Tuesday Reads: Obama’s Deficit-Reduction Plan, Backsliding Obots, Rev. Wright, and Dr. Doom

Posted: September 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: American Jobs Act, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Global Financial Crisis, income inequality, Medicaid, Medicare, morning reads, Social Security, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 45 Comments

Good Morning!! Let’s see what’s happening in the news today.

Well, of course the Obama apologists are claiming that he has suddenly grown a backbone of steel and become the liberal messiah they all dreamed of in 2008. I already told you about Ezra Klein’s delusional column last night. The other usual suspects are also getting leg tingles, and former Obots are starting to backslide.

Greg Sargent has put on his rose-colored glasses and taken a few swigs of LSD-laced Koolaid:

This has to be the clearest sign yet that Obama has taken a very sharp populist turn as he seeks to frame the contrast between the parties heading into 2012. During his remarks this morning, Obama directly responded to Republicans accusing him of “class warfare,” but rather than simply deny the charge, he made the critical point that the act of protecting tax cuts for the rich is itself class warfare, in effect positioning himself as the defender of the middle class against GOP class warriors on behalf of the wealthy.

Wow! I’ll bet it never occurred to anyone that income inequality equals class warfare until Obama figured it out. Amaaaazzzzing!!

A senior administration official tells me that parts of Obama’s “class warfare” broadside were ad-libbed. Here’s the key chunk — and it’s a script that could have been written by just about any card-carrying member of the “professional left:”

Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There’s no justification for it. It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million…
We’re already hearing the usual defenders of these kinds of loopholes saying, “this is just class warfare.” I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare. I think it’s just the right thing to do. I believe the American middle class, who’ve been pressured relentlesly for decades, believe it’s time that they were fought for as hard as the lobbyists and some lawmakers have fought to protect special treatment for billionaires and big corporations.
Nobody wants to punish success in America … All I’m saying is, that those who have done well, including me, should pay our fair share in taxes to contribute to the nation that made our success possible.

Holy sh*t!! Obama ad libbed? Hope ‘n’ change! Change we can believe in! I guess it’s just me, but I thought that speech sounded kind of weak and defensive. But what do I know?

Booman has an even better rationalization for Obama’s behavior than Beltway Bob Ezra Klein. According to the ever-gullable Booman,

…the president has a lot more credibility now when he takes his ideas to the public and says the the Republicans aren’t interested in compromise. You have to try and fail to get a compromise before that argument has any resonance. It’s not so much 11-Dimensional chess as basic common sense. Everyone’s poll numbers suffered during the summer, but no one’s standing was weakened more the Republicans’. That’s not an accident.

So Obama must have planned this. The man is brilliant!!

Digby says Obama is in campaign mode and that’s why he’s trying to sound strong and determined.

My first thought is that it appears the administration has finally decided that there’s nothing to be gained with exclusively delivering post-partisan pablum. It certainly sounds as though he’s thrown down the gauntlet. Unfortunately, the President appears to want to have two fights going into this election, one over job creation and one over whose plan to cut the deficit is better, which I think is a confusing waste of time. (Focus like a laser beam on jobs and tell the Republicans they’ll have to go through you to get to the safety net and I think people would instinctively understand that he’s on their side.) But that isn’t this president’s style and perhaps it wouldn’t be believable if he did it. So, this is at least a change of tactics, more confrontational in tone, which is his best hope for reelection since it turns out people aren’t really all that impressed that he’s the most reasonable guy in the room if it appears that he gets punk’d every time.

Digby things the proposed Medicare cuts are a loser politically, though–especially for Congress members running for reelection.

Jon Walker at FDL was “pleasantly surprised” that Obama didn’t call for Social Security cuts or “any specific major cuts to Medicare benefits,” but he hasn’t gone back on the Koolaid.

This is a positive development. Having President Obama publicly call for major cuts in Medicare benefits or change in age eligibility would have been terrible for our senior citizens and a total political disaster for the Democratic party. But it is important to remember: simply because the president did not put such cuts on the table doesn’t mean he took these cuts off the table.

President Obama has already privately signaled that in theory he would be willing to support major cuts to Medicare. And he’s hinted he’d be willing to cut Social Security benefits. They were both earlier put the table for a theoretical deal and this speech didn’t take them off the table. There was no veto threat to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits.

