, but especially for immigrant workers, African American workers and Hispanic workers, and blue-collar workers in general across the country.”

That line does two things that are essential to Miller’s sales pitch. First, it blames income inequality — assuming that money headed to “wealthier corporations” means to those corporations’ owners — on increased immigration. Second, it highlights the effects on black, Hispanic and immigrant workers in particular.

There has been research that links increased income inequality to immigration. A 2015 paper by a trio of researchers found just such a link. But assuming that link, it’s clearly not the only — or even the primary — driver of income inequality. A graph created by those researchers makes clear that the inequality (as measured with the Gini coefficient) would be nearly as high without the effects of immigration.

Image: https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2017/08/Screen-Shot-2017-08-02-at-4.30.41-PM.png&w=1484

The effect of immigrants, the researchers say, is “modest.” But Miller presents the “shift in wealth” as being a “result” of the flow of unskilled immigrants. In other analyses of that increased gap, immigration isn’t mentioned.

Miller’s suggestion that those most affected by this shift are other communities of color, meanwhile, is a classic tactic aimed at appealing to working-class Americans and nonwhite voters by blaming immigrants for their problems. (Hillary Clinton did something similarduring a debate in the 2008 primaries.)

When Miller began to take questions, Thrush asked him very specifically for data to back up his points.

THRUSH: First of all, let’s have some statistics. There have been a lot of studies out there that don’t show a correlation between low-skilled immigration and the loss of jobs for native workers. Cite for me, if you could, one or two studies with specific numbers that prove the correlation between those two things, because your entire policy is based on that. …

MILLER: I think the most recent study I would point to is the study from George Borjas that he just did about the Mariel Boatlift. And he went back and reexamined and opened up the old data and talked about how it actually did reduce wages for workers who were living there at the time.

And Borjas has, of course, done enormous amounts of research on this, as has the — Peter Kirsanow on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, as has Steve Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies, and so on and so on.

We’ll jump in here first to note that Miller offered no statistics but did point to one study.

That study from Borjas looked at the migration of more than 100,000 Cubans into Florida in 1980. Borjas found that wages among the least-educated workers in Miami dropped 10 to 30 percent as a result of the influx. Borjas’s study was a direct rebuttal to a 1990 study by David Card, which found “virtually no effect” on wages or unemployment rates, even among the Cuban immigrant community that was already in the area.

Borjas’s study was itself soon rebutted, as the National Review noted, with researchers pointing out that he didn’t account for other demographic shifts in the area that may have had a significant effect on wages.

Miller also notes two other individuals, one of whom works for the staunchly anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies — and then implies a surfeit of other data with a casual “and so on, and so on.”

THRUSH: What about the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine? …

MILLER: One recent study said that as much as $300 billion a year may be lost as a result of our current immigration system, in terms of folks drawing more public benefits than they’re paying in.

Thrush raises a recent study showing that immigrants don’t take the jobs of native-born Americans, with the exception of teenagers who didn’t finish high school, who saw a drop in hours of work.

Miller responds by noting that the study also found that new immigrants cost nearly $300 billion a year more in government spending than they pay in taxes — though that’s the far end of a spectrum of estimates that starts at $43 billion. By the second generation, immigrant families add a net of $30 billion a year.

Then things got tense.

MILLER: But let’s also use common sense here, folks. At the end of the day, why do special interests want to bring in more low-skill workers? And why, historically …

THRUSH: I’m not asking for common sense. I’m asking for specific statistical data. How many …

MILLER: Well, I think it’s very clear, Glenn, that you’re not asking for common sense. But if I could just answer — if I could just answer your question …

THRUSH: Common sense is fungible, statistics are not.

MILLER: … I named — I named — I named the studies, Glenn.

THRUSH: Let me just finish the question …

MILLER: Glenn. Glenn.

THRUSH: Tell me the …

MILLER: I named the studies. I named the studies.

Again: He named one study. At this point, it got personal.

THRUSH: I asked you for a statistic. Can you tell me how many — how many …

MILLER: Glenn. The — maybe we’ll make a carve-out in the bill that says the New York Times can hire all the low-skilled, less-paid workers they want from other countries and see how you feel then about low-wage substitution. …

You know, maybe it’s time we had compassion, Glenn, for American workers. President Trump has met with American workers who have been replaced by foreign workers.

THRUSH: Stephen, I’m not questioning any of that. I’m asking …

MILLER: And ask them — ask them how this has affected their lives.

The exchange went on in this vein for a while, with Miller ultimately pointing not to statistical data showing a need for the policy but to general statistics about unemployment.

