|
BUSH WATCH...PROGRESSIVE NEWS AND OPINION papers | most mailed | archives | yesterday | today | today's earlybird | today's update | home | contact MAINSTREAM FEEDS TO BUSH WATCH: | Opinion | New York Times | Washington Post | Los Angeles Times | Boston Globe | USA Today | Christian Science Monitor | Baltimore Sun | Chicago Tribune | San Francisco Chronicle | Lehrer Newshour | Slate | ABC Politics | Reuters Politics | Google | Toronto Star | Guardian (UK) | Independent (UK) | Internation Herald Tribune | Deutsche Welle | Der Spiegel | PROGRESSIVE FEEDS TO BUSH WATCH: | Common Dreams Opinion | Common Dreams News | The Nation | Village Voice | Salon | Mother Jones | Working For Change | AlterNet | Tom Paine | Crooks and Liars | Daily Kos | In These Times | Democracy Now! | Huffington Post |COLUMNISTS' FEEDS TO BUSH WATCH: | Benedetto | Broder | Cohen | Dionne, Jr. | Durst | Froomkin | Gonsalves | Goodwin | Hightower | Hoagland | Huffington | Ignatius | Ivins | Jackson | Kamen | King | Kinsley | Margolis | Meyerson | Milbank | Minbiot | Morsford | Scheer | Solomon | tba | If your favorite columnist is unlisted and has an rss feed, please provide details. |
[CaRP] XML error: Mismatched tag at line 231
AlterNet Blogs: Speakeasy Democracy Now!
MoJo Articles | Mother Jones When it comes to manipulating charitable giving for personal and political ends, Newt Gingrich wrote the book. In 1997, his charity work won him the dubious distinction of being the first House speaker ever disciplined by his peers for ethical wrongdoing. Congress fined Gingrich $300,000 in connection with claiming tax-exempt status for "Renewing American Civilization," a college course he'd taught for political purposes. Gingrich has been at it again. Over the past two years, a Gingrich charity called Renewing American Leadership paid $220,000 to Gingrich Communications, one of his for-profit companies. The purchases included books authored by Gingrich, such as The Fight for America's Future and Rediscovering God in America. Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, told ABC News that the arrangement violates the spirit of how nonprofits are supposed to work. Continue Reading » Vetting Romney's $3 Million in Charity by Josh Harkinson 3 Feb 2012 at 6:00am In 2010, Mitt Romney and his wife gave just under $3 million to charity, or about 15 percent of their $21.6 million income. That's a sizeable sum even by 1 percenter standards, which is why Romney's backers say it's unfair to castigate him for exploiting tax loopholes. "Mr. Romney's taxes reveal the most generous charitable donor to run for president in recent memory," writes National Review's Mona Charen. But generous towards whom? Just over half of Romney's 2010 giving went to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The Romneys didn't have much choice there: The church requires Mormons to tithe 10 percent of their income to remain members in good standing. The rest of the money went to the Tyler Foundation, a 501(c3) nonprofit funded exclusively by the Romneys. Though most of its donations defy criticism, others aren't exactly middle of the road. Continue Reading » Book Review: Consent of the Networked by Alyssa Battistoni 2 Feb 2012 at 8:17pm Courtesy of Basic BooksConsent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom By Rebecca MacKinnon BASIC BOOKS When Facebook filed for its initial public offering Wednesday, the company declared its mission was "to make the world more open and connected," and claimed that "by giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible." Those sentiments might have sounded lofty for a business deal, but they're of a piece with the techno-utopian vision at the heart of Silicon Valley—the kind of vision characterized by grand proclamations about Twitter revolutions and claims that "if you want to liberate a society, just give them the internet." In her timely new book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, Rebecca MacKinnon, a former journalist and current fellow at the New America Foundation, offers a sharp, sobering rebuttal to such heady rhetoric, questioning and complicating our understandings of what it means to be free online. For many in the United States, the recent SOPA/PIPA battle, which prompted a huge amount of attention to the politics of the web, will be an obvious reference point—but Consent of the Networked makes clear that it was just one part of an ongoing struggle over the Internet as a political terrain. MacKinnon's book presents a cogent picture of the many ways in which our lives, both online and off, are increasingly affected by regulators, politicians, and companies seeking to carve territories into the still-amorphous web. Continue Reading » The Right-Wing War on a Transgender Girl Scout by Nicole Pasulka 2 Feb 2012 at 4:20pm Three Girl Scout troops in Louisiana won't be hawking Thin Mints this year. They've disbanded in protest after the Girl Scouts of Colorado accepted seven-year-old transgender child Bobby Montoya as a member. Montoya was born a boy but has considered herself a girl since she was two years old, says her mom Felisha Archuleta. In October, Archuleta took her daughter to speak with a Denver troop leader about signing up, and took her daughter away crying after the Scout leader referred to the child as "it" and said "Everyone will know he's a boy." Three weeks later, the statewide Girl Scouts body issued a statement saying, "If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout." When they heard about this reversal, three moms and troop leaders in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana decided to dissolve their troops and leave Girl Scouts. Now, 95 years after the organization first starting selling cookies, its signature product has once again become a political pawn. Right-wing groups and some conservative parents and scouts have posted to a site called Honest Girl Scouts, YouTube, and Facebook pages—including one called "Make Girl Scouts Clean Again"—urging Girl Scouts everywhere to go on strike from selling cookies, and their parents to stop buying them. They want Girl Scouts USA to officially bans transgender children from membership, and kick out any known transgender scouts "hiding" in the troops. One of the former Louisiana troop leaders, a mother at Northland Christian School in Lacombe, told the Baptist Press that by letting Bobby Montoya join, the organization had created an "almost dangerous situation" for other children. Girl Scouts Louisiana East put up a new policy on its website saying transgender children wouldn't be allowed to join if they tried to apply there—as far as they know, none ever have. A video by a 14-year-old Girl Scout from Ventura, California, identified only as Taylor, was uploaded to YouTube Honest Girl Scouts, with Taylor reading off a script urging fellow Scouts to go on strike, claiming the Girl Scouts was putting girls in physical danger during sleepovers and field trips by allowing "transgender boys" to be there, and not letting the other girls know. "Unfortunately, I think it is because GSUSA cares more about promoting the desires of a small handful of people than it does for my safety and the safety of my friends and sister Girl Scouts, and they are doing it with money we earned for them from Girl Scout cookies." The video received 387,000 hits before the poster marked the video “private,” blocking it from the general public.
