Month: March 2010

Word

by digby

Frank Rich:

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

[…]

If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story…

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

It’s more likely that they don’t but fear them but find them useful, which is even more irresponsible.

In 1965 there was a common perception of reality. There isn’t anymore. The tea baggers live in a FOX and hate radio drenched world of a different dimension. The most sane among them believe liberals are fomenting the violence by passing legislation they don’t like. Most of them, however, literally believe that liberals are violently threatening them and they need to protect themselves. Bizarroworld.

Rich’s column is good today. RTWT.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Girls together outrageously

By Dennis Hartley

Power chord feministas: The Runaways

Oh, they would walk the Strip at nights
And dream they saw their name in lights
On Desolation Boulevard
They’ll light the faded light
-from “The Sixteens” by The Sweet

This may be tough to fathom now, but the idea of an all-female rock band (who actually played their own instruments and wrote their own songs) was still considered a “novelty” in the mid-70s. Some inroads had been made from the late-1960s up to that time; most notably from Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Suzi Quatro and Heart, as well as some lesser-known (but by no means any less talented) female rockers like Lydia Pense (Cold Blood), Maggie Bell (Stone the Crows), Inga Rumpf (Atlantis) and Janita Haan (Babe Ruth). However, most of the aforementioned were lead singers, with all-male backup. I do recall a hard-rocking female quartet called Fanny, who put out a couple of decent albums in the early 70s. And then, there were The Shaggs… but that’s a whole other post, dear reader.

In 1975, a music industry hustler and self-proclaimed idolmaker named Kim Fowley (whose claim to fame at the time chiefly stemmed from producer credits on several early 60s Top 40 novelty hits like “Alley Oop” by the Hollywood Argyles and “Nut Rocker” by B. Bumble & the Stingers) had an epiphany. If he could assemble an all-female rock band with the ability to capture the universal appeal of The Beatles by way of the sexy tomboy ethos of glam-punk queen Suzi Quatro, he could conquer the charts and make a bazillion dollars. He scoured L.A.s Sunset Strip for teenage girls who met his criteria: good looks, a “fuck you” attitude, and a relentless drive to succeed, who (preferably) already owned their own equipment and (in his twisty view) could be easily manipulated.

Depending on which camp is doing the talking in any tell-all book you may read or documentary you might watch, it was either due to or in spite of Fowley’s dubious manipulations that Cherie Currie (lead singer), Joan Jett (guitar and vocals), Sandy West (drums), Lita Ford (lead guitar) and bass player Jackie Fox (and her eventual replacement Vicki Blue) did make quite a name for themselves. In the course of their brief 4-year career, they also high-kicked a breach in rock’n’roll’s glass ceiling with those platform boots, empowering a new generation of young women to plug in and crank it up to “11”.

Sound like perfect fodder for a “behind the music” biopic? You bet your shag haircut. Anyone who harbors a fond remembrance for the halcyon days of Bowie, T. Rex and Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco might find themselves becoming a little misty-eyed during the opening moments of Floria Sigismondi’s new film, The Runaways, during which she uncannily captures the look and the vibe of the Sunset Strip youth scene (circa 1975) all set to the strains of Nick Gilder’s “Roxy Roller”. It’s the best cinematic evocation of the glam-rock era that I have seen since Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine.

The film picks up the band’s story at the point where Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) first introduces Suzi Quatro superfan and aspiring rock star Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) to drummer Sandy West (Stella Maeve). After a series of hit-and-miss audition sessions in the dingy trailer that serves as the fledgling band’s rehearsal space, the now-familiar lineup eventually falls into place, including lead singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) and lead guitarist Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton). Shannon chews major scenery as Fowley, especially as he puts the band through “boot camp”, which includes teaching them how to plough through a performance while getting pelted by yard waste (including dog shit) and verbal abuse. Cruel? Yes, but have you ever been to an “open mike” night?

The film is quite engaging in its first third, capturing all the wild energy and uninhibited exuberance of rock’n’roll and raging hormones; it eventually runs out of steam as it bogs down a bit in the more cliché trappings of backstage melodrama. Still, there are some very strong performances that make this film worth seeing. Although she is the same age that Cherie Currie was when she joined the band, Fanning somehow “feels” too young (innocent?) to be cast as this particular character. Nonetheless, she deserves some credit for giving her bravest performance to date (her handlers have obviously decided that it’s time for her to gingerly test the waters outside of the “Disney friendly” sandbox). The biggest surprise is the usually somnambulant Stewart’s surly and unpredictable performance as Joan Jett. Strike that-she IS Joan Jett; it’s less “acting” than shapeshifting.

