acquiescence

Are Americans finally tired of being the product?

If the service is free then you are the product—or variations on that phrase—is these days applied primarily to tech companies whose services are free contingent upon them harvesting users’ data, but is an idea that goes back much further. Still, at its heart it captures the idea that people are commodities; that businesses view them as numbers on a profit and loss statement. I would contend that Americans are more commodified than any other group of people but I question whether their acquiescence to that is as certain as it has been; that the spell has been broken.

Human no more

To be sure, Americans realise that they have been commodified; that as far as companies are concerned they are no longer human beings, individual entities, replete with souls. Instead they are consumers, aggregated together into groups whose motivations and desires are understood by focus group; who are then catered to by all the companies dependant upon consumption. And in this understanding, even if it is only a subconscious realisation, the American consumer knows that this is their social contract: that in exchange for being the unheralded drivers of the American economy, they got things they wanted — big cars, big houses, big televisions, big refrigerators — even though they knew that what they are getting, all these things, was somehow not what they really wanted, they were still happy to play the game because watching the Super Bowl on a huge television was great, wasn’t it? But the change in the majority of Americans’ fortunes over the decade since the devastation of the financial crisis is finally having a profound effect on the way they view themselves and their society.

Because the other side of the contract has been broken: Americans could afford the big tv, big house, and big refrigerator because they were well-paid (even if frequently over extended) but the well-paid jobs that used to be the mainstay of the middle class have disappeared without being replaced. And at the same time, more and more of an American’s life is commodified to the point where it knows no bounds.

Healthcare should be a Service, not an Industry

The most insidious commodification of the American individual occurs within the healthcare industry. Americans have been sold the lie that they alone should be masters of their care, choosing everything from their doctor and surgeon, to their cancer or COPD medication a la carte. And every part of the healthcare system reinforces this belief in order to profit from it.

The drug manufacturers sell their wares directly to the patient/consumer, incessant television advertisements telling them to ‘ask your doctor if x drug is right for you’, then they target the doctors, ensuring that drug is prescribed.

American hospitals are run as for profit enterprises. Ask yourself, if a hospital is in the business of business, of making money, where is that money coming from? From the difference between the cost of care and the amount charged for it. American lives are therefore, in the most visceral sense, the units by which a hospital makes money.

Add in the Health Insurance market and American healthcare is now so expensive that people just drop out of the system with the consequence that health outcomes in America are worse than any other comparable rich-world country.

Children, not Commodities

Education is another area where commodification and profit has become more insidious. Although it has long been the case that American universities are run for profit, it is only recently that large scale profiteering has filtered down to the school level. Uncontroversially, a typical American school district will allocate funds to a school based on the number of children that school has enrolled: If it costs x dollars to educate a child, then x dollars multiplied by the number of students enrolled equals the amount of money a school requires. And if there were only public schools, schools designed to offer education rather than turn a profit, then there would be no real value in attracting more students because the marginal gain in revenue would equal the cost of educating the additional child. But if you add in for-profit schools, like most Charter schools, then the dynamic totally changes. These schools compete for students, taking money from the school district in the same way as a public school, but seeing it as a revenue stream. More children equals more revenue. And a profit is returned based on the number of children they have enrolled. Teachers from the Los Angeles Unified School District just spent two weeks on strike because their public schools are dying, their pupils migrating to for-profit Charter schools.

A change is in the air

But maybe this is starting to change. As Americans realise how the social media giants make their money, as their education and healthcare costs spiral out of control with worse outcomes in both instances; as they feel the decline in living standards and income equality, the lack of social mobility and a distant political class that simply does not see their problems, they are starting to ask questions about their social contract.

Americans who have grown up disenfranchised by this system of commodification realize now that they want to correct the balance in favor of people and away from business. Business in all its forms but especially where it is found in those areas it doesn’t belong. And they have voted for this change, for people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are vocal in their desire for change; the idea that you can’t cross a chasm in several small jumps, you have to take one huge leap.

The Presidential election in less than two years time pushes all this to the forefront. The headlines are all about Medicaid-for-All and the Green New Deal, but at the heart of the change in American politics is this idea that people need to be treated as such, as ends in themselves, and not as numbers on spreadsheets. I hope very much that they are successful in giving Americans back their humanity.

Republicans could regret allowing Trump to use sham emergency

While we are confident that Connecticut’s House and Senate representatives in Washington, all Democrats, will push back against President Trump’s sham national emergency declaration, the prospects that enough Republicans from other states will join them appear slim.

And if, because of the unwillingness of Republican leaders to take a principled stand, Trump succeeds with his executive branch power grab, the damage to constitutional checks and balances will be substantial. Republicans could well come to regret their acquiescence when a Democrat is in the White House.

Those who are betting on the federal courts to save the day could be disappointed, because a year from now the Supreme Court might very well rule that Congress gave away its power of the purse constitutionally.

In the other words, the nation confronts a constitutional crisis because of political pandering. Having failed to convince a majority of Congress that funding for his border wall is a necessity, Trump wants to keep his base happy. So he comes up with a national emergency to fund it, able to tell his most ardent backers he is doing all he can to build the wall.

If he fails it will be the fault of the courts, or the biased media, or the Democrats — certainly not him.

Yet the facts are that Trump has tried to make his case for a crisis at the border and the solution of a “beautiful wall” since his run for the presidency in 2016. He promised, nonsensically, that Mexico would pay the bill. Once elected, Trump had the fortune of having his Republican Party controlling the House and Senate. Yet the president was unable to gain funding for his wall from the Republican Congress or Mexico.