From a flier on the website HonestGirlScouts.com At this stage, the proposed boycotts are unlikely to have much effect on the organization's bottom line. Last year, Girl Scouts USA sold 198 million boxes for a record $714 million in profits, and despite what some urging the boycott seem to think, the national governing body doesn't actually pull revenue from local cookie drives; it makes money through membership dues, which are $12 a year per girl, and from contributions from foundations, corporations, and private individuals. Thirty percent of cookie profits go back to the two bakers that GSUSA has contracted with, and the rest are shared between local troops and 100 regional councils across the country—there's about two per state—so revenue from the cookie drives more or less stays in local communities. The national body charges the bakers a licensing fee for use of its brand on the cookie boxes, and says the proceeds go back to local scouts by way of materials and support. So what badge are they earning here, exactly? Source: rich701/flickr Beyond organizing cookie sales, local troop leaders and regional directors exert a surprising amount of autonomy over troop activities and membership decisions. While a Scout leader somewhere in upstate New York might decide to sponsor a sex-ed forum hosted by the local Planned Parenthood branch, a local leader in Chatanooga might sponsor abstinence-oriented activities instead. The national organization provides very little in the way of agenda-setting or cultural cues, beyond its ideologically flexible messaging about "empowerment, "paths to success," and reaching one's full potential. Continue Reading » Four Reasons to Watch the Super Bowl This Sunday by Robert Lipsyte 2 Feb 2012 at 2:54pm This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. Most Americans won't need a justification to watch Sunday's game, but if you're a TomDispatch.com reader you might think, even in passing, that celebrating the holiest day of violence, consumerism, and class warfare on your couch is a betrayal of your values or a waste of your time. You might even imagine that it would be better to take a hike, read a book, or meditate. Not this Sunday, buster. It's an election season. You need to watch this game to fully understand how jobs, religion, leadership, and healthcare dominate every American contest. 1. Joe Hill will be playing: Where else will be you be able to watch more than 100 young men, most of them African-American, working for high wages in a totally unionized shop? True, their jobs are dangerous (more on that later) and relatively short-term (typically three or four years), but they are also high profile. They can lead to TV gigs, even political office. Buffalo Bills quarterback Jack Kemp became a Republican congressman and vice-presidential candidate. The former New England Patriots running back and ESPN analyst Craig James is currently running for the Republican nomination for Senator from Texas, although to less than universal acclaim. Continue Reading » What's Happening in Syria Now (Updated) by ?By Hamed Aleaziz with additional reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng 2 Feb 2012 at 6:00am Update, Feb. 3: On Friday, multiple reports from activists inside Syria described massive shelling and an army offensive in the central Syrian city of Homs. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the casualty figure at over a hundred, and claims many hundreds more are injured; other estimates have the body count at 200 and climbing. Activists report that "nail bombs" were used by the army during a mortar attack on the Khaldiyeh neighborhood. The reports come thirty years after the infamous Hama Massacre was conducted by the Syrian army over the course of four weeks in February 1982 (the operation was ordered by President Hafez al-Assad, father and predecessor to Syria's current ruler Bashar al-Assad). The UN Security Council is scheduled to convene Saturday morning to discuss a much-debated draft resolution on Syria. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to meet with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov that same morning in Munich. Here's a rundown of the deteriorating situation in Syria: The basics: Syria is an Arab country with more than 22 million people; it borders many of the major players in the Middle East (Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey) and is roughly the size of North Dakota. Syria famously lost the Golan Heights to Israel in 1967, during the Arab-Israeli war; negotiations between the two countries have been minimal in recent years. Like many countries in the region, Syria's main export is oil. Unlike Saudi Arabia or Iran, however, Syria's oil reserves are relatively small; it ranks 33rd in the world. Syria is home to a smorgasbord of ethnicities and religions: Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Sunnis, Alawites, and Druze. The capital, Damascus, is a bustling metropolis (many believe it to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world) but is not the site of the country's most significant protests (though rebels captured parts of the city in late January). That city, Hama, is the country's fourth-largest, with fewer than 1 million occupants. What's happening now? Ever since last March, Syrians, especially those in the country's central region, have protested the iron-fisted government headed by Bashar al-Assad. During the first week of August the Syrian army began a brutal campaign to control Hama, using tanks and troop assaults to kill citizens in a seemingly indiscriminate manner. The situation has continued to escalate in 2012. In late January, rebels known as the Free Syrian Army, reportedly took control of a portion of Damascus' suburbs. On January 31, Syrian government forces, according to Reuters, "reasserted control" of the Damascus suburbs. Elsewhere, in Homs, a central-Syrian town with more than a million people, Syrian government forces killed nearly 100 people—activists say 55 civilians were killed—on January 31. The Free Syrian Army has fought on, asserting that "half of the country" is now effectively a no-go zone for Assad's security forces. Since November, at least 3,000 Syrians reportedly have been killed. Read our interview with acclaimed reporter Anthony Shadid, who snuck into Syria last year.Who's in charge?: Assad has ruled Syria since 2000. His father, Hafez al-Assad, a member of the Baath Party, came to power in 1970 after leading a bloodless coup. Assad's family came from a minority religious sect: the Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam. Thirty years ago, Assad launched one of the most brutal massacres in the modern history of the Middle East: His troops killed nearly 20,000 people in the city of Hama. In 2000, Hafez Assad died, and Bashar took over. To some, the shift from Hafez to Bashar suggested an opportunity (albeit a limited one) for Syria to become a more politically moderate society. Last year, Vogue magazine perpetuated that notion with a widely remarked profile of first lady Asma al-Assad published during the height of the Arab Spring. It stated that Syria was "the safest country in the Middle East." Clearly that couldn't have been more off-base, with Bashar apparently intent on following in his father's footsteps. Continue Reading » Obama Won't Touch Climate With a 10-Foot Pole by Kate Sheppard 2 Feb 2012 at 6:00am In his State of the Union address on January 24, President Obama largely avoided the topic of climate change. He talked about it once, in passing, as a topic on which "the differences in this chamber may be too deep" to enact new legislation. Its less-controversial cousin, "energy," on the other hand, got a whopping 23 mentions as an area where Republicans and Democrats should be able to find agreement. It became clear well before that address that the president and his administration don't think that climate change is an issue that will carry them to a second term. In his public events following the speech, he's also focused on clean energy while avoiding the other "c" word. But there are several reasons that Obama won't be able to avoid talking about climate change for too long—and well he shouldn't. The first is the ongoing battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed 1,661-mile pipeline from Canada to Texas probably would have been approved to little fanfare if environmental groups hadn't waged a lengthy campaign asking the White House to reject it. Similar pipelines hadn't faced much backlash, but this one drew ire from climate-change activists who called attention to the increased emissions stemming from oil from Canada's tar sands, and from local residents in the pipeline's proposed pathway. During two weeks of sit-ins in late August, more than 1,200 people were arrested outside the White House protesting the pipeline. Activists also held a massive rally on November 6 that ended with thousands encircling the White House. Continue Reading » Are "DIY Slaughter Hobbyists" Destroying Your City? by Kiera Butler 2 Feb 2012 at 6:00am A few weeks ago, my friend was handed a flier (PDF) at a farmers market in Oakland, California. It's from a local group called Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter that wants the City of Oakland to forbid people to raise livestock on their property. Around here, urban farming is a pretty hot issue; a nonprofit called City Slicker Farms has been promoting DIY food production for several years, and author and farmer (and Mother Jones contributor) Novella Carpenter brought the practice into the limelight with her 2009 book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, about her experiences at her Oakland farm. Now I'm obviously biased on this issue; I've written on this site about the experience of raising turkeys for meat in my Berkeley backyard. But when I read through the anti-urban farming arguments put forth on the flier, I couldn't resist making a rebuttal. Herewith, some sections of the flier, along with my responses. First up: I called the Oakland Animal Shelter and asked whether it had seen an uptick in livestock (chickens, rabbits, and goats) since the urban farming trend took off around 2005. While the number of chickens at the shelter has gone up in recent years, from 213 in 2009 to 340 in 2010, shelter director Megan Webb attributes that increase to the city's crackdown on fighting roosters in 2010, when the city confiscated hundreds of roosters. Aside from that, said Webb, "I've asked several of my animal control officers and they don't feel like we have been seeing more livestock-type animals in the field or being impounded in the shelter." Obviously, this one's a matter of personal parenting choice. But one thing I do know: Kids are very curious about where their food comes from. I witnessed this curiosity firsthand when a bunch of neighborhood rapscallions showed up for the slaughter of one of my turkeys. I'm not sure how they even knew about it. Word must have gotten around. Sure, there were giggles and morbid jokes aplenty. But I'm pretty certain that the kids got something valuable out of the experience, too. I talked to a little girl who had never seen a turkey up close before. A few others wanted to get right up close to the processing to see what it was all about. I'm not the only one who thinks that kids learn from raising and processing animals. The 4-H Club has been doing it for a century. I wanted to see whether local real estate agents saw neighbors with livestock as a deterrent for potential home buyers, so I called up Elisa Uribe at Wells & Bennett Realtors, which sells homes in Oakland. "Keeping animals in the yard certainly does seem to be the trend, and I have not heard of it as a deterrent at all," she said. "I actually have a rental property where the neighbors have three or four chickens. We've had a variety of different tenants and they've never complained. I don't think that having neighbors with animals would lower property values at all." Now this one just strikes me as silly. I don't know anyone who is raising animals instead of gardening; most urban farmers are doing both. In fact, urban farming groups convinced Oakland to change its rules so that people could sell crops from their garden out of their homes. Pitting animal-raising against vegetable-raising is a strange and nonsensical rhetorical strategy. And one more from Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter's website: Introducing animal agriculture into Oakland’s food policy would be an unjust distribution of resources because it would serve the needs of a small group of people interested in creating artisan animal products instead of serving the low-income communities that the city of Oakland mandated the Planning Department to create food policy to serve. Essentially, NOBS is arguing that allowing people to raise their own meat would be elitist, since everyone who raises animals is a foodie who wants to host heritage omelet brunches. That's blatantly untrue. What about immigrants who come from places where tending animals is a way of life? And why shouldn't people in the "low-income communities" get to produce their own eggs, which would likely be cheaper and healthier than eggs from the supermarket? Local rules about urban farming vary widely. Oakland is currently in the process of revising its urban agriculture policy. Oakland Food Policy Council coordinator Esperanza Pallana told me that under current rules, residents who obtain a home occupation permit are allowed to sell plant-based crops and raw agricultural products—which includes eggs and honey, but not meat. Urban farming advocates are now in the process of trying to make it easier for urban farmers to raise their own meat. Meanwhile, in the neighboring community of El Cerrito, the city attorney ruled last November in favor of letting people raise and process animals on their property, arguing that forbidding such a practice could be a violation of First Amendment rights (for example, the rights of people who want to slaughter animals according to halal rules). I could go on. And perhaps in some other post, I will. For now, though, I'll leave it at this: My colleague Tom Philpott writes regularly about the deplorable practices of factory farms and the growing body of evidence that the meat that they produce is not healthy. To my mind, any rule that provides an alternative to mass-produced animal products would be a step in the right direction.