Actually, there do seem to be specific proposed cuts to Medicare. Jonathan Cohn breaks down the detail of the President’s deficit reduction proposal in a very technical piece that you can read if you’re interested. According to Cohn,

President Obama’s new deficit reduction plan includes about $320 billion in cuts to government health care programs. Most of the cuts from Medicare and that is sure to get a lot of people’s attention, if not now then in the presidential campaign.

But these reductions are less severe, and less worrisome, than some of the proposals Obama indicated he was willing to support over the summer, while he was negotiating with House Speaker John Boehner. In particular, Obama did not call for increasing the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, as folks like me feared he would.

In fact, the cuts Obama has in mind are more or less consistent with the kind of cuts that you find in the Affordable Care Act: They are reductions designed to change the way Medicare pays for treatment and services, ideally (although not always) in ways that will actually improve the efficiency or quality of care. To the extent they would force individual seniors to pay more, it’d be in the form of higher premiums from wealthy seniors or higher co-pays for treatments likely to be unnecessary or wasteful.

For a reminder of who Obama really is, I’ll turn to Glenn Ford at the Black Agenda Report. His post was written a few days ago–before today’s speech–but I still think he has Obama’s number.

The GOP can count on Obama to offer up Social Security on the alter of austerity, as he has done consistently since January, 2009, while still president-elect. Back in April, he proposed $4 trillion in cuts over 12 years – nearly as draconian as his hand-picked committee – with the focus on the safety net. “By 2025,” warned the apocalyptic and grossly misleading president, “the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs, Social Security, and the interest we owe on our debt.”

Obama promises that his grab-bag, mostly supply-side and wholly inadequate jobs scheme will largely be “paid for” by cuts that include “modest adjustments [hah!] to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid.”

Social Security stands to be mortally wounded at Obama’s hand. His second round of cuts in the payroll tax further undermine, not just the program’s trust fund, but its status as a free-standing entity outside of the usual congressional process. Congress will, theoretically, make up the temporary shortfall in payroll taxes through appropriations. But that puts Social Security in the middle of the budget deficit debate, where it does not belong and from which it has been purposely shielded since its origins in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Through rhetoric and calculated action, Obama has for the past two and a half years been in league with Republicans in falsely conflating Social Security and the federal debt. He is now positioned to knock the program from its protective pedestal.

The Social Security cuts are already taken care of as long as the GOP goes along with extending the payroll tax holiday. The more money Obama can suck out of the Social Security trust fund, the more likely he can “reform” the Social Security into a welfare program or Wall Street ATM.

If Obama succeeds, Social Security will become just another “entitlement” to be mangled in a grand bargain with the GOP, like Medicare and Medicaid. Obama wants to be remembered as the president who brought the Republicans and the right wing of the Democratic Party into harmonious consensus – over the dead carcass of the New Deal. That’s what he means by “Go big!”

Chris Hedges has another excellent article up at Truthdig. It’s an interview with Obama’s former pastor and spiritual adviser: “The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Recalls Obama’s Fall From Grace.” I know not everyone will agree with Hedges’ point of view, but I mostly do. As outlandish as Wright was made to seem in the media, I couldn’t fault much of what I heard him say about America and racism. It’s a lengthy article, but I hope you’ll take a look at it.

One of the things Wright discussed with Hedges was the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington DC. Wright himself raised $200,000 for the project.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing that the country would recognize someone as important as Dr. King,” Wright said when I reached him by phone in Chicago, “and recognize him in a way that raises his likeness in the Mall along with the presidents. He’s not a president like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. But to have him ranked among them in terms of this nation paying attention to the importance of his work, that’s a good thing.”

“I read Maya Angelou’s piece about the way the quote was put on the monument,” Wright said in referring to the editing of a quote by King on the north face of the 30-foot-tall granite statue. The inscription quote reads: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” But these are not King’s words. They are paraphrased from a sermon he gave in which he said: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” Angelou said the mangled inscription made King sound “arrogant.”