I couldn’t help noticing that there were a couple of glaring omissions in the “where are they now?” crawl that prefaces the end credits. Jett, Currie and West are mentioned, but bio updates on Lita Ford and Jackie Fox were conspicuously absent. Then, when I saw that Joan Jett was one of the film’s producers, I had an “aha!” moment. It did appear to me, more often than not, that the film was skewing in the direction of becoming “the Joan Jett story”. Then again, one could argue that she has had the most high profile post-Runaways career, with chart success as a solo artist and as co-founder of Blackheart Records. Combined with Kirsten Stewart’s current box-office legs and the release of Jett’s latest album right before opening weekend, maybe this was just a shrewd marketing move on the part of the producers. According to the Internet Movie Database, Lita Ford and Jackie Fox did not give their blessing to the production, so it’s also possible that the end credits snub is simply a “fuck you” to her old band mates. God, I LOVE rock’n’roll.

Like I said-a whole other post, dear reader.

Grrls gone wild: Edgeplay – A Film About The Runaways, Foxes, Light of Day, Bandits, Streets of Fire, Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, Prey for Rock & Roll, Breaking Glass, Smithereens, Times Square, Starstruck , The Rose, Janis: A Film, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Josie and The Pussycats.

Previous posts with related themes:

The Mayor of the Sunset Strip
The Gits
Top 10 Rock Musicals

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You Figure It Out

by digby

..because I can’t. Here’s a diary from Red State this week, discussing a post of mine:

Hullabaloo, a Liberal blog, posted a little gem: ”There were no MRIs in 1780.”

Ignoring the fact that the United States had not yet forced Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown in 1780 (and hence, no Articles of Confederation, let alone a Constitution, had been ratified), the line of reasoning by the author is sophomoric at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.

Nowhere in the constitution does it authorize the Federal Aviation Administration or the Center For Disease Control either, so I guess they’re out too. The fact that the founders weren’t psychics or time travelers is a real problem for us, apparently.

Ian Millheiser from CAP pointed out that if you used this logic, then Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional as well. Pilon agrees, saying that the entire New Deal is unconstitutional. So, there you have it.

Um, no, not exactly. You see, there were no airplanes, no aviation industry in 1780 (or 1781, when the Articles were signed, or 1787, when the Constitution was ratified). There were doctors at the time. The health care industry, tiny as it was, did actually exist. MRIs may be a modern convenience, but physical examinations have existed since time immemorial.

That’s hardly relevant, however, since the aircraft owned by airlines largely travel across state lines (that is, “interstate commerce,” which the Constitution expressly grants the Federal Government the authority to regulate). In fact, when Southwest Airlines began operating solely within the state of Texas, they fought (and won) a court battle with other airlines who had argued Southwest as subject to regulation by the Civil Aeronautics board (or CAB, the precursor to the FAA). Southwest Airlines argued that because their aircraft did not travel across state lines, the CAB could not regulate their routes or set their fares as it did other airlines. The Supreme Court agreed, and Southwest started the airline industry on the route to deregulation and the discount airlines of today.

As for CDC, their mandate is to deal with disease outbreaks that can or do spread across state lines. Epidemics and pandemics, that sort of thing. One could argue with the constitutionality of the research, but fighting diseases would be hard without the knowledge of how they work.

This argument by the author at Hullabaloo is the same specious reasoning that has liberals arguing that, because there were no “assault rifles” when the Second Amendment was passed, those weapons should not be protected by that Amendment. So let’s extrapolate this reasoning:

* Computers did not exist in the 1790s. Therefore, they should not be subject to the Fourth Amendment restriction against search without a warrant.
* The internet did not exist in the 1790s. Therefore, web pages are not subject to freedom of speech or press under the First Amendment.

Now, reverse the reasoning to match the Hullabaloo post:

* Television did not exist in 1780, but Americans need to be informed in order to make decisions. Therefore, the government should provide every American with a television so they can get the news.
* Air conditioning did not exist at the founding of the nation, but hot summers can be hazardous. Therefore, the government should provide every American with an air conditioning unit so they will not be overheated.

So what happens when we divorce the mental construct from the issue of health care? The argument does not have merit. A person could die if they don’t get an MRI that could diagnose some treatable disease, but they could just as easily die without a television to warn them of an approaching disaster or from heat stroke during a heat wave. Only the most ardent communist would argue that the government should be providing televisions and air conditioners.