In These Times The release of Apple's computer-based textbooks last month had the usual technology triumphalists buzzing. "Apple And The Coming Education Revolution," blared the headline at Fast Company magazine. "Apple puts iPad at head of the class," screamed MacWorld. And Time declared the announcement the "debut (of) the holy grail of textbooks." It sounds exciting--a rise of the machines that promises educational utopia rather than Terminator-style cataclysm. Or does it? Though it may be too soon to definitively answer that question, it's not too soon to ask it, because despite the celebratory hype, there's no guarantee that a hyper-technologized education system is synonymous with genuine progress. Ponder, for starters, the much-discussed issue of financial efficiency. As the tech website Gizmodo noted in a post titled "You Can't Afford Apple's Education Revolution," the new iPad-based books might "only cost $15 a pop," but "instead of selling an updated textbook every 5-10 years for $100, (publishers will) update and sell every year for $15," and "it's not like you can hand down an iBook from year to year ... you expressly can't." It's the same story with so many other vaunted education-branded technologies: They seem to promise resource-strapped school districts a way to constructively reduce expenditures, but the dazzle of flashy gadgets and interactivity often means budget-busting costs over the long haul. Those costs might be justifiable when a new device is a sure bet to improve education. But a school's wager on computer technology as a pedagogic panacea is often just that: a blind gamble, and one that evidence shows is hardly safe. Here in Colorado, for instance, the nonprofit I-News Network recently reported that students attending the state's "full-time online education programs have typically lagged their peers on virtually every academic indicator, from state test scores to student growth measures to high school graduation rates." Stanford University researchers found similar results in their separate study of online schools in Pennsylvania. And after its exhaustive national investigation of the trend, The New York Times concluded that "schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning." In lieu of empirical data, why are schools rushing into this brave new world of technology? For one thing, there's the allure of a quick fix, as gadgets seem to hold out the possibility that school districts can sustain huge budget cuts without sacrificing quality tutelage. The idea is that teachers can be replaced by cheaper computers, at once saving schools money, preventing tax increases for school resources, and preserving educational services. Even if data prove that's a pipe dream, the desire for a cure-all has convinced many desperate schools to chase the fantasy.
There's also political pressure from high-tech companies that, according to Education Week, "are thriving in the K-12 market." As the Investigative Fund's Lee Fang recently documented, these firms use some of the loot they are generating to finance state-based political front groups, hire lobbyists and employ has-beens like Gov. Jeb Bush as their public representatives. The result is a powerful political infrastructure that pushes state legislatures and local school boards to divert money away from proven education tools (teaching staff, textbooks, etc.) and into risky technology procurement. There's little doubt, of course, that some technologies may end up bringing about genuine advancements in education. But that possibility is no reason to suddenly ignore Ronald Reagan's notion of "trust, but verify." After all, before it was the Gipper's, that motto was the mantra of the most devoted science and technology geeks--just as it should be schools' mantra now. Farewell to Our Feminist-in-Chief by Sady Doyle 2 Feb 2012 at 2:43pm The woman on the platform seems happy. She's an ordinary woman, well-dressed but not ostentatiously so, pretty but not playing it up, heading gracefully into late middle age. Her voice is low and calm; her tone is gracious. She smiles frequently as she speaks, compliments the reporters surrounding her and tells them how good it's been to work with them, with what reads as genuine affection. "I think after twenty years--and it will be twenty years--of being on the high wire of American politics, and all of the challenges that come with that," she says, "It would probably be a good idea to just find out how tired I am." That gets a laugh, and she laughs with it. If you take Hillary Clinton moment by moment--if you take her, for example, at this moment on January 26, as she announces that she step down from her position as the Secretary of State when the president's terms ends--it's hard to imagine that she's spent the last two decades of her life as one of the most hated women in America. And if you take her on the whole, the void left by her promised departure from American politics is nearly impossible to comprehend. "Women look for themselves in any woman who stands out among a sea of men," says blogger Melissa McEwan, of Shakesville. "Women who find themselves in Hillary Clinton have a passionate attachment to her, because they see reflected back at them qualities they have or hope to acquire--strength, independence, fortitude, a commitment to other women--but also because to see a woman with those qualities in her position is some sign, even despite her Shawshankian swim through a river of shit to get there, that this nation will embrace a woman like that, like them." For decades, Hillary Clinton has served as a litmus test for just how much the American public will accept from a smart, ambitious, assertive, feminist woman: How much she can reasonably hope to attain, and what opposition she will face. Her basic competence has never truly been in question; her "likability," the ability of society to accept her, always has been. And women have projected their deepest hopes and fears onto her throughout. The "challenges" alluded to by Clinton have been huge. Her attempts at healthcare reform led to a "Billary" label and caricatures of the president and his wife as conjoined twins. She refused to bake; America panicked. When her husband cheated, people called her too aggressive to keep him happy; when they stayed married, people called her too submissive to stand up for herself. She ran for the Senate, prompting hand-wringing over her power-hungry nature--she was a wife, her husband already had a job in politics, why did she need a job, too? And she won. So she ran for president, which was where the trouble really started. Fucking whore. Castrating, overbearing, and scary. Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She devil. Iron my shirt. C.U.N.T. Beat the bitch. The amount of overt misogyny aimed at Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign, from conservatives and progressives alike, was enough to shock many young women -- even Obama supporters like myself -- into a new awareness of just how powerful and widespread sexism still was in this culture. In this magazine, Susan J. Douglas accused Clinton of being too much "like a man." (And, hilariously, pointed to notable dying-wife-betrayer and sex-tape-maker John Edwards as an example of a more truly feminine and caring politician.) Feminist veteran Robin Morgan penned a scorching and controversial response, entitled "Goodbye to All That, Part II." Though I didn't agree with every statement therein, I admit I winced with uncomfortable recognition when I hit the line about young, female Obama supporters "who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about [Clinton]." Morgan describes the feminist movement's relationship with Clinton as longstanding, rooted as much in an understanding of her historical importance as anything else. "When I was growing up, [a First Lady] arranged flowers. I mean, that was the job," Morgan told me in a phone call. "The only thing that was known that they consistently did was become alcoholics." But, Morgan says, Clinton has persistently exceeded the culture's expectations and fulfilled those of her feminist supporters. To be the first First Lady who openly sought equality with her husband, and the first First Lady with her own political career (and post-graduate degree)--to go from designated flower-arranger to Secretary of State -- and to inadvertently spark the feminist conscience of an entire generation along the way is no small accomplishment. Those I spoke to predicted further accomplishments. Morgan thinks she could be Secretary General of the U.N.; McEwan suggests that she'll be "a global ambassador for women" with the Clinton Global Initiative. But, without Hillary, where do women stand? Which other figure can reflect women's ambitions, and their fears about the price of ambition, in such a profound and iconic way? There are many women in the political arena, but few as powerful and as historically resonant as Clinton. One clue may be in the passionate outpouring of support for Elizabeth Warren--another law-degree-possessed woman in her early sixties with decisively progressive politics, a gift for fiery summation of the progressive worldview, and a big, committed following, which is already pushing for her 2016 presidential candidacy. When I put out two queries on Twitter--to speak about Warren, and to speak about Clinton, respectively--the responses I received were almost all women who wanted to speak about Warren. We appear to have found our new girl. McEwan acknowledges that, in some ways, Warren may well be Clinton's "most natural heir." "I don't know if there will ever be another Hillary Clinton, though," says McEwan. "And in a way, I hope there isn't, since she is an icon not just because she is extraordinary, but because she is alone." In the end, what may be the finest sign of what Clinton has accomplished, and which barriers she broke down, is this: People do not, generally, compare Elizabeth Warren to Hillary Clinton. The person they compare Warren to is President Barack Obama. When Less is More Political Engagement by Jane Miller 2 Feb 2012 at 5:00am No more boom and bust," said Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997, New Labour's first year in government. Fifteen years later, we are reminded daily that we are very much in a bust, and that things will get worse. We must all (or perhaps not quite all) tighten our belts in this era of austerity. This may be less of a shock for those of us who remember Britain during the 1930s and World War II. We tell ourselves that we managed then without cars or washing machines or refrigerators. We grew quite fond of our ration books and gave a lot of thought to what could be bought with our clothing coupons. We didn't get scurvy or get fat on a diet without oranges and bananas. Indeed, it is generally thought that the British people benefited from a more balanced and nutritious diet during the war than they'd had before it. There was something leveling about those war years, despite films and novels that revel in the antics of the servanted classes, freezing in their unheated castles. A return to some of those lacks and