“I read the explanation as to why we couldn’t include the whole quote,” said Wright, who helped raise $200,000 for the monument. “Kids a hundred years from now, like our pastor who was born three years after King was killed, they’re going to see that and will not get the context. They will not hear the whole speech, and that will be their take-away, which is not a good thing. My bigger problems, however, have to do with all the emphasis on ’63 and ‘I Have a Dream.’ They have swept under the rug the radical justice message that King ended his career repeating over and over and over again, starting with the media coverage of the April 4, 1967, ‘A Time to Break Silence’ message at the Riverside Church [in New York City]. King had a huge emphasis on capitalism, militarism and racism, the three-headed giant. There is no mention of that, no mention of that King, and absolutely no mention of the importance of his work with the poor. After all, he’s at the garbage collectors strike in Memphis, Tenn., when he is assassinated. The whole emphasis on the poor sent him to Memphis. But that gets swept away. It bothers me that we think more about a monument than a movement. He had a movement trying to address poverty. It was for jobs, not I Have a Dream, not Black and White Together, but that gets lost.”

He’s right. The powers that be have worked for years to minimize King’s work to end the Vietnam war as well as his determination to wipe out poverty. It’s interesting that this is the second time King has been misquoted on Obama’s watch.

This post is already too long, so I’ll end with an article by Dr. Doom (Nouriel Roubini): Eight drastic policy measures necessary to prevent global economic collapse. None of them will be popular. The first recommendation is that

we must accept that austerity measures, necessary to avoid a fiscal train wreck, have recessionary effects on output. So, if countries in the Eurozone’s periphery such as Greece or Portugal are forced to undertake fiscal austerity, countries able to provide short-term stimulus should do so and postpone their own austerity efforts. These countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the core of the Eurozone, and Japan. Infrastructure banks that finance needed public infrastructure should be created as well.

Read the rest and weep. Our current “leaders” aren’t likely to pay any attention.

So sorry if I depressed you with that one. What are you reading and blogging about today?

Take it from Dr. King

Posted: August 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

The I have a Dream Speech happened 48 years ago tomorrow.

I thought about this a lot while I was watching the PBS Masters series on Pete Seeger called The Power of Song.  A repeat of the 2007 program was played yesterday showing 88 years of Pete Seeger and the role of his protests songs in everything from cleaning the Hudson River, to the Vietnam War and protesting the Wars in Afghanistan and, of course, his score for the Civil Rights movement.

There was then and there should be now: a powerful joining of social justice, music, and words.

Here’s part of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

Here is the powerful music of Pete Seeger who provided the score to so many social justice movements during my life time.

and from the PBS show and the transcript up top:

This is an open thread, but I’d like to add an article with a good question.

Why won’t America embrace the left?

In two centuries, the movement’s history in America is plagued by failure. An expert explains why.

What has the left really accomplished over the past two centuries? FDR’s New Deal remains one of the great American success stories. In the ’60s, leftist politics created a massive countercultural movement — and sexual and feminist revolutions. The civil rights movement transformed both American society and the American soul. But, if you compare the accomplishments of the American left to those of other parts of the world, like Western Europe, its record is remarkably dismal, with a surprising lack of real political and social impact.

At least, that’s the main takeaway from “American Dreamers,” a new book by Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University, which covers nearly 200 years of struggle for civil rights, sexual equality and radical rebellion. His book explores the way the national conversation has been changed by union organizers, gay rights activists and feminists. He also writes about how their techniques have now been adopted by the Tea Party movement. From Michael Moore to “Wall-E,” he argues that, although the left has been successful at transforming American culture, when it comes to practical change, it’s been woefully unsuccessful.

Saturday Reads: Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dreams, Waiting for Irene, and Bernanke’s Complaint

Posted: August 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Civil Rights, Domestic Policy, Economy, jobs, morning reads, poverty, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 63 Comments

By Mr. Fish, Truthdig.org

Good Morning! We are approaching the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (remember those?) and Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. Perhaps it is fitting that the ceremony to be held tomorrow to commemorate the anniversary has been postponed indefinitely. After all, King’s dream of ending poverty in American has certainly been postponed indefinitely. Ironically, we now have a “Black President” who as different from Dr. King as night from day. Oh, if only King were here today to speak truth to this sorry excuse for a President!

A reminder from the Center for American Progress: Dr. King’s Legacy Relevant in Today’s Budget Battles

In the 1960s, Americans had a government that refused to deliver basic human rights to its people. Over time, after battles in the courts and the political arena, laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 were passed. But despite these great accomplishments the fight continued because many Americans of all racial backgrounds were still living below the poverty line.