The argument that because MRIs didn’t exist in 1780, the Constitution doesn’t cover the issue of health care is false. The Constitution gives the Federal Government certain enumerated powers; beyond that, its power is supposed to be limited or non-existent, with all other power being vested in the various States, or in each individual citizen. If the Constitution does not grant the Federal Government the power to do something, that is by design, not by an accident of evolving technology.

Like I said, you figure it out. I will just make one point: I agree that the constitution doesn’t explicitly cover the issue of health care, just as I agree that it doesn’t explicitly cover assault rifles or MRIs. And if this fine fellow had read my post more carefully (or resisted the urge to misrepresent it) he would have included the opening of the post, which was this:

The Cato Institute’s Roger Pilon was on TV earlier saying:

“Nowhere in the constitution does it authorize the congress to enact a health care bill.”

That changes my point a bit, doesn’t it? I was quoting someone else. To the extent this poor soul makes any sense at all, it seems we are in agreement about the illogic of that comment. Neither of us believes that because the constitution doesn’t specifically address something, that doesn’t mean it isn’t allowed to, hence my ironic post title and references to the CDC and the FAA.

But the constitution does say this, in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3:

the United States Congress shall have power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”.

There are raging battles over how the commerce clause should be interpreted and have been since the New Deal. But the question that concerns us on Health Care isn’t whether or not the government is allowed to “provide” health insurance. That’s long settled: it already “provides” 50% of the health insurance in this country through Medicare, Medicaid and the VA. This constitutional question is whether the government can mandate that individuals buy a product from a private party simply because they are a citizen. If this person is a member of the Supreme Court (God help us) then perhaps he is in a position to render such a smug, tendentious final ruling that it doesn’t. Otherwise, he’s just as full of shit as that guy on TV the other day.

Watching too much FOX and listening to Rush and Beck will confuse anyone, I know. And I feel for them. But the level of confusion among the American people is rising in direct proportion to how many hours a day this misinformation is disseminated, leaving them with the sad conclusion that this illogical hash they hear every day is common wisdom. WTTW: Glenn Beck is a clown. And if you think like him, you are a clown too.

h/t to RK

The Wrong People

by digby

Here’s an interesting headline:

Most white Americans think health reform benefits the poor and uninsured, not people like them.

by Ronald Brownstein

Can we all see what’s wrong with that formulation? I thought so. It reminded me of this memorable phrase from George W. Bush:

You know there’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that, that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self governing. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily, you know, are a different color than white, can self-govern.

Says a lot, doesn’t it?

It’s not just a headline writer in a hurry problem. It’s in the article itself:

Compared with earlier presidents, Obama focused his case less on helping the uninsured and more on providing those with coverage greater leverage against their insurers. That shift was especially evident in his final drive toward passage.

And yet, polling just before the bill’s approval showed that most white Americans believed that the legislation would primarily benefit the uninsured and the poor, not people like them. In a mid-March Gallup survey, 57 percent of white respondents said that the bill would make things better for the uninsured, and 52 percent said that it would improve conditions for low-income families. But only one-third of whites said that it would benefit the country overall — and just one-fifth said that it would help their own family.

So, whites either think that only non-whites are poor and uninsured, or they just assume that that health care reform is going to benefit the non-whites regardless of whether whites are uninsured and poor. Either way, it’s a little weird, don’t you think?

In both that Gallup Poll and the latest monthly survey by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, nonwhite respondents were much more likely than whites to say that the bill would help the country and their own families. Those responses reflect not only experience (African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than whites to lack insurance) but also minorities’ greater receptivity to government activism. By meeting a tangible need in these communities, health reform is likely to solidify the Democratic hold on the one-quarter (and growing) minority share of the electorate, especially if Republicans define themselves around demanding repeal.

But whites still cast about three-quarters of votes. And if most remain convinced that health reform primarily benefits the poor and uninsured, Democrats could find themselves caught in an unusual populist crossfire during this fall’s elections.

The unusual populist crossfire isn’t actually unusual at all. It’s called right wing populism and it goes like this: Obama has stolen the tax dollars of hard working white people (Real Americans) and given it to the blacks, Mexicans and rich “cosmopolitan” elites on Wall Street. Nothing unusual about that in the least. It’s as old as the hills.