scarcities would be hard for my generation, but harder still for the next one, let alone the one after that. By the middle of the 1950s we were pretty certain, after all, that life was getting better and that it would go on doing so. And it did. Our parents expected their children to have an easier time of it than they had had. Now most parents worry that their children will have far more to contend with than they did. So far, it is undoubtedly the young who come off worst -- and that really is a change. Youth unemployment is rising to new heights. Of the more than 1 million unemployed young NEETs (which stands for 'not in education, employment or training') between the ages of 16 and 24 in the U.K., almost 900,000 have been looking for work for a year or more. And since the announcement of a tripling of university fees, there has been a 15 percent reduction in the number of young people applying to higher education institutions for next year. On the face of it, the government is warier of cutting services for the old than for the young. Even so, there have been disturbing revelations. There are tales of cruelty and neglect of old people in care homes and hospitals, and the possibility that the old constantly find themselves at the back of the queue waiting for medical attention. The moderately serious suggestion that old people should be required to downsize their homes in order to release spare bedrooms for the homeless has been another unwelcome suggestion. Public-sector workers are having to pay more for pensions that will be smaller than ours and delivered at a later date. Many people will be happy to go on working, although no thought has been given to what happens when the young are blocked from work which is still being performed by people in their 70s. It's possible to feel that the worst effects of recession are a new callousness, a new set of rationales for inequality. Apparently a majority of us blames the poor for their situation and despises them for wanting all the material things that the richer and the rich take for granted. Ruthlessness and competitiveness prevail and are admired. Dishonesty surprises and shocks us hardly at all. The government blames Europe, the last Labour government and the reckless, improvident poor for all our ills, and a majority of those who are asked for their opinion seem to agree with them. Yet I have Irish friends who are scathing about reports in the English press that they are suffering appalling hardship. My friends believe we're far too sorry for ourselves and too patronizing about them. It's all nonsense, they say. The Irish are used to austerity, and as their boom time only lasted for about 10 years, they feel up to the austerity they're required to go back to. I am torn between pessimism about the effects of new levels of poverty on our unequal society, and optimism about the vitality of Occupy and other political engagement that take austerity as a given -- and even a kind of inspiration. U.S. Military Toxins: The Gift That Keeps on Killing by Terry J. Allen 1 Feb 2012 at 5:00am Hey, Iraq, don't say we never gave you anything. In addition to hundreds of thousands dead and untold injured, the United States is leaving behind enough toxic waste sites to kill your rats. "Open-air burn pits have operated widely at military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan," the Department of Veterans Affairs notes on its website. On hundreds of camps and bases across the two countries, the U.S. military and its contractors incinerated toxic waste, including unexploded ordnance, plastics and Styrofoam, asbestos, formaldehyde, arsenic, pesticides and neurotoxins, medical waste (even amputated limbs), heavy metals and what the military refers to as "radioactive commodities." The burns have released mutagens and carcinogens, including uranium and other isotopes, volatile organic compounds, hexachlorobenzene, and, that old favorite, dioxin (aka Agent Orange). The military pooh-poohs the problem, despite a 2009 Pentagon document noting "an estimated 11 million pounds [5,000 tonnes] of hazardous waste" produced by American troops, the Times of London reported. In any case, it says, the waste isn't all that toxic, and there is no hard evidence troops were harmed. Of course, one reason for that lack of evidence, reports the Institute of Medicine (which found 53 toxins in the air above the Balad air base alone), is that the Pentagon won't or can't document what it burned and buried, or where it did so. The little media attention that has been paid to this massive pollution has dimly illuminated its potential impact on U.S. troops. Left in mephitic darkness are the contractors, often impoverished South Asians, who did the dirty work at the bases, as well as Iraqi civilians who live and farm nearby. The Times of London reported that "open acid canisters sit within easy reach of children, and discarded batteries lie close to irrigated farmland," causing people to sicken and rats to die "next to soiled containers." The toxic air echoes with the Vietnam War's Agent Orange fiasco. Victims of that war's dioxin suffered for years before the United States took limited responsibility -- but only for its troops, and not for the countries it poisoned. The military's history of pollution is long and largely unmitigated by legislation, treaties or lawsuits. It stretches around the world, from bases in the Philippines to Okinawa, Kuwait to Canada, and to numerous U.S. sites as well. Once upon a time--before 9/11 turned conspiracy theories into a self-righteous boom industry--Area 51 was an amusing Mecca for a dedicated band of tinfoil-hat nutters who fantasized about alien anal probes and insisted that the government was hiding space aliens on a secret Air Force Base in the Nevada desert. But a real and more nefarious plot was the military's exploitation of lax regulation and worker confidentiality agreements to use Area 51 as a secret dumping/burning ground for the toxic waste shipped in from other bases. As deaths mounted at Area 51, workers--and their widows--sued, producing evidence that the military had regularly filled football-field-sized trenches with 55-gallon drums of hazardous waste, doused them with jet fuel and set them ablaze. The lawsuit foundered on the shoals of "national security" secrecy. The military got away with murder. Fast forward to U.S. military bases around the world that are similarly immune from effective regulation and reporting. GAO investigators charge that the military in Iraq burned prohibited substances and ignored "guidance" to monitor emissions and to analyze its waste stream. Again, sick and dying vets, this time from Iraq and Afghanistan, are trying to trace their cancers and respiratory problems to the toxins of war. Again, the military refuses to release complete data, and claims the data show no harmful effects. Again, the assumption of culpability, and the clean-up efforts will come too little, too late. A July article in the New England Journal of Medicine studied 80 soldiers disabled with constrictive bronchiolitis, "a very rare finding" in otherwise healthy, young non-smokers. Almost all the cases were traced to "inhalational exposures during service in Iraq and Afghanistan." The journal lamented : "This group causes particular concern, since their potential toxic exposures are shared by most personnel who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan." And, oh, yes, by those left to endure the predictable consequences of expedient poisoning. You're welcome, Iraq.? Illinois? Injustice System by Joel Handley 31 Jan 2012 at 5:00am CHICAGO--From where he stands today, Kerry Owens is optimistic. He was released from an Illinois prison in November, after serving a year for retail theft. Owens, 41, has been in and out of the criminal justice system before, but his most recent sentence, for his first felony conviction, has changed his life forever. He resolved to live differently by volunteering, kicking the addiction that led him to steal $300 worth of merchandise, and enrolling at a local community college. But as a convicted felon, it is now harder than ever to get a job, find an apartment and receive social services. Owens previously worked as a custodian, and while in prison he earned a certificate for commercial custodian services. But persistent high unemployment and his felony record have left him looking for work. "There's nothing out there," he says. "They're certifying us for jobs that don't exist." As one of more than 16,000 black male ex-offenders estimated to have been released to Chicago in 2011, Owens is not alone in his struggle. Experts estimate that the unemployment rate for ex-offenders in the city is well over 50 percent, compared to an overall unemployment rate of 10.1 percent. (Nationally, rates for ex-convicts are similar, while the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 8.6 percent.) If history is any guide, rates for black males, who account for two-thirds of Illinois' prison population, are likely even higher. In 2005, in a comparatively favorable job environment, an Urban Institute report found that a year after being released, only 28 percent of black males surveyed were employed, while 60 percent had been employed before their arrests. Recent reports on ex-offenders show higher employment rates, but those reports also count "at least one week of work" during the previous year as "employment." Determined not to fall back into his old habits, Owens volunteers at the Westside Health Authority, a community center in Austin, one of the six Chicago neighborhoods -- along with Humboldt Park, Englewood, West Englewood, North Lawndale and East Garfield Park -- that receive a disproportionate majority of the city's returning ex-offenders, and account for higher unemployment and arrest rates than the city as a whole. "I'm not bitter, I'm better, [and] productive in the same place I did my crimes in," he says. "I'm no longer part of the problem. I'm part of the solution." But Owens is part of an increasingly small group of prisoners and ex-prisoners in Chicago who received at least a minimal level of support from social services -- services that have become a major target of state and local governments looking to cut costs. In attempts to close budget deficits, since 2007 Illinois and Chicago have cut extensively from programs that benefit inmates and ex-offenders, including education, job training, healthcare, drug treatment programs and housing. Conviction, prison, release--and then repeat According to a 2010 report by the John Howard Association (JHA), which has been monitoring Illinois prisons and working for reform since 1901, 14 percent of Illinois' prison population was enrolled in college education programs in 2002. By 2009, after Illinois cut funding for the programs, only 10 percent of prisoners were enrolled. Similarly, there were 136 vocational education programs in Illinois state prisons in 2002, but only 96 by 2009. Even those that offer job training, like Vandalia Correctional Center where Owens was locked up, limit the programs to low-level offenders and prisoners close to their release