So in 1967, Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided to organize and lead the Poor People’s Campaign to combat poverty. The goal was to push Congress to create an “Economic Bill of Rights” that would establish how the federal government would address and solve the country’s poverty issues. It called for full employment, affordable housing, reasonable living wages, and equitable education opportunities for the poor. Momentum built up around the country, but unfortunately the campaign ended early due to the tragic assassination of Dr. King and lack of organization to continue the efforts.

Cornel West had a very appropriate op-ed in the NYT a couple of days ago: Dr. King Weeps From His Grave Here is a relevant excerpt:

The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.

As the talk show host Tavis Smiley and I have said in our national tour against poverty, the recent budget deal is only the latest phase of a 30-year, top-down, one-sided war against the poor and working people in the name of a morally bankrupt policy of deregulating markets, lowering taxes and cutting spending for those already socially neglected and economically abandoned. Our two main political parties, each beholden to big money, offer merely alternative versions of oligarchic rule.

The absence of a King-worthy narrative to reinvigorate poor and working people has enabled right-wing populists to seize the moment with credible claims about government corruption and ridiculous claims about tax cuts’ stimulating growth. This right-wing threat is a catastrophic response to King’s four catastrophes; its agenda would lead to hellish conditions for most Americans.

King weeps from his grave. He never confused substance with symbolism. He never conflated a flesh and blood sacrifice with a stone and mortar edifice. We rightly celebrate his substance and sacrifice because he loved us all so deeply. Let us not remain satisfied with symbolism because we too often fear the challenge he embraced. Our greatest writer, Herman Melville, who spent his life in love with America even as he was our most fierce critic of the myth of American exceptionalism, noted, “Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial.”

King’s response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.

Yes we need a revolution. We desperately need to revise our priorities and values and to end the transfer of wealth and power from the people to the oligarchs. Who will lead that revolution? We have never been more in need of strong, honest, caring leaders and yet we have a complete vacuum of leadership. What is to become of our country?

Of course Hurricane Irene is the more immediate focus and the object of the media sharks’ feeding frenzy for today. Nothing so pedestrian as putting people back to work or ending poverty could interest them. Interestingly, big media seems to be ignoring the fact that the hurricane has weakened significantly and that the eye has collapsed, meaning that there is unlikely to be any more intensification of the storm. I suppose it could still do quite a bit of damage along the coastline, but as a Bostonian I’ve seen so many of these huge storms fail to live up to the hype that I’m skeptical of this one. I hope I’m right this time.

Jeff Masters at Weather Underground yesterday:

Satellite data and measurements from the Hurricane Hunters show that Irene is weakening. A 9:21 am EDT center fix by an Air Force Reserve aircraft found that Irene’s eyewall had collapsed, and the central pressure had risen to 946 mb from a low of 942 mb this morning. The highest winds measured at their flight level of 10,000 feet were 125 mph, which would normally support classifying Irene as a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds. However, these winds were not mixing down to the surface in the way we typically see with hurricanes, and the strongest surface winds seen by the aircraft with their SFMR instrument were just 90 mph in the storm’s northeast eyewall. Assuming the aircraft missed sampling the strongest winds of the hurricane, it’s a good guess that Irene is a mid-strength Category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds. Satellite imagery shows a distinctly lopsided appearance to Irene’s cloud pattern, with not much heavy thunderstorm activity on the southwest side. This is due to moderate wind shear of 10 – 20 knots due to upper-level winds out of the southwest. This shear is disrupting Irene’s circulation and has cut off upper-level outflow along the south side of the hurricane. No eye is visible in satellite loops, but the storm’s size is certainly impressive. Long range radar out of Wlimington, North Carolina, shows that the outermost spiral bands from Irene are now beginning to come ashore along the South Carolina/North Carolina border. Winds at buoy 41004 100 miles offshore from Charleston, SC increased to 36 mph as of 10 am, with significant wave heights of 18 feet.


And from last night: “Irene continues to weaken.”

