Month: May 2010

Easy For Him To Say

by digby

“Savvy businessman” Jamie Dimon gave words of wisdom to college graduates this week-end:

“Throughout my life, throughout this crisis, I’ve seen many people bury themselves by failing to stand up, being mealy mouthed and simply going along with the pack,” said Dimon at the university’s Carrier Dome, where more than 5,000 students received diplomas.

He told students to “do the right thing, not the easy thing” and not to become someone else’s “lap dog.” Dimon, 54, who was the subject of student protests before the ceremony, was met at the end of his speech with loud applause by the audience of more than 17,000. “Have the courage to speak the truth, even if it’s unpopular,” said Dimon. “Have the courage to put yourself on the line, strive for something meaningful, even to risk the embarrassment of failure.”

I would guess he really believes that he is proof of all that by standing up for the banksters when it’s “unpopular” to do so. He’s a hero in his own mind.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear that the youth have been particularly radicalized by any of this:

Fewer than a dozen students removed their graduation robes during Dimon’s address in a planned sign of protest of the bank executive as the commencement speaker. More than 1,200 students, alumni and supporters signed an online petition urging the university to rescind the invitation to him.

Some of them are probably going to regret not taking a symbolic stand while they had the chance. In a job market like this, you don’t take stands of any kind on the job. not that Dimon would know that. He breathes the rarefied air of the super-rich, who have all the fuck-you money anyone could possibly want.
That’s the truly sickening thing about Dimon’s speech. Due to his cohort’s hideous professional malpractice, these kids are going into a workforce in which the worker is at a huge disadvantage. It’s not just that 10% workforce is out of a job ( a number which is undoubtedly understated.) The problem of high unemployment hits everyone who’s working as well.
These young college graduates are going to find that they are competing for jobs with people who have years of experience and are willing to take cuts in pay and benefits because they have a nut to crack every month or kids to support and they need a job very badly. But older people are at a disadvantage as well. They tend to require higher pay and expect their experience to count for more (plus employers just don’t like ‘e
Those in between are working in a world in which the competition is so stiff that they can’t afford to “put themselves on the line” or rock the boat in any way. They are doing the work that used to be done by three people (hence “productivity growth”) and they are stuck in whatever dead end job they found themselves in before the recession began because everyone knows you are daft to quit with 10% unemployment. Workers are at the mercy of their bosses, working as wage slaves, getting no raises, feeling trapped and at their mercy. Refusing to be a “lap dog” isn’t on the menu in an environment like this.
When there is 10% unemployment, the whole workforce is under stress. And the longer it goes on, the more frustrated, angry and depressed the average working stiff feels. Masters of the Universe can drone on about being brave and finding meaning and telling the truth even if it’s unpopular, but he might as well be speaking in tongues for how relevant it is to workers right now.
Those kids may not know it, but they soon will. And I hope they find it in themselves to look back on this day and wish they’d turned their backs on that bastard when they had the chance. It was probably their last opportunity for a good long while to follow his advice..

May Sweeps

by digby

Happy talk news and the G-Spot:

“So she’s enjoying penis a little bit more, is she?

h/t to ja

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Spocko And Rupert

by digby

Somebody let in the riff-raff:

Last week I called up Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of NewsCorp (NWS)and asked him a question during his quarterly conference call.

“I know that you don’t break out revenue numbers for Fox News beyond the top line, but with 81 advertisers leaving the Glenn Beck show following the Color of Change action, the show now seems limited to in house ads and gold ads. Do you have a time frame for how long Fox will subsidize the show until it to starts to generate revenue in line with its ratings? ”

Here was Rupert Murdoch’s response:

“It’s not subsidizing the show at all. And it’s giving a terrific kick off to the whole evening schedule. It has plenty of advertising, and those advertisers you talk about, I don’t think there is anything like that number, but if there were they are on other shows.”

The exchange got picked up, but nobody thought to fact check ole Rupert. Read on for Spocko’s bigger question for the media in all this.