dates. Owens was one of only 45 inmates (out of a total of 1,748 at the prison) who were enrolled in job training at the time of a June 2011 JHA prison tour report. JHA executive director John Maki says, "We're seeing prohibitively long waiting lists at nearly all facilities." Illinois' financial delinquency has caused further problems in drug treatment centers and housing. According to Geri Cooper, manager of Hardin House Women's Recovery House on the South Side, the program only has 14 participants, even though the waiting list for acceptance is more than a year long, because it can't rely on funding. The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) used to pay for five months of housing at the center, but now pays only for two. And even though many of Hardin House program's clients are required by courts or parole boards to attend psychological therapy, the state no longer covers it. Participants now must pay $15 per session, not easy for the recently-released and sometimes homeless women to whom the organization caters. Perhaps most damaging are cuts to mental health services, which leave the penal system as de facto psychiatric wards. In May 2011, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart threatened to sue Illinois for its negligence and told Chicago's WLS-TV that the Cook County Jail was "the largest mental health provider in the state," where one fifth of the jail's population has been diagnosed with a mental illness. After facing cuts of $114 million between 2009 and 2011, mental health services in Chicago received a devastating blow in November, when the City Council unanimously passed a 2012 budget that closes five of the city's 12 mental health clinics. As preventive and rehabilitative services have been reduced, incarceration rates have increased and recidivism has persisted. "There's an increased demand for prison space as social services are cut," says Maki. From 2005 to 2009, Illinois' incarcerated population remained fairly constant, at just over 45,000 prisoners. By September 2011, it had increased to well over 48,000, according to IDOC. While recidivism rates, or the percentage of ex-prisoners who have re-offended within three years of their release, have dropped slightly during the same time, from 53.4 percent in 2007 to 51.1 percent in 2010, they remain higher now than a decade ago (44.1 percent in 1998). Reverend Tommie Johnson, a recovery support services coordinator for Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities (TASC) and the founder and director of Outside the Walls Ministries in North Lawndale, equates the task at hand for social services to the harrowing plight of the Israelites under the pharaoh's command: "They're telling us we have to make brick without straw." Like other social service workers, Johnson understands the desperate acts of those facing dire circumstances, and that the cycles of convictions and recidivism start early in the lives of many of Chicago's poor black youth. The new masons When conflicts arise between Englewood youth, Chris Bufford intervenes. As the lead organizer for juvenile justice with the Southwest Youth Collaborative, which offers mentoring, leadership training and many other programs to youth in the city's Southwest neighborhoods, Bufford uses his own experience as an ex-offender to help them understand the economic and social forces behind their behavior. "We expand from their individual problems to the whole dynamic around the community," he says, "to teach them how to restore the damage they've caused victims and their neighborhood." Today, Bufford says, "Things are worse. The suffering is more apparent. Young people don't have a way to make a dollar." But resorting to the street economy has long been one of few opportunities for economic advancement immediately available. "Ask any adult criminal when they needed help, and they'll tell you, 'You should have hollered at me when I was 12, probably younger.' " From Bufford's perspective, the recession has not made the lives of poor black males worse. "It's sad to say, but the recession is taking [the government] in the right direction," as Democratic politicians like Gov. Pat Quinn and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle explore alternative treatments and ways to reduce inmate populations. Some have called for easing sentences of nonviolent offenders, which comprise 70 percent of Illinois' prison population. "But," Bufford adds, "[Politicians'] main thing is to save money, not help young people." This story continues "The Other Chicago," an In These Times series supported by the Local Reporting Initiative of Community News Matters, underwritten by The Chicago Community Trust and administered by The Community Media Workshop and The Chicago Reporter. The Sunshine State?s Shadowy Legacy by Theo Anderson 30 Jan 2012 at 11:53pm There are a few iconic moments and events that represent profound shifts in American history. Think of the civil rights marches in 1965, the riots at Altamont and Stonewall in 1969, or Jimmy Carter's "crisis of confidence" speech in 1979. This week's GOP primary election in Florida will not rank among them. But with the state in the spotlight again, it's worth pausing to remember what happened in Florida a dozen years ago, and to wonder why it isn't better remembered as an iconic moment in our history, and to consider how the 2000 election has shaped our politics in ways that defy all expectations. Recall that George W. Bush was declared the winner in Florida by about 500 votes, giving him the presidency. Recall also that Bush's victory was sealed by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that abruptly halted a statewide vote recount. In the election's aftermath, the press was concerned more with "healing" than digging into the facts of what happened. And then, after 9/11, it was considered unseemly to question the fundamental health of our democracy. The upshot is that we've never honestly grappled with the extent of the fraud that occurred in Florida in 2000. But the truth is that the state's GOP-controlled election was corrupt almost beyond belief. According to an investigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, more than 50 percent of Florida's 180,000 "spoiled" ballots were cast by African Americans, though blacks constituted only 11 percent of the population. Put another way, ballots cast by African Americans were about nine times more likely to be rejected than ballots cast by the rest of the population. And "the disparity in the spoilage rates," according to the report, "is not the result of education or literary differences." That conclusion was confirmed by a task force assembled by the state's Republican governor, Jeb Bush. So tens of thousands of Florida voters were systematically disenfranchised in an election that turned on a few hundred votes. There is bipartisan agreement that this happened. And that was just one of many irregularities favoring Bush. As the journalist Jeffrey Toobin wrote in a judicious account of the election, it's clear that more Florida voters intended to vote for Gore than Bush, and "in any real, moral, and democratic sense, Al Gore should have been declared the victor. . . . If the simple preference of the voters behind their curtains was the rule -- and it is supposed to be the rule in a democracy -- then Gore probably won the state by several thousand votes." The terrible implications of that fact are difficult to absorb, and both parties have reasons to move on and just get over it. For Democrats, it's too painful to think about the long-term damage inflicted by policies that Bush should never have had the power to pursue. And for Republicans, it's all just whining. So our response has been repression. We don't talk about it much. The problems it exposed in our electoral processes were written up in reports -- and then ignored. There were reforms to Florida's election laws, but nothing on the scale one would have expected, and the inevitable calls for abolishing the Electoral College faded after a few months. All the drama of the 2000 election changed very little, apparently. Except that it did. It didn't initiate the wave of soul searching and reform that one might have expected. But it did teach the GOP that it could turn weakness into strength by attacking without shame. The sullying of John Kerry's war service in 2004 was the most jaw-dropping confirmation of this lesson. But that was just one instance in a broader strategy of shamelessness. You might think, for example, that Republicans would be shy about making accusations of election fraud after their shenanigans in 2000. Not so. Over the past decade, that accusation has become a powerful galvanizing issue among conservatives. What angers them isn't the very real possibility that states like Florida are disenfranchising minority voters. It's the possibility that ineligible voters are casting votes, or that voters are casting multiple votes, though investigations into voter fraud have concluded that it is rare in the extreme. By any normal standard, it shouldn't be an issue at all. But the truth of the matter isn't really the question. Zeal trumps reality. Weakness becomes strength. Here's another legacy of the 2000 election that now defines our politics: Winning a majority means nothing. When a 51-majority vote is sufficient to pass legislation, the Senate is heavily but not outrageously tilted toward the smaller and less populous states. When a 60-vote "supermajority" becomes the standard -- as it now is for any legislation of consequence -- our system is at the mercy of 40 Republican senators who represent between a one-fourth and one-third of the population. The single most important legacy of the 2000 election, though, was an increasingly conservative and activist Supreme Court. Some pundits speculated that the Court would try to repair its reputation after the election by retreating from the political sphere. Fat chance. Bush's victory and his subsequent appointees had the opposite effect, giving conservatives a 5-4 majority, energizing them politically, and ultimately giving us the Citizens United decision, which has unleashed unlimited corporate spending on our elections. It's too painful to dwell on, perhaps, but we now live in a political culture created in large part by electoral fraud in Florida in 2000, and by a Democratic Party that has never come to grips with what the GOP has pulled off since then, or how it has done so. It just doesn't seem plausible that a political party could advocate tax cuts for the wealthy during a deep recession and remain viable. But then, it didn't seem plausible that Bush could lose the 2000 election and still be named president; or that John Kerry's war service would become a liability. The same is true on issue after issue. From climate change to healthcare to gay rights to torture, the GOP is on the wrong side of history and morality. It wouldn't survive long in a healthy democracy. But to borrow from the parlance of Donald Rumsfeld: You engage in political battles with the democracy you have, not the one you might wish to have. In our corrupt and out-of-whack