Satellite data and measurements from the Hurricane Hunters show that Irene continues to weaken. A 1:32 pm EDT center fix by an Air Force Reserve aircraft found that Irene’s eyewall is still gone, and the central pressure had risen to 951 mb from a low of 942 mb this morning. The winds measured in Irene near the surface support classifying it as a strong Category 1 hurricane or weak Category 2. Satellite imagery shows a distinctly lopsided appearance to Irene’s cloud pattern, with not much heavy thunderstorm activity on the southwest side. This is due to moderate southwesterly wind shear of 10 – 20 knots. This shear is disrupting Irene’s circulation and has cut off upper-level outflow along the south side of the hurricane. No eye is visible in satellite loops, but the storm’s size is certainly impressive. Long range radar out of Wilmington, North Carolina, shows that the outermost spiral bands from Irene have moved ashore over North Carolina. Winds at buoy 41004 100 miles offshore from Charleston, SC increased to 47 mph, gusting to 60 mph at 3 pm EDT, with significant wave heights of 25 feet.

New York City has ordered 250,000 people to evacuate from coastal areas.

New York City officials issued what they called an unprecedented order on Friday for the evacuation of about 250,000 residents of low-lying areas at the city’s edges — from the expensive apartments in Battery Park City to the roller coaster in Coney Island to the dilapidated boardwalk in the Rockaways — warning that Hurricane Irene was such a threat that people living there simply had to get out.

Officials made what they said was another first-of-its kind decision, announcing plans to shut down the city’s entire transit system on Saturday — all 468 subway stations and 840 miles of tracks, and the rest of nation’s largest mass transit network: thousands of buses in the city, as well as the buses and commuter trains that reach from Midtown Manhattan to the suburbs.

Underscoring what Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other officials said was the seriousness of the threat, President Obama approved a request from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York to declare a federal emergency in the state while the hurricane was still several hundred miles away, churning toward the Carolinas. The city was part of a hurricane warning that took in hundreds of miles of coastline, from Sandy Hook, N.J., to Sagamore Beach, Mass.

From what I’ve heard, the Jersey Shore may get hit worse than NYC, but who knows? I know we have a few commenters from NJ, so I hope they will keep us updated on the situation there. In Boston, they are getting warnings about the storm surges for people along the coast and the Cape and islands.

BOSTON — As Hurricane Irene began to batter the Carolina Coast on Friday afternoon, a hurricane warning was issued for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, New York City and coastal Connecticut.

A tropical storm warning was issued for the North and South shores, and a tropical storm watch was issued for areas of southern New England further inland….

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm. He said he is particularly concerned because Irene will likely take a path through central Massachusetts, with fierce, damage-causing winds and storm surges on the eastern, coastal side of the state, and at least 10 inches of heavy rain leading to flooding to the west.

Here’s a little comic relief. Some ESPN guy (a former golfer) got in trouble for mocking President Obama on Twitter (has the First Amendment been repealed or what?)

ESPN is coming down on Paul Azinger for mocking President Obama on Twitter. The golf analyst tweeted Thursday the commander in chief plays more golf than he does — and that Azinger has created more jobs this month than Obama has.

On Friday ESPN ‘reminded” Azinger his venture into political punditry violates the company’s updated social network policy for on-air talent and reporters.

“Paul’s tweet was not consistent with our social media policy, and he has been reminded that political commentary is best left to those in that field,” spokesman Andy Hall told Game On! in a statement.

ESPN’s Hall would not comment on whether Azinger, who won the 1993 PGA Championship, will be fired, suspended or punished in some way. “We handle that internally,” he said.

In economics news, Ben Bernanke gave his eagerly anticipated speech yesterday, and basically said that the politicians have screwed up the economy and he hopes they won’t completely sink it with their insanely stupid policies based on Reagan era fantasies. If you’re interested, here are a few links to reactions to Bernanke’s speech.

Derek Thompson at The Atlantic: Bernanke: The Debt Ceiling Debate Nearly Broke the Recovery

Andrew Leonard at Salon: Bernanke Declines to Commit Treason

Jenine Aversa at Bloomberg: Bernanke Scholar Advises Bernanke Fed Chief to Be Bold on Monetary Policy

Those are my reading recommendations for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Monday Reads

Posted: April 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Diplomacy Nightmares, Foreign Affairs, Hamas, Labor unions, Libya, MENA, Middle East, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Syria, worker rights | Tags: , , , | 68 Comments

Good Morning!

This is the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination.  It happened on April 4, 1968.  Historian Robert Creamer remembers the day and its meaning in a post at HuffPo.  It’s the 43rd anniversary of the activist’s death.  He was in Memphis working for the rights of ordinary workers to organize and better their work terms and conditions.