Ultimately, Miller again asked Thrush to set aside his request for data and to consider common sense.

“The reality is that if you just use common sense — and, yes, I will use common sense,” Miller said, “the reason why some companies want to bring in more unskilled labor is because they know that it drives down wages and reduces labor costs. Our question as a government is, to whom is our duty? Our duty is to U.S. citizens and U.S. workers, to promote rising wages for them.”

That raised an obvious question, which other reporters subsequently jumped on: Why do Trump’s private businesses continue to seek visas allowing them to hire immigrants for low-wage jobs?

“I’ll just refer everyone here today back to the president’s comments during the primary, when this was raised in a debate,” Miller replied, “and he said: ‘My job as a businessman is to follow the laws of the United States. And my job as president is to create an immigration system that works for American workers.’ ”

It’s just common sense.

Emma Lazarus Poem at Statue of Liberty. Image: http://patriotretort.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Only-a-poem.jpg

In: washingtonpost

Border Patrol and Sheriff Stumped. Politely Executed.

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La Carta de los Derechos de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos señala en la Cuarta Enmienda:

“El derecho de los habitantes de que sus personas, domicilios, papeles y efectos se hallen a salvo de pesquisas y aprehensiones arbitrarias, será inviolable, y no se expedirán al efecto mandamientos que no se apoyen en un motivo verosímil, estén corroborados mediante juramento o protesta y describan con particularidad el lugar que deba ser registrado y las personas o cosas que han de ser detenidas o embargadas.”

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Así mismo, la Primera Enmienda:

“El Congreso no podrá hacer ninguna ley con respecto al establecimiento de la religión, ni prohibiendo la libre práctica de la misma; ni limitando la libertad de expresión, ni de prensa; ni el derecho a la asamblea pacífica de las personas, ni de solicitar al gobierno una compensación de agravios.”

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

How bosses are (literally) like dictators

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Americans think they live in a democracy. But their workplaces are small tyrannies.

Some Amazon warehouse workers have complained about being pushed beyond their abilities by their bosses. Boston Globe / Getty

Updated by Elizabeth Anderson  Jul 17, 2017, 8:20am EDT

Consider some facts about how American employers control their workers. Amazon prohibits employees from exchanging casual remarks while on duty, calling this “time theft.” Apple inspects the personal belongings of its retail workers, some of whom lose up to a half-hour of unpaid time every day as they wait in line to be searched. Tyson prevents its poultry workers from using the bathroom. Some have been forced to urinate on themselves while their supervisors mock them.

About half of US employees have been subject to suspicionless drug screening by their employers. Millions are pressured by their employers to support particular political causes or candidates. Soon employers will be empowered to withhold contraception coveragefrom their employees’ health insurance. They already have the right to penalize workers for failure to exercise and diet, by charging them higher health insurance premiums.

How should we understand these sweeping powers that employers have to regulate their employees’ lives, both on and off duty? Most people don’t use the term in this context, but wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in some domain of life, that authority is a government

We usually assume that “government” refers to state authorities. Yet the state is only one kind of government. Every organization needs some way to govern itself — to designate who has authority to make decisions concerning its affairs, what their powers are, and what consequences they may mete out to those beneath them in the organizational chart who fail to do their part in carrying out the organization’s decisions.

Managers in private firms can impose, for almost any reason, sanctions including job loss, demotion, pay cuts, worse hours, worse conditions, and harassment. The top managers of firms are therefore the heads of little governments, who rule their workers while they are at work — and often even when they are off duty.

Every government has a constitution, which determines whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, or something else. In a democracy like the United States, the government is “public.” This means it is properly the business of the governed: transparent to them and servant to their interests. They have a voice and the power to hold rulers accountable.

Not every government is public in this way. When King Louis XIV of France said, “L’etat, c’est moi,” he meant that his government was his business alone, something he kept private from those he governed. They weren’t entitled to know how he operated it, had no standing to insist he take their interests into account in his decisions, and no right to hold him accountable for his actions.

Over time, national governments have become “public,” but in the US workplace governments remain resolutely “private”

Like Louis XIV’s government, the typical American workplace is kept private from those it governs. Managers often conceal decisions of vital interest to their workers. Often, they don’t even give advance notice of firm closures and layoffs. They are free to sacrifice workers’ dignity in dominating and humiliating their subordinates. Most employer harassment of workers is perfectly legal, as long as bosses mete it out on an equal-opportunity basis. (Walmart and Amazon managers are notorious for berating and belittling their workers.) And workers have virtually no power to hold their bosses accountable for such abuses: They can’t fire their bosses, and can’t sue them for mistreatment except in a very narrow range of cases, mostly having to do with discrimination.