In the lead up to the 2018 election, Trump doubled down on his fearful rhetoric about the southern border threat and what to do about it — a wall. The result was solid Democratic gains, including taking control of the House of Representatives.

Given those election results, it should have been no surprise to the president that the Democrats had no interest in providing massive funding for a border structure. Yet for 35 days, the country suffered through a needless partial government shutdown and Coast Guard personnel, air traffic controllers, transportation agents and other critical workers went unpaid, all because Trump signaled he would not sign a bill unless it included $5.7 billion in wall funding.

But he didn’t have the votes, just as all past presidents at times didn’t have the votes and had to live within the means provided by Congress, as the Constitution mandates.

Eventually Trump buckled, the government reopened and a budget won approval from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, including $1.3 billion for border security, which the president is free to use to improve or extend physical barriers along the southern border where it makes sense.

Trump signed the budget bill.

Now he is trying to use his national emergency declaration to get what he could not obtain through the democratic process, or at least to save face. According to the administration, the president plans to redirect $3.6 billion from the military’s construction budget, $2.5 billion from drug interdiction and $600 million in drug forfeiture funds to pay for wall construction.

Congress can stop this and should.

The 1976 law Trump is citing to claim his national emergency expenditure gives Congress the power to override it. The House will vote to do so. Enough Republicans, we suspect, will have the integrity to do likewise in the Republican-controlled Senate. But given an expected Trump veto, overturning the emergency declaration would then require two-thirds votes, and it is highly unlikely enough Republicans will stand up to Trump to get that number.

But before they support this behavior, Republicans might consider how a future Democratic president could use an emergency declaration to address gun violence, climate change or health care despite GOP opposition.

At the very least, Congress should re-examine that 1976 law that provides presidents far too much leeway in using emergency claims to legislate from the executive branch. Presidents have used it 59 times, though never so blatantly to get around the will of Congress.

The law provided an open portal for a demagogic president to exploit it. Now the nation has one.

The Day editorial board meets regularly with political, business and community leaders and convenes weekly to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Pat Richardson, Editorial Page Editor Paul Choiniere, retired Day editor Lisa McGinley, Managing Editor Tim Cotter and Staff Writer Julia Bergman. However, only the publisher and editorial page editor are responsible for developing the editorial opinions. The board operates independently from the Day newsroom.

Cohen: Our considered silence on Saudi Arabia is no better than Trump’s brazen acquiescence

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Oct. 23 he likely won't cancel a 2014 blockbuster sale of armored personnel carriers to Saudi Arabia as pressure mounts to hold Riyadh accountable for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP/Getty Images

It has been almost two months since Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Istanbul. For all the threats and cries in Canada and the United States, nothing much has changed.

In fact, a cynic might say that things are unfolding as expected. This is what happens in a world in which your friends are the enemies of your enemies – or, more crassly, you just want their money. Call it practical.

Donald Trump is in denial over the murder; the president of the United States refuses to believe the findings of his intelligence services, who believe that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia ordered the killing.

The man who swore that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States and claimed that millions of Americans voted illegally in 2016 now cannot believe that the crown prince was behind the killing. Trump says the prince says he didn’t know about it and, of course, he believes him.

In October, a shrewd observer in Washington told me what he thought would happen: the Israelis would appeal strenuously to Trump to preserve the alliance against Iran, keeping the Saudis in at all costs. The Americans would agree, shrug, and call the Middle East “a tough neighborhood” where bad things happen. They would give the Saudis “a slap on the wrist” over Khashoggi and move on.

Congress, for its part, may still suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. But for Trump, what’s the lousy life of a journalist against all that money and those jobs?

In Canada, things are more complicated. We don’t worry about the Israelis, the Iranians and geopolitical questions. We’re caught between commerce and conscience.

Our problem is that, like all civilized people, we are appalled that the Saudis killed Khashoggi. Before that, we were appalled that the Saudis tortured and imprisoned leading human rights activists. We said so, and the Saudis hit us with a suite of diplomatic and economic measures.

Since then, though, not much has been said. The Saudis are still selling us oil and their students remain here, at least for now. We have not cancelled the $15-billion contract between General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada and the Saudis. And there things sit.

For all intents and purposes, then, our considered silence on Saudi Arabia is no better than Trump’s brazen acquiescence. It amounts to the same thing: a de facto acceptance that a government can kill a journalist it doesn’t like, in another country, and get away with it.

Justin Trudeau says cancelling the contract would be expensive. It might cost us a billion dollars. And if we are not paying the Saudis for walking away, we would have to compensate the workers. Would we?

As Joe Castaldo reported insightfully in The Globe and Mail on the weekend, breaking the contract would have real economic and political consequences in and around London, Ontario. It would cost a lot of jobs and quite possibly cost the Liberals the two seats they hold there.

If the Liberals are considering cancelling the contract and compensating workers, that is now harder with General Motors closing its plant in Oshawa. If the Liberals have to find money for workers in Oshawa, they will have less for those in London.

But let’s ask ourselves: Is there something more important in selling arms to Saudi Arabia than politics and money? What about — dare we say it — morality?

Canada calls itself a progressive country with values as well as interests. We have never had colonies, never fought wars of conquest and never fought alone. We believe in democracy and decency, though we are often imperfect and hypocritical in choosing our trading partners, like China.

Here we are selling arms to a medieval regime that is using them to kill innocents indiscriminately in Yemen. This is helping them buttress a leadership that jails, tortures and kills without apology.

At the end of the day, if we stand for anything, we have only one choice: Cancel the contract.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, professor and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.

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