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Why They Took Out ACORN

by digby

Since we are heading into an election and the subject of race and immigration are coming once again to the fore in American politics, this seems like a good time talk about voter suppression.

For now, I’ll just reprise this post from 2008, which hits some of the highlights:

Validating Voter Suppression

by digby

Following up on D-Day’s post below about the Supreme Court’s decision on voter ID in Indiana, and particularly his point that Obama is greatly expanding the pool of first time voters who might be affected by this ruling, I would just remind everyone of a couple of things.

First of all, let’s not forget that this may be the biggest political land mine the Bush administration has set for Democrats. “Voter fraud” was, you’ll remember, at the bottom of the US Attorney scandals and one of their main tools for suppressing the Democratic vote. This is the realization of a very long term plan to chip away at the Voting Rights Act. Republicans, like all aristocrats, know that if enough average people vote, they will lose. Period.

I have been writing about this since before I started this blog. It’s at the heart of the Florida debacle in 2000, where they illegitimately purged voter rolls and relied on arcane interpretations of the rules to deny people the fundamental right to have their votes counted. It goes all the way back to the reconstruction period and has continued right up to Ohio in 2004.

The Supreme Court has just legitimized the notion that “voter fraud” is a problem when, in fact, every study shows that it simply does not exist in any systematic way and that the voter disenfranchisement that results from such laws is a far more serious problem.

Here’s Rick Perlstein on the vote suppression effort in 1964, called “Operation Eagle Eye” in which Chief justice John Roberts’ predecessor, William Rehnquist, participated as a young man:

The “vote fraud” fantasies are tinged by deeply right-wing racial and anti-urban panics. I’ve talked to many conservative who seem to consider the idea of mass non-white participation in the duties of citizenship is inherently suspicious. It’s an idea all decent Americans should consider abhorrent. It is also, however, a very old conservative obsession–one that goes back to the beginnings of the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party itself.

Let me show you. Read this report from 1964, running down all the ways how Barry Goldwater’s Republican Party was working overtime to keep minorities from voting. The document can be found in the LBJ Library, where I researched my book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

John M Baley, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, charged today that “under the guise of setting up an apparatus to protect the sanctity of the ballot, the Republicans are actually creating the machinery for a carefully organized campaign to intimidate voters and to frighten members of minority groups from casing their ballots on November 3rd. “‘Let’s get this straight,’ Bailey added, ‘the Democratic Party is just as much opposed to vote frauds as is the Republican party. We will settle for giving all legally registered voters an opportunity to make their choice on November 3rd. We have enough faith in our Party to be confident that the outcome will be a vote of confience in President Johnson and a mandate for the President and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, to continue the programs of the Johnson-Kennedy Administration. “‘But we have evidence that the Republican program is not really what it purports to be. it is an organized effort to prevent the foreign born, to prevent Negroes, to prevent members of ethnic minorities from casting their votes by frightening and intimidating them at the polling place. “‘We intend to see to it that the rights of these people are protected. We will have our people at the polling places–not to frighten or threaten anyone–but to protect the right of any eligible voter to cast a secret ballot without threats or intimidation.’

It didn’t stop there. As a result of the massive voter registration efforts of Jesse Jackson during the 1984 and 1988 campaigns, the republicans institutionalized their vote suppression efforts and created the Voting Integrity Project and the Republican National Lawyers Association to create bogus claims of voter fraud. I’ve written reams about this, but this post from last year highlights an important study that directly pertains to the voter registration drives that D-Day mentions:

With the news from Steve Benen coming out of Wisconsin and from Christy about Minnesota, regarding a couple more of those “Good Bushies” in the Justice Department, I thought it might be a good time to bring up a little something I found the other day on the blog Wot Is It Good 4. A commenter there pointed to this very interesting paper (pdf) presented to the Center For Voting Rights just before the 2004 election on the issue of voter suppression.