Brownstein doesn’t seem to know that because he goes on and talking about how odd this whole thing is for the Democrats caught in a crossfire as working class whites rebel against the government bail outs and health care (which they believe is going to benefit people who don’t deserve it.) I guess this is a new concept to Stan Greenberg too who gives this fatuous analysis:

Census figures show that noncollege whites are more than twice as likely to lack health insurance as whites with a degree. But these working-class whites have grown more skeptical than better-educated whites that government cares about their needs. And the searing recession has only hardened those doubts. In a recent memo, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg warned that these anxious and alienated voters are approaching a “tipping point” that would send them hurtling toward Republicans in November. House Democrats seem aware of that risk: Of the 34 Democrats who opposed the final health care bill, 28 represent districts with an above-average share of whites without college educations.

But why is it that these voters don’t think the government cares about their needs when it just passed a health care reform that will help them since they currently lack health insurance. is it possible that their issue isn’t the government caring for their needs at all? Is it possible that the issue is that they simply feel the government shouldn’t be giving help to people they think don’t deserve it? I think you have to admit that this is a likely scenario for a fair number of those people. They would rather do without health insurance themselves than have the same benefit going to black and brown people. It’s always been that way.

So when Brownstein argues “these trends frame perhaps the Democrats’ greatest political challenge today: convincing economically squeezed white voters that Washington understands their distress,” he’s failing to realize that it’s not about the government “understanding” their distress. It’s about the government passing out favors across the board including to groups who these people feel are inferior, thus devaluing these folks and their privilege. Emphasizing certain policy prescriptions in the health care bill isn’t going to change that.

As for the other side of the right wing populist argument, well good luck with that:

Greenberg says his recent polling shows that Obama’s collision with insurers on health reform has already softened the belief that Democrats favor Wall Street over Main Street. He predicts the financial fight “will shift it further.”

At this point the teabaggers are so confused that they think the government has nationalized all the banks and insurance companies and are preparing to round up all the white people and put them into FEMA camps. The administration’s efforts have been extremely lame up to this point and it’s left them without any serious way to direct this populist fever away from themselves.

Brownstein concludes:

[D]espite a Gallup Poll showing a post-passage bump in support for the health care bill, skepticism that government will ever deliver for them is bred in the bone for many white voters, especially those in the working class. Health care reform won’t win sustained acceptance — or politically benefit the Democrats who finally shouldered it into law — unless it begins to excise those deeply embedded doubts.

These doubts have been deeply embedded since the 1700s, so it’s pretty deep. And the election of the first African American president may have brought some of it up to the surface, but it wasn’t unique. There is a fact about all this that simply has to be acknowledged before you can understand what’s going on here:

While it’s certainly true that enough white people voted for Obama to put him in the Oval Office, the blunt fact remains that a majority of white people did not. Although Obama beat John McCain in the popular vote by an impressive seven-point margin, McCain beat Obama among white voters by an even more impressive 12-point margin. Obama got 53 percent of the broad electorate to vote for him but only 43 percent of the white electorate. When I say “white electorate,” I don’t mean the white working class, or white Southerners, or any other subgroup whose capacity for racial tolerance has long been held suspect. I mean all white voters.

Of course Democrats haven’t won a majority* of the white vote since the civil rights act was passed. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

Is this all about race? Obviously not. But it’s certainly definitional in right wing populism and is a huge factor in the teabagger revolt. Trying at this late date to direct the populist anger at the banks after dithering for months probably isn’t going to work to keep the reasonable members of the working class who still identify as Democratic on board. (It could have if they’d done it consistently, but at this point they’re either on the team or they aren’t.) The Democrats are going to need to get out the African American, Hispanic and liberal white vote in big numbers.

Too bad they helped the wingnuts kill ACORN. They really could have used them.

* Keep in mind that in 92 and 96, Perot took 20% and 8% of the vote — and they were virtually all white.

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TBTF

by digby

Simon Johnson writes:

When a company wants to fend off a hostile takeover, its board may seek to put in place so-called “poison pill” defenses – i.e., measures that will make the firm less desirable if purchased, but which ideally will not encumber its operations if it stays independent.

Large complex cross-border financial institutions run with exactly such a structure in place, but it has the effect of making it very expensive for the government to takeover or shut down such firms, i.e., to push them into any form of bankruptcy. To understand this more clearly you can,

1. Look at the situation of Citigroup today, or
2. Read this new speech by Senator Ted Kaufman.

Johnson goes on to discuss the Citigroup issue in some depth. But I would urge you to read Kaufman’s speech in its entirety. He has looked at this Financial Reform Bill from the perspective of a disinterested bystander, who is not taking any money from the industry and isn’t running for reelection. (Evidently, he doesn’t have any ambitions to become a Wall Street Playah either.) Here’s an excerpt:

I will limit my remarks today to this central aspect of the challenge we face. In particular, does this bill take the necessary steps to reduce the size, complexity and concentrated power of the behemoths that currently dominate our financial industry and our economy? If not, what is the justification for maintaining their status quo, what is the risk that one might fail, and – if that were to occur – what is the likelihood that the American taxpayer will once again have to bail them out? The answer is that there is little in the current legislation that would change the behavior or reduce the size of the nation’s six mega-banks. Instead, this bill invests its hopes in two ideas: First, that chastened regulators (who failed miserably in preventing the crisis) will this time control these mega-banks more effectively – today, tomorrow and decades into the future. And, second, that a resolution authority designed to shield the taxpayers from yet another bail-out will be able successfully to unwind incredibly complex mega-banks engaged across the globe. In the midst of the Great Depression, Congress built laws that maintained financial stability for nearly 60 years. Through the Glass-Steagall Act, which included the establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Congress separated investment banks, which were free to engage in risky behavior, and commercial banks, whose deposits were federally insured. As I described in a previous speech, during the last 30 years, that division was methodically disassembled by a deregulatory mindset, leading to the reckless Wall Street behavior that caused the greatest financial crisis and economic downturn since the 1930s. What walls will this bill erect? None. On what bedrock does this bill rest if the nation is to hope for another 60 years of financial stability? Better and smarter regulators, plain and simple. No great statutory walls, no hard divisions or limits on regulatory discretion, only a reshuffled set of regulatory powers that already exist. Remember, it was the regulators who abdicated their responsibilities and helped cause the crisis. Thus far, on the central aspect of “too big to fail,” financial reform consists of giving regulators the authority to supervise institutions that are too big, and then the ability to resolve those banks when they are about to fail. Upon closer examination, however, the former is virtually the same authority regulators currently possess, while the latter – an orderly resolution of a failing mega-bank – is an illusion. Unless Congress breaks up the mega-banks that are “too big to fail,” the American taxpayer will remain the ultimate guarantor in an almost certain-to-repeat-itself cycle of boom-bust-and-bailout. read on

The crux of the problem with the financial sector is the “too big to fail” syndrome. As long as that continues, we will see these riverboat gamblers taking excessive risk with our futures. They figure that the most they stand to lose is a portion of their multi-million dollar bonus for a year or so — if that. And they are convinced Americans find them to be so valuable and uniquely talented that no matter what they do, they cannot be punished or even chastised for failure lest they walk away from their jobs and leave us all stranded without the expertise we need to dig ourselves out of the hole they dug for us. It’s a beautiful scam.

Dodd’s Financial Reform bill is weak tea. It’s said that he’s desperate to get a bipartisan bill for his political legacy (and future job prospects) and so he has compromised on the important aspects of the bill that could have reined in this gambling culture and forced the banks and others in the industry to bear the risk of their bets. I don’t know or care what’s in his heart on this. The administration and the Democrats wants a bill to sign to say they successfully attacked the problem, but there is no reason to do this if it isn’t right on the merits.

Johnson ends his post with this:

Massive banks cannot be controlled, at least not in the US context; we are not Canada. “Smart regulation” in this context is an oxymoron. Our regulators have been captured by the ideology of finance for 20 years; the big banks industry are not about to let them out on parole now. For a long while, the Obama administration insisted that size caps for banks were not on the table. Then, in January, the president himself announced the Volcker Rules – which include a size cap for banks. We’ve argued this cap should be even tighter – big banks can get smaller in an orderly fashion and regulators can help – but still any cap would be a step in the right direction. Yet there is no size cap in Senator Dodd’s bill. Given that this White House has shown it can achieve considerable things, when it applies itself, why not pursue the Volcker Rules in full? The White House is clearly not afraid of the business lobby – Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin took on the Chamber of Commerce this week regarding the Consumer Protection Agency for Financial Products; his tone was strong and his arguments were telling. Yet the White House, Senator Dodd, and perhaps even Barney Frank are all stuck on one issue – they can’t contemplate making our biggest banks smaller (or even limiting their size). It’s as if a very clever political poisoned pill has been put into place. If you act against the big banks they will …. What exactly? Threaten to prolong the recession? Help your opponents get elected? Run ads against everything you believe in? Whatever the reason, write it down and think about it. How do you feel about a small set of big financial firms having this kind of power? How is that good for the rest of the business community, let alone regular citizens and our democracy? This administration is perfectly capable of taking on the big banks. All that is missing is a little clarity of thought and a fair amount of political courage. Or they can just call up Senator Kaufman.