system, shamelessness is a proven and potent weapon. If Democrats hope to prevail this year and beyond, they'll have to develop an intensity and zeal for telling the truth that is equal to the GOP's chutzpah. That's easy to say and hard to do. "The best lack all conviction," William Butler Yeats wrote, "while the worst are full of passionate intensity." The one certainty about the coming election season is that the worst will be full of intensity. Whether the best in our system will find their voice -- and use it on behalf of truth -- is the critical question. The Austerians Attack! by James Crotty 30 Jan 2012 at 5:00am When the economic and financial crisis erupted in 2008, progressives hoped that it would trigger a popular revulsion against the right-wing economic policies that caused the crisis. It is now clear that these expectations are not being met. Moderate progressive policy moves have been overwhelmed by public-sector layoffs and budget cuts as Republicans, too many Democrats and even President Barack Obama himself, have chosen austerity or "belt-tightening" as a main policy objective. But how did the dogma of these "Austerians" -- inspired by the Austrian School of economics -- come to dominate public policy? Progressives were not the only ones hoping to seize the opportunity of the economic crisis. A right-wing coalition of ideologues and industrialists saw it as a chance to achieve final victory in the war they have waged since the 1930s to destroy the New Deal institutions built under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and extended through the late 1970s. Those of us who believe in an economy designed to meet the needs of the majority can still win the war that the Austerians are waging against us. Our commitment to those who are suffering the most during the Great Recession does not need to be sacrificed on the altar of a balanced budget achieved not by taxing corporations and the very rich but by savagely cutting the social safety net. The Left's vision of a government that serves human needs is entirely compatible with moderate sustainable deficits and a shrinking public debt burden. How is it that a right-wing coalition is closer to destroying social democracy in America than at any time since its emergence in the 1930s? Because the Right succeeded in creating a dominant media narrative that blames deficits on an American public that demands more government social spending than it's willing to pay for. In fact, deficit problems were actually created by the Right's neoliberal economic model imposed on the country after 1980, which involved the radical deregulation of the financial market, regressive tax cuts, rising inequality and unfunded war spending. To fully understand how we got to this point, we have to go back to the 1920s. This historical context makes the solutions to today's deficit "crisis," offered below, even more obvious and compelling. Capitalism in crisis The boom of the second half of the 1920s was marked by little regulation of business, very low taxes on corporations and rich households, a crippled union movement, a powerful financial sector that rained money on the wealthy, and a political system dominated by economic elites. From 1923 to 1929, 70 percent of the growth in income went to the richest 1 percent and only 15 percent went to the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution. This was the Right's dream world. The out-of-control capitalism of the period led to a financial crisis in late 1929. The ensuing financial collapse was accompanied by a severe depression. The terrible economic costs of the Great Depression led to powerful political movements in the United States and Europe that demanded both an end to uncontrolled capitalism and its replacement with a new system designed to meet the needs of the people. The Western economic models that evolved from these movements are variants of social democracy, democratic capitalism, regulated capitalism or the mixed economy. In 1933, Roosevelt and the Democratic Party took control of the government and began to implement a series of social-democratic programs that became known as the New Deal. They included strict regulation of financial markets, creation of the Social Security program, support for the growing union movement, large public employment programs, implementation of various kinds of deficit-financed stimulus spending and the beginning of unemployment insurance. U.S. elites were split on whether to accommodate some aspects of the New Deal in the early 1930s, but the strength of the Right's resistance increased in the late 1930s as the danger of mass rebellion against capitalism ebbed. The right-wing coalition tried to undermine all aspects of the New Deal, including: ??the regulation of industry ??the "confiscation" of private wealth through income taxes (which did not exist prior to 1913) ??the reduction of economic inequality ??support for unions ??Social Security ??unemployment insurance ??regulation of business ??the commitment to full employment, which weakened business control over labor ??the diminution of elite control over the government. In other words the Right wanted to restore the 1920s regime. Much of the opposition to the New Deal was based on economic self-interest, but ideological forces were at play as well. Kim Phillips-Fein in Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal writes that, motivated by a deep-seated "antipathy toward social democracy," the Right: [B]elieved that at the heart of the New Deal and the labor movement was an excess of democracy -- that the organization of working-class people into labor unions led to the rise of the welfare state and the perversion of the market economy. ... For them, the turning back of the New Deal was a question not only of the bottom line but of the deepest social principles. The problem for the right-wing coalition was that the ever-expanding role of government in the economy was extremely popular because it created widespread prosperity from WWII through the mid-1970s -- the so-called "Golden Age" of modern capitalism. The rate of economic growth was high, unemployment was low, real wages and family incomes rose rapidly, and inequality plummeted. Much of the business sector distanced itself from coalition efforts to overthrow the New Deal in the 1950s and 1960s because profits were so high. The mid- to late-1970s marked a turning point. In the wake of the first oil price hike in 1973, the U.S. government was faced with two choices: It could stimulate spending to sustain growth at the expense of higher inflation, or it could restrict spending to stop inflation at the expense of higher unemployment and slower growth. It chose the latter course, which caused the unemployment rate to rise from 4.9 percent in 1973 to 8.5 percent in 1975. Slower growth, higher inflation and unemployment, and falling profits and stock prices created growing discontent with the economic status quo. Meanwhile, social unrest was stirred by conflict over racial integration, the anti-war movement, the women's movement, pro-choice struggles, the so-called culture wars, student radicalism and a youth rebellion. These developments led to a political alliance between resurgent right-wing economic forces and the rapidly increasing ranks of cultural conservatives. As a result, business and other conservative forces saw a dramatic increase in their ability to raise money to elect friendly politicians, organize grassroots pressure on all politicians, and spend money on an expanding right-wing ideological infrastructure of think tanks and university influence. They also used their control of the media to interpret economic and political events for the public through a conservative prism. By 1980, the country had come to a crossroads. The existing set of government institutions and policies, in combination with changes in economic conditions -- including the increasing globalization of production and investment that led to rising foreign competition -- were no longer generating the widespread prosperity the public had come to expect. Either we had to reconstruct and reinvigorate our social democratic model or replace it. Right-wing forces, which had vastly increased their political clout, had a clear vision of the alternative model they wanted -- a modern version of the 1920s economy situated in a globalized economic system. For their part, supporters of the basic New Deal philosophy were confused about how to restructure the government-economy nexus in the face of economic adversity. In addition, a large and growing percentage of Democrats had lost their commitment to the New Deal. Progressive economists did offer various policy proposals that, in the spirit of the New Deal, were designed to support egalitarian growth. For example, a combination of stronger unions, a rising minimum wage, tougher regulation of financial markets and a more progressive tax policy could have sustained the relatively low economic inequality of the Golden Age. But right-wing forces were now dominant. So under President Ronald Reagan, the Right delivered a rapid rise in inequality through financial market deregulation, high unemployment, regressive tax cuts and attacks on unions. Increased capital mobility in a globalized economy also facilitated a "race to the bottom," in which transnational firms threatened to invest only in those countries with the lower wages and corporate taxes, and with the least effective regulatory regimes. Since Reagan not only enacted large regressive tax cuts but also increased defense spending by about 1.5 percent of GDP, he created by far the largest federal budget deficits since the end of World War II. Both the tax cuts and slow economic growth under the new right-wing economic policies helped create the rise in deficits and debt that took place after 1980. The economy grew much faster than government debt during the early post-war decades -- so the debt-to-GDP ratio became smaller over time. The ratio was at a post-war low of 26 percent in the year before Reagan became president. In other words, there was no deficit or debt problem before the Reagan presidency. When Reagan left office in 1989, the debt-to-GDP ratio had risen to 41 percent. During the presidency of George Bush senior it rose to 48.1 -- almost double that in 1981. Under Bill Clinton, who increased taxes on the wealthy by a modest amount, the debt-to-GDP ratio declined. In 2001, when George W. Bush took office, the debt-to-GDP ratio had fallen to 32.5 percent. When he left office in 2009, the ratio was 40.3 percent and the deficit was about to explode. The oft-heard claim that Republicans are fiscal conservatives is nonsense that is utterly inconsistent with the historical record. The failed right-wing economic model combined with large regressive tax cuts and unfunded wars under George W. Bush, and the Obama administration's efforts to prevent a depression through increased government spending and tax cuts, created the largest federal budget deficits in peacetime history just after Obama took office. In the first year of President Obama's term, the debt-to-GDP ratio