Why are workers subject to private government? The state has set the default terms of the constitution of workplace government through its employment laws. The most important source of employers’ power is the default rule of employment at will. Unless the parties have otherwise agreed, employers are free to fire workers for almost any or no reason. This amounts to an effective grant of power to employers to rule the lives of their employees in almost any respect — not just on the job but off duty as well. And they have exercised that power.

Scotts, the lawn care company, fired an employee for smoking off duty. After Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) notified Lakeland Bank that an employee had complained he wasn’t holding town hall meetings, the bank intimidated her into resigning. San Diego Christian College fired a teacher for having premarital sex — and hired her fiancé to fill her post. Bosses are dictators, and workers are their subjects.

American public discourse doesn’t give us helpful ways to talk about the dictatorial rule of employers. Instead, we talk as if workers aren’t ruled by their bosses. We are told that unregulated markets make us free, and that the only threat to our liberties is the state. We are told that in the market, all transactions are voluntary. We are told that since workers freely enter and exit the labor contract, they are perfectly free under it. We prize our skepticism about “government,” without extending our critique to workplace dictatorship.

The earliest champions of free markets envisioned a world of self-employment

Why do we talk like this? The answer takes us back to free market ideas developed before the Industrial Revolution. In 17th- and 18th-century Britain, big merchants got the state to grant them monopolies over trade in particular goods, forcing small craftsmen to submit to their regulations. A handful of aristocratic families enjoyed a monopoly on land, due to primogeniture and entail, which barred the breakup and sale of any part of large estates. Farmers could rent their land only on short-term leases, which forced them to bow and scrape before their landlords, in a condition of subordination not much different from servants, who lived in their masters’ households and had to obey their rules.

The problem was that the state had rigged the rules of the market in favor of the rich. Confronted with this economic situation, many people argued that free markets would promote equality and workers’ interests by enabling them to go into business for themselves and thereby escapesubordination to the owners of capital.

No wonder some of the early advocates of free markets in 17th-century England were called “Levellers.” These radicals, who emerged during the English civil war, wanted to abolish the monopolies held by the big merchants and aristocrats. They saw the prospects of greater equality that might come from opening up to ordinary workers opportunities for manufacture, trade, and farming one’s own land.

Marchers in Burford, England, celebrate the “levellers,” who sought to overthrow monopolies in the 17th century. Tim Graham / Getty

In the 18th century, Adam Smith was the greatest advocate for the view that replacing monopolies, primogeniture, entail, and involuntary servitude with free markets would enable laborers to work on their own behalf. His key assumption was that incentives were more powerful than economies of scale. When workers get to keep all of the fruits of their labor, as they do when self-employed, they will work much harder and more efficiently than if they are employed by a master, who takes a cut of what they produce. Indolent aristocratic landowners can’t compete with yeoman farmers without laws preventing land sales. Free markets in land, labor, and commerce will therefore lead to the triumph of the most efficient producer, the self-employed worker, and the demise of the idle, stupid, rent-seeking rentier.

Smith and his contemporaries looked across the Atlantic and saw that America appeared to be realizing these hopes — although only for white men. The great majority of the free population in the Revolutionary period was self-employed, as either a yeoman farmer or an independent artisan or merchant.

In the United States, Thomas Paine was the great promoter of this vision. Indeed, his views on political economy sound as if they could have been ripped out of the GOP Freedom Caucus playbook. Paine argued that individuals can solve nearly all of their problems on their own, without state meddling. A good government does nothing more than secure individuals in “peace and safety” in the free pursuit of their occupations, with the lowest possible tax burden. Taxation is theft. People living off government pay are social parasites. Government is the chief cause of poverty. Paine was a lifelong advocate of commerce, free trade, and free markets. He called for hard money and fiscal responsibility.

Paine was the hero of labor radicals for decades after his death in 1809, because they shared his hope that free markets would yield an economy almost entirely composed of small proprietors. An economy of small proprietors offers a plausible model of a free society of equals: each individual personally independent, none taking orders from anyone else, everyone middle class.

Abraham Lincoln built on the vision of Smith and Paine, which helped to shape the two key planks of the Republican Party platform: opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories, and the Homestead Act. Slavery, after all, enabled masters to accumulate vast tracts of land, squeezing out small farmers and forcing them into wage labor. Prohibiting the extension of slavery into the territories and giving away small plots of land to anyone who would work it would realize a society of equals in which no one is ever consigned to wage labor for life. Lincoln, who helped create the political party that now defends the interests of business, never wavered from the proposition that true free labor meant freedom from wage labor.