Martin Luther King was in Memphis to support the strike of the city’s garbage collectors who were demanding the right of collective bargaining.

He was there because the right to sit across a table and negotiate wages and working conditions gave otherwise powerless workers, the right to have a say.

Then — as now — collective bargaining was, as the AFSCME banner said in the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda, about freedom.

At Duke that spring we — and the non-academic employees of the university — took up the same cause. Collective bargaining was the only thing that could systematically, permanently change the relations of power and overcome years of exploitation.

Even in 1968, their $1.15 per hour was a pathetic salary — $2,392 a year. They were exploited every day. They needed a union.

Now, 43 years later, America is relearning the lessons of April, 1968:

  • How collective bargaining is an integral part of a truly democratic society.
  • How the labor movement is about a lot more than wages and working conditions — that it’s about respect and dignity and hope.
  • And finally, it is learning once again that you can’t have the rain without the thunder and lightning. Freedom is earned through struggle. And if you want to have a great life — a life that gives you a sense of fulfillment and meaning — it’s never too late to decide that you will dedicate yours to the struggle for social and economic justice.

The LA Times reports that over 700 Anti-union pieces of legislation have been introduced across the country as part of the Republican party’s war on working Americans.  Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

More than 700 bills have been introduced in virtually every state. Nearly half of the states are considering legislation to limit public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Unions are girding for a fight.

Now that the governors of Ohio and Wisconsin have signed bills to limit public workers’ collective bargaining rights, their fellow Republicans in other states are expected to gain momentum in their efforts to take on unions.

Palm Beach, Florida judges have evidently had it with the sloppy recordkeeping practices of mortgage holders and servicers.  They’re starting to “routinely”  dismiss foreclosure cases.

Angry and exasperated by faulty foreclosure documents, judges throughout Florida are hitting back by increasingly dismissing cases and boldly accusing lawyers of “fraud upon the court.”

A Palm Beach Post review of cases in state and appellate courts found judges are routinely dismissing cases for questionable paperwork. Although in most cases the bank is allowed to refile the case with the appropriate documents, in a growing number of cases judges are awarding homeowners their homes free and clear after finding fraud upon the court.

Still, critics say judges are not doing enough.

“The judges are the gatekeepers to jurisprudence, to the Florida Constitution, to access to the courts and to due process,” said attorney Chip Parker, a Jacksonville foreclosure defense attorney who was recently investigated by the Florida Bar for his critical comments about so-called “rocket dockets” during an interview with CNN. “It’s discouraging when it appears as if there is an exception being made for foreclosure cases.”

Dictator Bashar al-Assad of Syria is undoubtedly one of the most oppressive leaders in the world. He has been a strong supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah.  AJ has an op-ed that talks about how deluded he’s become these days as his people have finally stood up to say enough!  It’s an interesting piece that talks about how just being against Israel does not translate into a blank check from your people or other leaders in the region.

The eruption of Arab revolutions has been a reaction to decades of repression and the skewed distribution of wealth; two problems that have plagued anti- and pro-Western Arab governments alike.

And Syria is one of the most repressive states in the region; hundreds, if not thousands, of people have disappeared into its infamous prisons. Some reappear after years, some after decades, many never resurface at all.

Syrians have not been the only victims. Other Arabs – Lebanese who were abducted during the decades of Syrian control over its neighbour, Jordanian members of the ruling Baath party who disagreed with its leadership and members of different Palestinian factions – have also been victimised.

Syrian critics of the regime are often arrested and charged – without due process – with serving external – often American and Israeli – agendas to undermine the country’s “steadfastness and confrontational policies”.

But these acts have never been adequately condemned by Arab political parties and civil society, which have supported Syria’s position on Israel while turning a blind eye to its repressive policies.

Thus while Syrian dissidents, including prominent nationalist and leftist intellectuals, are incarcerated in Syrian jails, other Arab activists and intellectuals have flocked to Damascus to praise its role in “defending Arab causes”.

This hypocrisy has reinforced the regime’s belief that it is immune from the criticisms directed at repressive pro-Western governments in the region.