hit 53.5 percent. In 2010 it was just over 62 percent. The deficit was projected to hit 75.1 percent in 2012, in part due to the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts agreed to by President Obama and congressional Republicans in 2010 at an estimated two-year revenue loss of $850 billion. A one-sided class war Rapidly rising deficits at the federal, state and local levels, along with prospective long-term financing problems in the Social Security and Medicare programs, intensified the ongoing one-sided class war waged by the right-wing coalition against the rest of us. As billionaire Warren Buffet famously remarked in 2006, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Because of these deficits the right-wing coalition of rich households, large corporations, smaller businesses, ideological conservatives (such as the Religious Right and, more recently, the Tea Party) and conservative politicians is demanding severe cuts in spending that supports the poor and the middle class, or that funds public investment in education, healthcare, infrastructure and technology. At the same time, this coalition has demanded tax cuts (for the wealthy and corporations) that are larger than the proposed spending cuts, which would increase government deficits and thereby sustain political and economic pressure to further decimate government spending -- what the Right publicly refers to as its "starve the beast" strategy. The Republican Party, with the assistance of a significant number of Democratic politicians, supports core post-Reagan policies of unrelenting regressive tax cuts, major reductions in nondefense government spending and serious cutbacks to -- or privatization of -- Social Security and Medicare. The adoption of new austerity programs across the globe, particularly in Europe, threatens to sink economies deeper into recession, perhaps triggering another global financial crisis. Deep cuts in government spending will reduce the income of public-sector workers and private-sector employees who work under government contract, as well as the income of families who receive payments from Social Security and other social programs. This means reduced purchasing power, less production and more unemployment. Here in the United States we need a serious jobs-creation program over the next several years, but it cannot be built on the deep cuts in public spending and regressive tax cuts demanded by the right-wing coalition. The Economic Normalcy Bias by David Sirota 27 Jan 2012 at 5:00am In 1977, two Boeing 747s collided on an airstrip in the Canary Islands. According to accident investigators, those who survived the initial blast in one plane had time to escape before a fire consumed the wreckage. But eyewitnesses reported that many remained in their seat looking perfectly content--as if nothing was wrong. Not surprisingly, dozens of these dazed victims were burned to death, and the episode became a reminder of the so-called normalcy bias--a cognitive phenomenon whereby many who are faced with imminent disaster instantly convince themselves that everything is normal and that they don't have to modify their behavior. Unpleasant as this anecdote is to recount, it exemplifies the psychology at the root of one of America's most destructive traits: our obsession with materialism and consumerism. To extrapolate the metaphor, if our damaged economy, record-low savings rate and sky-high personal debt levels are that smoldering plane about to explode, then America's "shop till you drop" normalcy bias may be engineering yet another avoidable tragedy. The most recent holiday binge exemplified the impending crisis. Despite persistent unemployment, flat wages and higher prices for necessities (food, health care, etc.), America nonetheless went on its usual post-Thanksgiving buying spree. A glance at new data from the holiday season tells this story. After Black Friday's now-annual melee of hyper-aggressive shoppers, the Washington Post reported that Christmas saw credit card purchases jump 7 percent over last year. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve bank reported that consumer borrowing surged to pre-recession levels; Forbes reported that online holiday spending hit a record; and the Los Angeles Times reported that "consumer spending "grew faster than people's take-home incomes" as households "cut their savings rate (to) support their purchases of cars and other goods and services." In the face of such self-destructive behavior, it's worth asking: Why is overconsumption still the preferred "normal" in America? The flippant answer is that it's simply hard for shopaholics to break old habits. But while that's certainly true, it's not the whole story when enablers are everywhere. Turn on the television, and you'll inevitably face a bevy of ads telling you to buy something -- a cellphone, a television, a car, anything!--even if you don't actually need the product. Look around at the economy and you'll see growing industries that are based not on fulfilling customers' basic needs, but on satiating consumers' materialist impulses. Tune into politics and you'll hear policies touted for how they will prompt even more consumer spending. Of course, that latter enabler--politics--is the most powerful of all, as our national leaders regularly tout consumption for its own sake. Recall that in the face of the planet's climate change and resource crises, then-Vice President Dick Cheney denigrated the notion of frugality, saying, "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." Likewise, Rudy "America's Mayor" Giuliani told everyone not to sacrifice after 9/11 but instead to "go shopping." And last month, Bloomberg News headlined a dispatch "Bernanke Prods Savers to Become Consumers," highlighting how the "easy money" lending policies of the nation's chief banker was reinvigorating the culture of gluttony. Just five years ago, this same Fed chairman was rightly imploring Americans to "forgo consumption or leisure" in order to start reshaping our economy around sustainability and thrift. But after the financial crisis, he, like so many politicians, became just another passenger on that burning plane. Paralyzed by the normalcy bias, Bernanke and other leaders keep calmly imploring us to go about our business ... move along ... and that's what we keep doing, even though the fuselage may soon go up in flames. Daily Kos Things that appear certain, based on polling: Mitt Romney is on his way to a relatively easy win in tomorrow's caucuses in Nevada. Romney is also in pretty decent shape in the two late February primaries in Arizona and Michigan, two states that (on paper) set up pretty well for him. Gingrich's national standing, at least in the Gallup tracking polls, has taken a mighty dive.What is quite a bit less clear, however, is if this really does portend the beginning of the end for the Republican presidential horse race. More on that after the jump. For now, the numbers from two days of polling (yesterday's Wrap having been sabotaged by a computer virus beating up my laptop): NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 33, Gingrich 25, Santorum 16, Paul 11NATIONAL (YouGov): Romney 29, Gingrich 23, Santorum 20, Paul 14 ARIZONA (Rasmussen): Romney 48, Gingrich 24, Santorum 13, Paul 6 GEORGIA (SurveyUSA): Gingrich 45, Romney 32, Santorum 9, Paul 8 MICHIGAN (Rasmussen): Romney 38, Gingrich 23, Santorum 17, Paul 14 NEVADA (PPP): Romney 50, Gingrich 25, Paul 15, Santorum 8 NEVADA (UNLV): Romney 45, Gingrich 25, Santorum 11, Paul 9 And ... as always ... the general election nums, as well: NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama tied with Romney (45-45); Obama d. Santorum (46-44); Obama d. Paul (45-42); Obama d. Gingrich (49-41)NATIONAL (YouGov): Obama d. Paul (48-40); Obama d. Romney (49-40); Obama d. Santorum (50-40); Obama d. Gingrich (52-37) GEORGIA (SurveyUSA): Romney d. Obama (51-43); Gingrich d. Obama (50-44) MISSOURI (PPP): Obama tied with Romney (45-45); Obama d. Paul (45-43); Obama d. Santorum (47-44); Obama d. Gingrich (49-42) Some thoughts as we head into the weekend, right after the jump.
Sheldon Whitehouse explains 'Paying a Fair Share' tax bill, Democratic tax st... by rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) 2 Feb 2012 at 4:19pm Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Larry Downing/Reuters) Ezra Klein has an interview with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) about his "Paying a Fair Share" tax reform and "about how the bill would work, whether Democrats have developed their own dogma on taxes, and what the chances are for comprehensive tax reform in the coming Congress." It's a fairly simple piece of legislation as far as tax reform goes, creating basically an alternative minimum tax for millionaires. Where it gets slightly complicated is in an adjustment for those making between $1 and 2 million, a provision that would allow for the tax to be gradually phased in. This would avoid a ?tax cliff,? where a taxpayer going from $999,999 to $1 million, would pay on a phased-in basis a portion of the extra tax required to get up to the 30 percent effective tax rate. This would also potentially prevent a problem Klein identifies of people at that threshold just evading their taxes. The premise of the bill is simple, but the rationale lying behind it is interesting, and something Klein tries to delve into a bit, asking whether Democrats might be ceding the fight on ending the Bush tax cuts, pushing the threshold of "wealthy" from $250,000 upward, and the concern that "there?s no one left looking at taxes as a revenue measure, and asking what should be the basic question: what level of taxation do we need to fund the government we think we want, and what?s the best way to get there?" He got a semi-answer from Whitehouse: SW: Kent Conrad is fond of pointing out that in God knows how many years, 50 years or something like that, America has never had its budget in balance with revenues less than, if I remember correctly, 21 percent of GDP. So if you?re looking at the times in the past when we?ve gotten our act together and gotten our budget balanced, you come in at 21 percent. If you?re substantially below that, you?re doing protracted deficits or cutting very significantly into spending. So I think it is an important point, but in the meantime, I think it?s important that we restore some confidence in the tax code on the part of the American public by getting rid of the egregious loopholes.Klein's question was more to the point of when are Democrats going to start talking about the necessity of revenue to keep the government functioning, which is the larger argument that needs to be made against the nihilism of Republicans who basically just want to sell it off. From a short-term political perspective, the Buffett Rule push makes a lot of sense. Now is the moment to seize the argument of economic inequality, of tax fairness and to force Republicans to vote on it. But the long-term case for a progressive tax structure and for the necessity of it to allow for a government that works?the existential fight we're in right now?needs to be made.