The Industrial Revolution, however — well underway by Lincoln’s time — ultimately dashed the hopes of joining free markets with independent labor in a society of equals. Smith’s prediction — that economies of scale would be less important than the incentive effects of enabling workers to reap all the fruits of their labor — was defeated by industrial technologies that required massive accumulations of capital. The US, with its access to territories seized from Native Americans, was able to stave off the bankruptcy of self-employed farmers and other small proprietors for far longer than Europe. But industrialization, population growth, the closure of the frontier, and railroad monopolies doomed the sole proprietorship to the margins of the economy, even in North America.

The Industrial Revolution gave employers new powers over workers, but economists failed to adjust their vocabulary — or their analyses

The Smith-Paine-Lincoln libertarian vision was rendered largely irrelevant by industrialization, which created a new model of wage labor, with large companies taking the place of large landowners. Yet strangely, many people persist in using Smith’s and Paine’s rhetoric to describe the world we live in today. We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control — but most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government. A vision of what egalitarians hoped market society would deliver before the Industrial Revolution — a world without private workplace government, with producers interacting only through markets and the state — has been blindly carried over to the modern economy by libertarians and their pro-business fellow travelers.

There is a condition called hemiagnosia, whose sufferers cannot perceive one half of their bodies. A large class of libertarian-leaning thinkers and politicians, with considerable public following, resemble patients with this condition: They cannot perceive half of the economy — the half that takes place beyond the market, after the employment contract is accepted, where workers are subject to private, arbitrary, unaccountable government.

What can we do about this? Americans are used to complaining about how government regulation restricts our freedom. So we should recognize that such complaints apply, with at least as much force, to private governments of the workplace. For while the punishments employers can impose for disobedience aren’t as severe as those available to the state, the scope of employers’ authority over workers is more sweeping and exacting, its power more arbitrary and unaccountable. Therefore, it is high time we considered remedies for reining in the private government of the workplace similar to those we have long insisted should apply to the state.

Three types of remedy are of special importance. First, recall a key demand the United States made of communist dictatorships during the Cold War: Let dissenters leave. Although workers are formally free to leave their workplace dictatorships, they often pay a steep price. Nearly one-fifth of American workers labor under noncompete clauses. This means they can’t work in the same industry if they quit or are fired.

And it’s not just engineers and other “knowledge economy” workers who are restricted in this way: Even some minimum wage workers are forced to sign noncompetes. Workers who must leave their human capital behind are not truly free to quit. Every state should follow California’s example and ban noncompete clauses from work contracts.

We should clarify the rights that workers possess, and then defend them

Second, consider that if the state imposed surveillance and regulations on us in anything like the way that private employers do, we would rightly protest that our constitutional rights were being violated. American workers have few such rights against their bosses, and the rights they have are very weakly enforced. We should strengthen the constitutional rights that workers have against their employers, and rigorously enforce the ones the law already purports to recognize.

A Manchester clothes mill, 1909. This is not the world Adam Smith envisioned when he championed free markets. Topical Press Agency / Getty

Among the most important of these rights are to freedom of speech and association. This means employers shouldn’t be able to regulate workers’ off-duty speech and association, or informal non-harassing talk during breaks or on duty, if it does not unduly interfere with job performance. Nor should they be able to prevent workers from supporting the candidate of their choice.

Third, we should make the government of the workplace more public (in the sense that political scientists use the term). Workers need a real voice in how they are governed — not just the right to complain without getting fired, but an organized way to insist that their interests have weight in decisions about how work is organized.

One way to do this would be to strengthen the rights of labor unions to organize. Labor unions are a vital tool for checking abusive and exploitative employers. However, due to lax enforcement of laws protecting the right to organize and discuss workplace complaints, many workers are fired for these activities. And many workers shy away from unionization, because they prefer a collaborative to an adversarial relationship to their employer.

Yet even when employers are decent, workers could still use a voice. In many of the rich states of Europe, they already have one, even if they don’t belong to a union. It’s called “co-determination” — a system of joint workplace governance by workers and managers, which automatically applies to firms with more than a few dozen employees. Under co-determination, workers elect representatives to a works council, which participates in decision-making concerning hours, layoffs, plant closures, workplace conditions, and processes. Workers in publicly traded firms also elect some members of the board of directors of the firm.

Against these proposals, libertarian and neoliberal economists theorize that workers somehow suffer from provisions that would secure their dignity, autonomy, and voice at work. That’s because the efficiency of firms would, in theory, drop — along with profits, and therefore wages — if managers did not have maximum control of their workforce. These thinkers insist that employers already compensate workers for any “oppressive” conditions that may exist by offering higher wages. Workers are therefore free to make the trade-off between wages and workplace freedom when they seek a job.