I was surprised to see that the Republican National Lawyers Association (where Rove delivered his speech last spring in which, among other things, he mentioned as “problems” those states from which the targeted US Attorneys hail) was pretty much formed for the express and exclusive purpose of training and deploying lawyers on matters of purported voter fraud (aka minority vote suppression.) Neither did I know before that they played a pivotal role in the Florida Recount.

The report gives the history of minority voter suppression in America (a very ugly story) and brings it right up to the 1980’s, particularly the huge voter registration effort in the black community by the Jesse Jackson campaign which apparently scared the bejeezuz out of the Republicans:

Democratic activist Donna Brazile, a Jackson worker and Albert Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, said “There were all sorts of groups out there doing voter registration. Some time after the ’86 election, massive purging started taking place. It was a wicked practice that took place all over the country, especially in the deep South. Democrats retook the Senate in 1986, and [Republican] groups went on a rampage on the premise they were cleaning up the rolls. The campaign then was targeted toward African-Americans.” As in the past, Republicans justified the purges in the name of preventing the unregistered from voting. But Democrats charged vote suppression.

[…]

The Republicans’ perceived problems arising from too heavy a reliance on volunteers began to be addressed with a different strategy in the mid-1980s. From Operation Eagle Eye onward, the major Republican ballot security programs had borne the imprimatur of the party high command, overseen by the RNC and implemented at the grassroots by local organizations and commercial political operatives. In the mid-1980s, the situation began to change. GOP ballot-security skulduggery in the city of Newark and environs had led to a consent decree in 1982 presided over by a federal judge in New Jersey, according to which the RNC promised to forego minority vote suppression.19 In 1985, several months before the RNC was hauled back before the same judge as a result of illegal purging efforts in a 1986 Louisiana senatorial campaign and agreed to submit all future ballot security programs it oversaw to the court for its inspection, a new organization was created—the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA).

A group of lawyers who had worked on the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1984 were behind its founding, and it was designed “to be a sort of Rotary Club for GOP stalwarts,” according to a contemporary article in Legal Times magazine. The RNC helped the association get off the ground with a $5,000 loan, although today the RNC claims no official connection with it. By 1987 the RNLA had active chapters in several states and the District of Columbia, and planned to hold its first annual convention early the following year. A lure for attendees, the planners hoped, would be continuing legal education credits and a possible appearance by Attorney General Edwin Meese III and President Reagan.20

The RNLA turned out to be much more than a Rotary Club for GOP lawyers, however; it became the predominant Republican organization coordinating ballot security. By its own account, in early 2004 it had grown to “a 1,900-member organization of lawyers and law students in all 50 states.”21 Its officers were experienced lawyers who knew their way around Washington as a result of having served in Republican administrations at the national and state levels and in major K Street firms. Michael Thielen, its current executive director, who earlier worked for the RNC, describes the organization as follows: Since 1985 the RNLA has nurtured and advanced lawyer involvement in public affairs generally and the Republican Party in particular. It is accurately described as a combination of a professional bar association, politically involved law firm and educational institute. . . . With members now in government, party general counsel positions, law firm management and on law school faculties, the RNLA has for many years been the principal national organization through which lawyers serve the Republican Party and its candidates.22

Its prestige in Republican party circles undoubtedly got a boost from its involvement in the Florida ballot recount battles of November-December 2000, when, according to one of its members, Eric Buermann, the RNLA was “extremely helpful . . . by sending lawyers to Florida to work on the recount, providing expertise as needed, and coordinating volunteer lawyer response.” It was this helpfulness which apparently led Buermann, the state’s Republican Party general counsel, to coordinate a collaboration between the RNLA and Florida legal response teams in 2002, so that, in the words of anRNLA newsletter that year, “there will be a permanent structure in place to keep the lawyers active and organized during off-election years.”23

Actually, the collaboration was even broader, involving the National Republican Campaign Committee and the RNC as well.24 The Democrats, on the other hand, also were developing a large network of lawyers that year—10,000, by one estimate—to counter vote suppression efforts. The nationwide deployment of thousands of lawyers in both parties led one journalist to predict “a new era in US politics after the Florida debacle two years ago—the age of the lawyers.”25

Executive Director Thielen gives this account of the organization’s involvement in the 2000 recount: “After election day, RNLA members were dispatched by party organizations and campaigns to multiple locations within several states. When it became clear that the final result in Florida would determine the outcome of the presidential election, members were concentrated there.” Thielen adds, “had it not been for the preeminent litigators retained by the campaign entities and the volunteer attorneys who spent weeks defending the intent of voters before canvassing boards, the will of thenation’s voters would surely have been thwarted.”