He followed up with a post pointing out that Dodd came on the floor and hedged his bets after Kaufman’s speech, so maybe there’s still hope:

Chris Dodd wants to go out in blaze of glory, not with a bill that makes no sense at all on its most critical points. Ted Kaufman is turning into a relentless critic, Elizabeth Warren is fast becoming a folk hero, and Paul Volcker is poised to make a major speech in Washington on Tuesday. Is Volcker likely to toe the party line and defer to Senator Dodd – or will he lay out in forceful terms what reforms would really mean, i.e., what are the true Volcker principles, who has them, and how would you know? Financial reform might make for good television after all.

Bring the popcorn.

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Blue Dog On The Run

by digby

I wrote about the little problem the Blue Dog John Barrow has gotten himself into down in Georgia last week. Today, his primary challenger Regina Thomas, is being formally endorsed by Blue America and will be over at Crooks and Liars today at 11PDT.

Howie writes:

History will remember this week as the one in which a tremendous stride was made down the road towards universal healthcare. But reactionary Georgia Blue Dog, John Barrow, was on the wrong side of history. A stranger to his own district and out of touch with its people, he voted twice in committee and 4 times on the floor of the House against healthcare reform. He voted against the bill last Sunday, causing an explosion of anger among Democrats back home. And then he arrogantly voted against the Senate reconciliation on Thursday evening, one of only 32 conservative Democrats to cross the aisle and voted with the GOP. But voting with the GOP is his default position on most everything. Does that make sense?

Barrow was driven out of his own Athens-based district when it was gerrymandered to make a home for another Republican. He fled to Savannah, which has a strong Democratic base– a base he has studiously ignored while courting the wealthy (Republican) power structure. Although GA-12 leans Democratic– Gore won there with 52%, Bush and Kerry were in a virtual dead heat and Obama won with 54%– Barrow consistently votes as though it were a deep red district and he’s been one of the worst-voting Blue Dogs– but, only when it matters; he supports Democrats when it comes to naming post offices or honoring sports teams.

Today Blue America is honored to formally endorse former state Senator Regina Thomas, a strong advocate for working families with a long record in her district and in the state capitol. Regina will join us at Crooks and Liars at 2pm (EST/11am on the West Coast). She offers her neighbors in eastern Georgia a far different outlook than John Barrow. Regina’s perspective on governance is pure FDR– the government is there to protect us from forces outside of our own control, whether that be foreign enemies or domestic predators. If Barrow’s #1 concern is holding down taxes for the powerful and immensely rich transnational corporations that have financed his political career, Regina’s concern is that the rich and powerful pay their fair share so that the society that has enriched them continues to prosper and thrive for everyone.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Blue America is unveiling its first ad of the 2010 campaign today. (It was produced by our talented pals at Donkey on the Edge.) Regina is seeing it for the first time along with all of you:

Turning it into a TV spot will be our PAC’s first political independent expenditure of 2010. When you contribute to Regina on our ActBlue page, please also consider making an extra donation to the PAC so we can get the spot all over TV in Savannah, Augusta and all points in between.

We will be making more of these for other endorsed candidates.

Update: Howie has a poll up over at DKos to vote for the Blue Dog you’d most like to see defeated. Vote!

Update II: While you’re donating today, be sure to put a few bucks in the pot for Alan Grayson for his big moneybomb today.

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Moral Standing

by digby

This morning page 10 of the New York Times featured three different stories of cover ups of child molestation by the Catholic hierarchy. There’s the Vatican’s terse “this is old news” non-denial denial about the Pope’s personal knowledge of several cases, there’s the ongoing horror story of the Legionnaries of Christ’s leader, Father Maciel and his decades of abuse, and now this truly shocking story of a priest molesting deaf boys for decades in a school in Wisconsin. There’s this story elsewhere in the paper about the Pope being far more concerned with the Church being “liberalized” than pedophile priests. During the period in which he blithely allowed a known molester to go back among children, he drew the line at this:

[I]n 1981, he punished a priest for holding a Mass at a peace demonstration, leading the man to ultimately leave the priesthood.

Stories of priest molestations have been around for a long time here in the US and are cropping up all over the world. The church has been covering up for pedophiles and child abusers for what appears to be forever. But one of the under discussed aspects of this story is the fact that the civilian authorities wouldn’t do anything either. (Ireland is the worst case where the police were actually involved.) The case of the deaf students is particularly stark. Those kids reported that stuff for decades. They tried everything they could think of to stop it and nobody would listen:

Internal church correspondence unearthed in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and given to The New York Times, which made it public it this week, included a letter from the Rev. David Walsh, who served as a chaplain for the deaf in Chicago, saying that teenage students at St. John’s had told him in the late 1950s about Father Murphy’s abuse.