This theory supposes, unrealistically, that entry-level workers already know how well they will be treated when they apply for jobs at different workplaces, and that low-paid workers have ready access to decent working conditions in the first place. It’s telling that the same workers who suffer the worst working conditions also suffer from massive wage theft. One study estimates that employers failed to pay $50 billion in legally mandated wages in one year. Two-thirds of workers in low-wage industries suffered wage theft, costing them nearly 15 percent of their total earnings. This is three times the amount of all other thefts in the United States.

If employers have such contempt for their employees that they steal their wages, how likely is it that they are making it up to them with better working conditions?

It’s also easy to theorize that workers are better off under employer dictatorship, because managers supposedly know best to govern the workplace efficiently. But if efficiency means that workers are forced to pee in their pants, why shouldn’t they have a say in whether such “efficiency” is worthwhile? The long history of American workers’ struggles to get the right to use the bathroom at work — something long enjoyed by our European counterparts — says enough about economists’ stunted notion of efficiency.

Meanwhile, our false rhetoric of workers’ “choice” continues to obscure the ways the state is handing ever more power to workplace dictators. The Trump administration’s Labor Department is working to roll back the Obama administration’s expansion of overtime pay. It is giving a free pass to federal contractors who have violated workplace safety and federal wage and hours laws. It has canceled the paycheck transparency rule, making it harder for women to know when they are being paid less for the same work as men.

Private government is arbitrary, unaccountable government. That’s what most Americans are subject to at work. The history of democracy is the history of turning governance from a private matter into a public one. It has been about making government public — answerable to the interests of citizens and not just the interests of their rulers. It’s time to apply the lessons we have learned from this history to the private government of the workplace. Workers deserve a voice not just on Capitol Hill but in Amazon warehouses, Silicon Valley technology companies, and meat-processing plants as well.

Elizabeth Anderson is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) (Princeton University Press, 2017).

In: vox

Law prof’s exam question on Brazilian wax is deemed harassment; is academic freedom threatened?

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Image: http://pensamientocolombia.org/AllUploads/ExternalColumns/ExternalCol_6_2015-03-30.jpg

A Howard University law professor says academics everywhere should be concerned by his school’s response to a 2015 exam question about a Brazilian bikini wax.

The school determined in May that the question by Professor Reginald Robinson constituted sexual harassment under school policy, report Law.com (sub. req.) and Inside Higher Ed in a story noted by TaxProf Blog.

The school placed a letter of reprimand in Robinson’s file, ordered him to attend sensitivity training and required him to submit future exam questions for advance review, according to a letter written on Robinson’s behalf by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

The exam question, part of Robinson’s agency law course, asked whether the owner of a day spa would win a demurrer motion in a suit filed by a customer who claimed improper touching by the licensed aesthetician who performed the procedure. The exam question asserted that the customer had slept through the wax, but thought something improper had occurred upon awakening.

The aesthetician had warned the customer about touching that would take place during the procedure, and the customer acknowledged in writing having received the aesthetician’s information, according to the exam hypothetical. (The correct answer was that a court would not find in favor of the customer.)

After the exam, Robinson asked volunteers to discuss the test questions. One volunteer said the customer would not sleep through a Brazilian wax. Robinson switched focus, and when the volunteer declined to explain her answer choice, Robinson sought answers from another volunteer, according to FIRE’s letter.

Two students filed a complaint. An administrator who found the question constituted sexual harassment cited use of the word “genital,” the students’ suspicion that the question was crafted to reveal personal details about themselves, their belief the revelations had a negative impact on them, and the administrator’s belief that the exam scenario wasn’t necessary to teach the subject.

In its June 16 letter, FIRE asked Howard University to rescind the sanctions and to respond to its request by June 30. Howard did not respond by the deadline, according to a FIRE press release.

Howard’s punishment “does not comport with its own definition of sexual harassment or its promises of academic freedom,” FIRE wrote in its letter. “It poses a severe threat not only to professors’ rights but also to students’ ability to learn all areas of the law, including learning how to analyze situations that may make some students uncomfortable.”

Robinson released a statement about his case through FIRE.

“My case should worry every faculty member at Howard University, and perhaps elsewhere, who teaches in substantive areas like law, medicine, history, and literature,” Robinson stated. “Why? None of these academic areas can be taught without evaluating and discussing contextual facts, especially unsavory and emotionally charged ones.”

In: abajournal

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