As some one who studies the region–albeit mostly in economic and trade terms–I’ve found that each country has its unique set of problems and circumstances even though many of them seem to have similarities on the surface.  Syria’s been one of the worst of the worst destabilizers in the region. This is one regime that could be replaced by nearly any one and it would be an immediate improvement.

Former President Clinton is on record saying that the US government shouldn’t rule out arming Libyan Rebels.

But Clinton said he wouldn’t completely rule out the idea of supplying arms to Libya’s rebels.

“Let me just say this. I sure wouldn’t shut the door to it. I think … we may need to know a little more,” he said.

Clinton, husband of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stressed that he was speaking without “any official sanction” whatsoever.

“I’m just speaking from myself. But I certainly wouldn’t take that off the table, too,” he said.

For some reason, emissaries from Gadhafi are meeting Greek leaders to find a political solution to their civil war and to the UN resolution.  Maybe Gadhafi is looking for that special retirement place on a Greek Isle.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s acting foreign minister met with Greece’s prime minister yesterday to seek a political solution to hostilities in the north African country, said Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas.

“It appears that the regime is also seeking a solution,” Droutsas said, referring to Qaddafi’s government, after Abdul Ati al-Obeidi met with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, Droutsas said in a statement.

The talks followed “a series of contacts over recent days” involving Greek and Libyan officials, including the countries’ prime ministers, which led to al-Obeidi’s Athens trip, Droutsas said. Al-Obeidi also planned to visit Malta and Turkey, he said.

“It is necessary for there to be a serious attempt for peace, for stability in the region,” the Greek foreign minister said.

The Daily Mail reports that Moussa Koussa is getting asylum in the UK.  I’d say that’s a pretty interesting development considering his role in the Lockabie bombing.  I suppose there’s worse places to spend your retirement from “notorious henchmen”.

Libya’s feared ‘torturer-in-chief’ has been offered asylum in the UK in return for his help to topple Muammar Gaddafi and his hated regime.

The secret offer to Libya’s former foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, was made while he was still in Tripoli and helped persuade him to seek sanctuary in Britain.

But any promise of special protection for one of Gaddafi’s most notorious henchmen has provoked anger from those who want Koussa, 62, put on trial for his alleged crimes.

MP Ben Wallace, parliamentary aide to Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, said: ‘This man should not be granted asylum or any other special treatment; the only proper outcome is to bring him to justice.

‘Britain needs to make up its mind quickly. There will be no shortage of courts that will readily seek his extradition. The last thing the UK wants is for Koussa to languish, at taxpayers’ expense, in legal no-man’s-land.’

MI6 officers first made contact with Koussa, who has been linked with the Lockerbie bombing and the killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London, in the first few days after the UN-sanctioned attacks on Gaddafi’s military machine on March 19.

A source told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Central to the enticements was the prospect of living in safety in the UK under the protection of the asylum laws. Koussa’s greatest concern was what would happen to him once he left Gaddafi.

I’m going to end with something BB sent me last on what the radical right thinks of women.  You can see this onslaught of anti women laws ooze disrespect and the opinion that women aren’t fully competent adults who are capable of making good, moral decisions without some big daddy republican government telling them what to do.  Disgusting!  They want to turn BP loose on the Gulf of Mexico again, but women can’t even been trusted with their own bodies.

Women sure are impulsive, lying, vulnerable and childlike creatures, aren’t they? That’s the conclusion I’d draw, if my understanding of women were based solely on anti-abortion bills.

These bills are pending and passing at a disturbing pace in multiple states. They don’t just reflect the nation’s chronic and understandable ambivalence about abortion. They also paint a shockingly negative portrait of women.

Here are a few key messages gleaned from the latest bills and anti-abortion advocacy:

* Women are impulsive. Half of states now require women to undergo a waiting period before obtaining an abortion. Usually the waiting period is one day. South Dakota just passed a three-day waiting period, the longest in the nation. The implication is that, without a government-mandated waiting period, women would dash into abortion clinics without first weighing the gravity of their decision.

* Women are prone to lying. Last week, the Indiana House passed a measure that would forbid most abortions after 20 weeks. A version of it is expected to pass into law. Opponents tried to carve out an exception for victims of rape or incest, as well as for women whose lives are threatened by medical complications. However, the bill’s sponsor fended off the amendment by attacking it as a “giant loophole” that women would use to get abortions by pretending they were raped.