What an odd thing to say. The “nation’s” voters clearly preferred Al Gore. It was only through that regrettable anachronism of the electoral college (and cheating in Florida) that had Bush within stealing distance.

Underlining the organization’s enhanced status among Republicans, White House counsel Albert Gonzales told the group, “You know, I must confess I groaned when I was first asked whether I would be willing to address another group of lawyers. However, when I found out this group included many lawyers that helped secure the election for George W. Bush, I quickly reconsidered.”27

The RNLA’s pride in its Florida efforts is expressed by trophies it presents to honorees at special receptions, consisting of lucite blocks that, as described on the organization’s Web site, “contain a commemorative message in honor of the Florida recount team, and contain actual ‘Chads’ from Florida dispersed throughout the Lucite. They [sic] were only a few hundred created and are not for sale but rather only presented to distinguished members and guests of the RNLA.” Not surprisingly, an RNLA lawyer, Hayden Dempsey, formerly a lawyer for Governor Jeb Bush, is heading Lawyers for Bush, the president’s legal defense team in Florida in 2004.

[…]

With the rise to prominence of the RNLA, the Republican Party’s nationally directed ballot security programs appear to have been transformed. While Operation Eagle Eye was directed from the command posts of the RNC by professionals, the people on the ground—poll-watchers and challengers—were often amateurs, which is to say Election Day volunteers who may have had only cursory training. The RNLA, born in the Reagan era, has gradually assumed the role of the party’s overarching anti-fraud enforcement agency. In the process, the organization has professionalized ballot security (its spokespersons seem to prefer the term “ballot integrity”) with a cadre of highly trained, aggressive, and mobile lawyers who can go anywhere in the nation on short notice. Indeed, they don’t even need to be mobile, in many cases. As one of the organization’s newsletters put it: “Ironically, when the Democratic National Committee bragged of sending in a thousand lawyers each to Missouri, Florida, and Texas for election day operations, the [RNLA] Field Operations Committee already had chapters organized in those states and did not need to send out of state lawyers to assist with the elections.”

Now, I realize that Obama is concentrating mostly on registering college students who are first time voters, so it’s a little bit different. But there are plenty of hurdles there too, with arcane residency requirements and the very serious possibility that some college students won’t have local “government issued” ID. I assume there will be tons of outreach using the new social networking tools to educate these voters about what’s required, but there’s always the danger that at least a few will just not bother — and say they did. That’s certainly happened in the past.

This is a terribly pernicious ruling that legitimizes the view that “voter fraud” is a bigger threat than disenfranchisement. That is the opposite of what this country needs right now, with rampant cynicism about the franchise already infecting the body politic. This ruling gives fodder to every wingnut lawyer in the country to say that if there were no voter fraud in this country, there wouldn’t be any need for a Supreme Court ruling that allows states to protect against it.

It’s important to remember that the thrust of many of these latest laws are to suppress the Latino vote, many of whom are reluctant to show up at polling places only to be treated like second class citizens and viewed with suspicion. Life is short. The same, of course, holds true for African Americans, even today. Simply slowing the lines with demands for proof of ID is enough to suppress the votes in urban precincts with too few voting machines. And then there are the handicapped and elderly who often just don’t have the same type of ID as the rest of us. But then that’s the point. These people must be made to jump through hoops in order to exercise their right to vote.