FAA 'compromise' includes anti-union provisions. Tell Congress no. by rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) 2 Feb 2012 at 3:46pm Veda Shook, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, explains why the "compromise" on union issues (that do not actually belong) in the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill aren't actually a compromise. While the proposal drops Republicans' earlier insistence that workers who don't vote in union elections should be counted as having cast anti-union votes, it adds a host of new hurdles to workers wanting to form unions. For one thing, in some cases, an existing union would just be dissolved. "In a merger," Shook explains, "if the larger workforce is non-union, there would simply be no election to determine representation of the combined group. The union and the contract would simply go away." In other cases, though, hurdles galore. Accompanying the new 50 percent threshold to call for a union representation election, management would control all the information on how many people might be eligible to vote and who they were. That means they could pad the numbers required to get to 50 percent. Then, because the requirement threshold would now be written into the statute, it would be subject to litigation. That would not only allow companies to drag out the process, the union cards the workers had signed would be subject to discovery. It's a perfect opportunity for management to intimidate union supporters. This is no compromise. Tell Congress to pass a clean FAA bill, without the union-busting.
Gallup: Democrats, independents and (sometimes) Republicans agree on economic... by rss@dailykos.com (DemFromCT) 1 Feb 2012 at 11:33am Well, there's partisanship and then there's the American people. Gallup asked the question of adults as to their level of support for five economic proposals expected in the State of the Union speech. Here's the same list of proposals broken down by partisanship. Note that the support from Republicans drops off for the "big government alternative energy" and the "tax the rich" proposals: Yet the Big Government jobs education idea is a political winner with everyone, including a bare majority of Republicans. While one might argue that "Big Government is fine so long as it's about me (and keep your hands off my Medicare)" is popular with everyone, the real underlying message is this: It's all about jobs.
Unions use Super Bowl to raise awareness in Indiana by rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) 3 Feb 2012 at 3:22pm (Hotel Workers Rising) The Super Bowl comes to Indiana just days after the passage of an anti-union law in the state. With the NFL Players Association having vocally opposed that law, it's an opportunity to draw attention to labor issues in the state. At the same time, you don't want to be the assholes who actually disrupted the Super Bowl, so there's a line to walk here. Indiana AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott issued a statement saying that "the Indiana State AFL-CIO does not plan nor condone any attempts to disrupt the Super Bowl," including a reminder that "the Super Bowl in Indianapolis is made possible because of the very working men and women our movement represents and that our state legislature has attacked." At the same time, unions are highlighting not just the recent anti-union vote but ongoing labor struggles in the state. Think Progress reports that: The AFL-CIO will have a ?constant presence? at Super Bowl events, [Indiana AFL-CIO Communications and Outreach Coordinator Jeff] Harris said, but its actions will be informative rather than disruptive. The union, which encouraged workers to meet with their state representatives in the days before the law passed and organized rallies outside the statehouse Wednesday, will pass out leaflets and pamphlets around Super Bowl village and Lucas Oil Stadium, the site of the game, Harris said.Unite Here has planned a Friday afternoon rally at the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis, where 20 workers may lose their jobs as Hyatt switches from one low-wage subcontractor to another; the original subcontractor was recently sued for wage theft. DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the NFL Players Association, is slated to participate in that rally.
Senate Republicans announce intention to join court challenge of recess appoi... by rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) 3 Feb 2012 at 3:25pm Sen. John Cornyn (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Despite the well-reasoned and comprehensive consideration by the Office of Legal Counsel of the White House that President Obama's recess appointments last month were constitutional, 39 Senate Republicans have decided to join in challenges against them in an as-of-yet to be determined court, or case. The senators said in a letter Friday that they will file a friend-of-the-court brief to support legal action arguing that Obama overstepped constitutional boundaries when he tapped Richard Cordray to lead the consumer agency and appointed three members to join the NLRB. ?American democracy was born out of a rejection of the monarchies of Western Europe, anchored by limited government and separation of powers,? Texas Sen. John Cornyn said in a statement. ?We refuse to stand by as this president arrogantly casts aside our Constitution and defies the will of the American people under the election-year guise of defending them.? While they don't specify which actual case they'll be joining, they just wanted the world to know that, yeah, they're still pissed about it and mean to do something, the specifics of which are to be determined. The National Federation of Independent Businesses and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have filed one case against the NLRB appointments, which provides a potential case for them to join.
Resistance to Komen's assault on Planned Parenthood reminds us of our strengt... by rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) 3 Feb 2012 at 6:14pm Click to donate As Kaili Joy Gray pointed out earlier here today, the Komen Foundation hasn't reversed its decision not to fund grants for Planned Parenthood. It's made one of those phony apologies designed to deflect criticism rather than renounce its previous stance and its public leadership is still pretending that its move was not political. So all those folks, including some Congresspeople, who uncorked the Champagne to toast the defeat of the pink giant are celebrating prematurely. What is worth celebrating, however, is the instantaneous and spontaneous and powerful reaction of the blogosphere and social media that first spotlighted Komen's decision, splattered it from coast to coast, drove a hugely successful fund-raising effort for Planned Parenthood and?assisted by Komen's incompetent management of the crisis it had created?permanently damaged the foundation's brand, bringing to light information that few Americans have previously heard. That is a victory. And it shouldn't be nay-said. But while quaffing the bubbly, that victory should be recognized for what it is: self-defense. Together, those of us who believe in ensuring that women without means can get basic and preventive health care as well as exercise their reproductive rights, fought what amounted to a rearguard action, struggling to hang onto ground gained long ago. It's not unlike other struggles in other arenas, like those we engage in these days to hang onto the gains of the New Deal and Great Society while right-wing forces do their damnedest to dismantle them. But what we need is both self-defense and offense. What we've witnessed and participated in during the past two days has been a skirmish in an on-going war with relentless, ruthless foes. This was not an isolated event but a line item on the agenda of a right wing movement determined to return us to the way things were. For the record, those weren't the good old days. (Continue reading below the fold.)
Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Coke FRIDAY! by rss@dailykos.com (Bill in Portland Maine) 3 Feb 2012 at 7:30pm From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE? Late Night Snarksters Document Teh Crazy: "I don't know whether Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich won [in Florida], but we do know one thing for certain: tomorrow both of them can go back to ignoring Latinos."---Stephen Colbert - ?Newt may be toast already. The Republican establishment have the knives out for him. Tom DeLay said Newt Gingrich was the most despicable human being he has seen since shaving this morning.? ---Bill Maher - ?Mitt Romney is getting some heat today for something he said on CNN. He said he's not concerned about the very poor. ... Romney said the quote was taken out of context and that he absolutely cares about the poor. In fact, his campaign bus runs on the tears of the poor." ---Jimmy Kimmel - "Rick Santorum says Newt Gingrich is too hot, Mitt Romney is too cold, but he's the 'Goldilocks candidate.' Yes, nothing gets voters excited like comparing yourself to tepid porridge." ---Craig Ferguson - "A new website just came out that?s designed to calculate how long it takes Mitt Romney to earn your salary. So from now on, whenever Mitt Romney is running late, he can call there and say, 'I'll be there in five teachers.'" ---Conan O'Brien Lots more at Dan Kurtzman's place. Oh, and something I heard this week on The Daily Show that you should know about: Jon Stewart: Your opponent, Scott Brown, has said the media doesn?t give you tough questions, so I'm going to start you off with one that I think is very difficult and somewhat complex. You're running for Senate in Massachusetts, [but] you're in New York right now. Who's the better quarterback, Tom Brady or Eli Manning?Elizabeth Warren: I hate to tell you this, but Tom Brady. The Pats are gonna spank the Giants. We're gonna git'cha! I'm sorry, it's just reality. We have nothing further to add. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
| ||