* Women need things explained to them. A bill recently passed by the Texas House would require doctors to describe the fetus in some detail to all abortion-seeking patients, including victims of rape and incest. The bill allows women to close their eyes and cover their ears. (It doesn’t specify whether women are permitted to say, “La-la-la, I can’t hear you.”)

Well, that’s about it from me.  I’m just waiting for the severe weather to fire up today and trying to heal.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Mr. President, How About Supporting Democracy in the U.S.?

Posted: February 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Anti-War, Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Egypt, executive orders, FBI raids, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Iran, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Yesterday, President Obama hypocrically praised the Egyptian pro-democracy demonstrators and argued forcefully in favor of the Egyptian government listening and responding to the demands of its people.

There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place. This is one of those moments. This is one of those times. The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same.

By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian people’s hunger for change. But this is not the end of Egypt’s transition. It’s a beginning. I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead, and many questions remain unanswered. But I am confident that the people of Egypt can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity that has defined these last few weeks. For Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.

Back here in the U.S., President Obama listens only to the rich and powerful while ignoring a level of inequality higher than that in Egypt and an unemployment rate approximately the same as Egypt’s!

In the speech, Obama quoted a man who really stood for nonviolent protest and the fight for democracy:

As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.

How dare you, Mr. Obama? You are a disgrace. You repeatedly imply comparisons between you and Martin Luther King, while behaving more like Mr. Mubarak.

What happens here in the U.S. when people peacefully protest the government’s policies? If it happens at Democratic or Republican party conventions, protesters are put in cages ironically called “free speech zones” that are far enough from the action to prevent the powerful from being disturbed by democracy-seeking rabble. Peace activists who identify as socialists or dare to support freedom movements in foreign countries are targeted by thuggish FBI raids and secret grand juries.

Mr. President, you and other members of your administration have repeatedly called for the Egyptian government to repeal its emergency laws. What about the emergency laws that have been in place here in the U.S. for many years?

Although most Americans would be surprised to hear it, the United States is technically experiencing more than one ongoing national emergency. In 1979, during the Iran Hostage Crisis, president Jimmy Carter declared a national emergency by executive order, which every president since has renewed. George W. Bush declared a separate state of emergency after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which Barack Obama renewed.

These emergency measures are limited rather than general in nature. The 1976 National Emergencies Act set a two-year term on emergency declarations (although it’s possible to extend a declaration indefinitely), and requires the president to specify what, exactly, the state of emergency empowers him to do. The Sept. 11-related emergency gives the president the right to call retired officers back into active duty (among other powers). The Iran emergency prevents American citizens and companies from entering into oil development contracts with the Islamic Republic.

Those states of emergency have allowed you and your mentor predecessor George W. Bush to gain authoritarian powers for the executive branch through the USA Patriot Act and other unconstitutional laws like the Military Commissions Act. The powers granted by these laws have frequently been abused by government agencies.

Free Speech Zone at Democratic Convention, 2008

The Patriot Act has been reauthorized multiple times and is currently up for renewal.

So, Mr. Obama, what is your position on the latest attempts to keep the most intrusive parts of the Patriot Act from expiring?

When the act was first signed into law, Congress put in some “sunset” provisions to quiet the concerns of civil libertarians, but they were ignored by successive extensions. Unfortunately, those concerns proved to be well founded, and a 2008 Justice Department report confirmed that the FBI regularly abused their ability to obtain personal records of Americans without a warrant.

The answer to that question is that the President wants those provisions extended for three years–two years longer than the Republicans in the House are pushing for!

The Senate is working on an extension also, and one of the leaders in support of that effort is “Democrat” Diane Feinstein (whose investment banker husband has profited handsomely from defense contracts and other government largess related to the financial crisis)

At least one mainstream journalist has called attention to the hypocrisy of your policies this morning, Mr. President–focusing on your disdain for the poor and unemployed in the U.S. In the NYT, Bob Herbert writes:

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.

It’s noteworthy that Bob Herbert is saying such things out loud these days, but what we really need is some serious consciousness-raising among the American people as a whole. We could be joining together to fight back against encroachments on our liberties and our economic stability like the people in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. When will Americans wake up and see what is happening right here in the USA and begin to demand the restoration of our freedoms and our living standards? When will we fight back against growing government tyranny right here in the USA?

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