Oh wait. That’s not quite right, is it? After all it was none other than the majority in Bush vs Gore who made it a point to reaffirm that “the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.”

Perhaps we ought to change that.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

SIFF Preview

By Dennis Hartley

Just in case you were wondering, I have been accredited for the 2010 Seattle International Film Festival, a privilege for which I will remain forever in debt to the readers who went to bat for me last year (you know who you are). And thanks to SIFF for acknowledging our little neck of the blogosphere. I guess that means that we’re too legit to quit now, eh?

The festival kicks off this coming Thursday and runs through June 13. Navigating a film festival is no easy task, even for a dedicated buff. SIFF will be showing 405 films over 24 days. That must be great for independently wealthy slackers, but for those of us who work for a living (*cough*), it’s a bit tough finding the time and energy it would take to catch 16.8 films a day (yes, I did the math). I do take consolation from my observation that the ratio of less-than-stellar (too many) to quality films (too few) at a film festival differs little from any Friday night crapshoot at the multiplex. The trick lies in developing a sixth sense for films most likely to be up your alley (in my case, embracing my OCD and channeling it like a cinematic divining rod.) There is a lot of good potential this year.

The documentary offerings look promising, particularly those with a political bent. Waiting for Superman is the latest from David Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), and it takes a look at the sad state of our public education system (enough material there for a Ken Burns-length opus, I would imagine). Countdown to Zero is about nuclear paranoia and the continuing importance of international disarmament. Gerrymandering is being billed as a “non-partisan” overview of the redistricting wars going on around the country. The Morman Propostion (narrated by Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black) promises to be a “thriller-like” expose of the Morman Church’s role in the passage of California’s Prop 8. A few more docs on my checklist include American: The Bill Hicks Story, a portrait of the late great heir to Lenny Bruce (the good ones always die young). Speaking of non-conformists, I am also eager to see Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (I suppose the title says it all) and Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar (sporting the longest title this year, I’d reckon). John Waters and Patti Smith are featured talking heads in William S. Burroughs: A Man Within. Another Beat luminary is profiled in the biopic Howl, from Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, with James Franco as Allen Ginsberg. Another biopic, Nowhere Boy, from U.K. director Sam Taylor-Wood, dramatizes John Lennon’s complex teenage years.

Also from Europe: Ondine, a new fantasy-comedy from veteran Irish director Neil Jordan; Diamond 13, a conspiracy-a-go-go neo-noir from France featuring Gerard Depardieu and Asia Argento; and from Serbia, Devil’s Town, which is intriguingly described as a black comedy that combines “tennis, familial politics and Serbian national character”. From China, City of Life and Death is a WW2 drama that recounts the 1937 Rape of Nanking. I always have a soft spot for offbeat Japanese cinema; and judging just by their titles alone, RoboGeisha and Air Doll sound like a couple of must-sees this year. Also in the “offbeat” category-Visionaries: Jonas Mekas and the (Mostly) American Avant-Garde Cinema, with archival footage, rare clips and interviews assembled by Chuck Workman; and a film that apparently has been stirring up a shitstorm wherever it plays, Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives-which sounds like it might be a stab (sorry) at providing an Inglourious Basterds-style revenge fantasy for the trans-gender community. From Canada: The Trotsky, a comedy about a Montreal teen who believes he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky (oddly enough, this one is currently on PPV in my market). And from Australia, Bran Nue Day-a “wacky” musical about an aboriginal and his pals.

SIFF has also lined up a special series of films from Spain this year (18 features and 9 shorts). Some of the more intriguing selections include Garbo: the Spy, a doc about a Spanish double agent who “helped change the course of history during WW2”; The Dancer and the Thief, a crime pulp styled political thriller set against the backdrop of Chile’s Pinochet regime; Stigmata, a metaphysical thriller adapted from an Italian graphic novel; and Woman Without Piano, concerning the misadventures of a bored housewife who embarks on clandestine nighttime wanderings around Madrid (it vibes a bit reminiscent of Dusan Makavejev’s Montenegro, one of my all-time favorite sleepers).