Father Walsh said he told Archbishop Albert Gregory Meyer of Milwaukee, who sent Father Murphy on a retreat and then put him back in the school to undo “the harm he had done.”

In the 1970s, a group of former students who were in a vocational rehabilitation program in Milwaukee began telling their hearing supervisors about Father Murphy, a sequence of events reported in two articles in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2006.

Among the supervisors was John Conway, now the deputy administrator of workers’ compensation for the State of Wisconsin. Mr. Conway, the students and others collected affidavits from 15 to 20 former students about Father Murphy’s violations. They were granted a meeting with Archbishop William E. Cousins.

“In my extreme naïveté,” said Mr. Conway in an interview on Friday, “I told them the archbishop would take care of this.”

He said they were surprised to find the room packed with people, including several nuns and teachers from the school, two priests who said they were representing the apostolic delegate in Chicago, and Father Murphy himself.

Arthur Budzinski and Gary Smith, two more victims of Father Murphy, said in an interview last week that they remember seeing Archbishop Cousins yell, and Father Murphy staring at the floor. The deaf men and their advocates were told that Father Murphy, the school’s director and top fund-raiser, was too valuable to be let go, so he would be given only administrative duties.

They were outraged. They distributed “Wanted” posters with Father Murphy’s face outside the cathedral in Milwaukee. They went to the police departments in Milwaukee, where they were told it was not the correct jurisdiction, and in St. Francis, where the school was located, Mr. Conway said. They also went to the office of E. Michael McCann, the district attorney of Milwaukee County, and spoke with his assistant, William Gardner.

“A criminal priest was an oxymoron to them,” Mr. Conway said. “They said they’ll refer it to the archdiocese.”

The deference given to churches in our society rendered our civil justice system impotent, especially in communities where the church was powerful. There’s something deeply disturbing about that.

This is an awful story. And it’s getting bigger as it becomes clearer that the cover-up reached all the way to the top. I don’t know what will happen within the Church, but I do know that civil society should no longer be held hostage to the moral instruction of people who cover up for child molesters. Once you’ve done something like that, you you have no credibility or standing to judge the behavior of others.

Update: To be clear, I should note that some churches like the UCC are given no deference at all. But I think the larger point still stands. When a church comes into conflict with the state on criminal matters, the church should not be granted special dispensation to adjudicate the matter in their own “court” simply because they are given a special place in our civic life.

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Shocking Scandal

by digby

Mike Stark didn’t some sleuthing on capitol hill and found something truly shocking. What more can these political monsters do? It’s enough to make you cry.

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Obey, Servants

by digby

Three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a case that prompted an incredulous dissent. Malaika Brooks was driving her son to Seattle’s African American Academy in 2004 when she was stopped for doing 32 mph in a school zone. She insisted it was the car in front of her that was speeding, and refused to sign the ticket because she thought she’d be admitting guilt. Rather than give her the ticket and let her go on her way, the officers decided to arrest her. One reached in, turned off her car and dropped the keys on the floor. Brooks stiffened her arms against the steering wheel and told the officers she was pregnant, but refused to get out, even after they threatened to stun her. The officers — Sgt. Steven Daman, Officer Juan Ornelas and Officer Donald Jones — then stunned her three times, in the thigh, shoulder and neck, and hauled her out of the car, laying her face-down in the street. Brooks gave birth to a healthy baby two months later, but has permanent scars from the Taser. She sued the officers for violating her constitutional rights, and U.S. District Judge Richard Jones allowed the case to continue. He declined to grant the officers immunity for performing their official duties and said Brooks’ rights were clearly violated. But in a 2-1 ruling Friday, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. Judges Cynthia Holcomb Hall and Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain held that the officers were justified in making an arrest because Brooks was obstructing them and resisting arrest. The use of force was also justified because of the threat Brooks posed, Hall wrote: “It seems clear that Brooks was not going to be able to harm anyone with her car at a moment’s notice. Nonetheless, some threat she might retrieve the keys and drive off erratically remained, particularly given her refusal to leave the car and her state of agitation.” They also noted that the force used wasn’t that serious because the Taser was in “touch” mode rather than “dart” mode, which hurts more. They reversed the lower court’s opinion and held that the officers were entitled to immunity from the lawsuit.

It’s hard to know what to say to something like that. It’s always strange to me to think that police officers have a right to electrocute anyone who doesn’t present a direct threat to their person, but this rationale is chilling:

“Police officers have to have the ability to compel people to obey their lawful orders,” Buck said. That’s all the court recognized today. The 9th Circuit just applied the law instead of getting caught up in the otherwise unfortunate factual circumstances.”

Except it wasn’t a lawful order, unless you define any order a police officer gives as being de facto lawful:

The majority’s opinion outraged Judge Marsha Berzon, who called it “off the wall.” “I fail utterly to comprehend how my colleagues are able to conclude that it was objectively reasonable to use any force against Brooks, let alone three activations of a Taser, in response to such a trivial offense,” she wrote. She argued that under Washington law, the officers had no authority to take Brooks into custody: Failure to sign a traffic infraction is not an arrestable offense, and it’s not illegal to resist an unlawful arrest. Berzon said the majority’s notion that Brooks obstructed officers was so far-fetched that even the officers themselves didn’t make that legal argument. To obstruct an officer, one must obstruct the officer’s official duties, and the officers’ only duties in this case were to detain Brooks long enough to identify her, check for warrants, write up the citation and give it to her. Brooks’ failure to sign did not interfere with those duties, she said.

Oh no, she needed to be electrocuted and arrested because there was a chance that she might drive off erratically. Or shape-shift into a lizard and levitate. You just can’t be too careful. In any case, what these judges seem to be saying is that there is no lawful reason that an officer cannot taser a citizen as long as he is barking some order and they fail to comply quickly enough. No reason of any kind, not even the fact that the officers had no right to issue that order at all. That’s scary.

BTW: where are all the anti-authoritarian libertarians now? It seems as if they only care about the constitution when it comes to taxes and guns. Someone else’s right not to be electrocuted for refusing to sign a traffic ticket? Not their problem.

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Songs Of The Movement

by digby

The other day I dubbed Michael Bérubé “the Woody Guthrie of the teabag movement,” for his moving epitaph for the United States of America, called “The Night The Country Died.” It seems his readers were moved to contribute their own efforts to the new teabag protest ouvre.

Here’s one example:

The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
His torch is at thy boardroom door,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
Avenge the patriotic gore
Shed by Obama, Reid, and Gore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!

Come! ‘tis like Red Dawn! Wolverines!
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
Come with thy frenzied states’ rights schemes,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
With Limbaugh’s spirit for the fray,
With Glenn Beck’s tears on screen all day,
With Bachmann’s rants and Wilson’s screams,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
Grandma should not call in vain!
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
“Sic semper!” ‘tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!

Thou wilt not yield the vandal toll,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!

I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
The Old Line’s bugle, fife, and drum,
Free Market, Oh Free Market!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she’ll come! she’ll come!
Free Market, Oh Free Market!

Posted by rm

And this:

I dreamed they passed the Bill last night,
Those friends of Mao and Ché.
Says I, “You didn’t have no votes.”
“We had enough,” says they.
“We had enough,” says they.
“When Scott Brown won,” says I to them,
Them standing by my bed,
“You folks were looking mighty blue.”
Says they, “We’re turning Red.”
Says they, “We’re turning Red.”
“The talking heads denounced your Bill,
They shot it down,” says I.
“Takes half the votes to kill a Bill,”
Says they, “It didn’t die.”
Says they, “It didn’t die.”
And standing there as big as life
Each face split by a smile,
They says, “What they forgot to kill
Went on to reconcile,
Went on to reconcile.”
“The Bill ain’t dead,” they says to me,
“The Bill ain’t never died.
When working men are sick in bed
The Bill is at their side,
The Bill is at their side.”
“From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill,
Where workers need some health care help,”
Says they, “You’ll find the Bill,”
Says they, “You’ll find the Bill.”
I dreamed they passed the Bill last night,
Those friends of Mao and Ché.
Says I, “You didn’t have no votes.”
“We had enough,” says they.
“We had enough,” says they.

There’s more where that came from at the link.

Here’s my (very) modest contribution to the genre:

How many pols must a man shout down,
before you admit he’s the man?
How many plans must Paul Ryan unfurl,
before you’ll bow down to Ayn Rand?
yes and how many times must you shout “Kill The Bill,”
before they will all understand?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

How many times must Rove tell you to stop
inflaming the Real Americans
how many taunts must the teabaggers take
from people with Parkinson’s
yes and how many times must Beck froth on TV,
before they drop their grip on sanity?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

How many times must a teabagger scream,
before UnReal Americans will heed.
yes and how many times must one teabagger freak,
before they’ll drop down to their knees?
Yes and how many threats will it take till they know,
that only white people can lead?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

everybody!

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