SIFF’s “Face the Music” series is one of my perennial favorites, and there are several entries I look forward to this year. From the U.K., Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll is a biopic about the late proto-punker, Ian Dury, with Andy “Gollum” Serkis in the lead role. Beyond Ipanema is a doc that promises to cover the Brazilian music scene (bossa-nova, samba, baile funk, etc.). As a huge reggae fan, I can’t wait to check out the Canadian doc, Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae, which brings together genre superstars Hopeton Lewis, Marcia Griffiths and Ken Boothe to swap stories and re-record some of their signature tunes (sounds like it could be the Jamaican version of Buena Vista Social Club). Andre Crouch, Mavis Staples and other Gospel music luminaries are profiled in Rejoice and Shout, and finally, The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, which to my knowledge is the first documentary to examine the world of, erm, yodeling lesbian twins.

I can’t guarantee that I will catch every film that I would like to, but, dear reader, you will be the first to receive a full report, beginning with next week’s post. In the meantime, for more information about SIFF, you can check out their website: www.seattlefilm.org.

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California Nightmare Part XXIV

by digby

We’ve got yer Libertarian paradise for you, comin’ right up:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked lawmakers Friday to eliminate the state’s welfare program starting in October and dramatically scale back in-home care for the elderly and disabled as part of his May budget revision to close a $19.1 billion deficit.

The Republican governor also proposed cuts to state worker compensation. Besides asking for a 5 percent pay cut, 5 percent payroll cap and 5 percent increased pension contribution, Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting one day per month of pay in exchange for leave credit.

The proposal would affect all state workers under the governor’s authority, regardless of whether they are general fund or special fund employees. Employees would not be able to cash out any of this unused leave credit when they leave state service. The plan would replace the three-day-a-month furloughs, which are due to end June 30.

Schwarzenegger said the sour economy, the failure of the Legislature to make cuts he proposed in January and the federal government’s failure to come up with about $7 billion leaves policymakers with no choice but to make deep cuts.

Schwarzenegger also proposed eliminating state-subsidized child care for all but preschoolers as a way to reduce the state’s education funding guarantee.

You’ll notice what is not on the table. And there’s no reason for it:

In discussion of AB 1836 (Furutani) in the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation on Monday, some lawmakers raised the specter of millionaires fleeing California in response to higher tax rates on wealthy earners. As we’ve blogged about before, the claim that high-income people flee California for states with lower personal income tax rates amounts to nothing more than yet another urban legend. Once again, let’s look at the facts. In the early 1990s, when 10 percent and 11 percent personal income tax rates were in place for married taxpayers with taxable incomes of $200,000 or more who filed joint tax returns and single taxpayers with taxable incomes of $100,000 or more, the number of taxpayers subject to those rates increased substantially, even while the total number of taxpayers declined. The number of California’s married taxpayers with incomes of at least $200,000 rose by 33.4 percent between 1991 and 1995, and the number of single personal income tax filers with incomes of at least $100,000 increased by 40.2 percent. In contrast, the total number of joint filers declined by 6.7 percent during this period, and the number of single filers fell by 7.3 percent.

Similarly, the rise in the number of California’s millionaire taxpayers has outpaced the total increase in personal income taxpayers since the passage of Proposition 63 in 2004, which imposed a 1 percentage point income tax rate on personal incomes over $1 million to fund mental health programs. In addition, data from the Internal Revenue Service show that for more than a decade – at least – taxpayers who remain in California from year to year have considerably higher average incomes than taxpayers who leave California for other states, and this income gap has widened for most of this decade.

While we’d never argue that the wealthy come here to pay more in taxes, there’s no empirical evidence to support the claim that they leave California in order to pay less.

This is the urban myth that won’t die, of course, because our entire discussion of taxes is now predicated on the idea that if we hurt millionaires’ feelings they’ll hold their breath until they turn blue. But the truth is that they take tax hikes in stride.

This state offers a special way of life for those who have money, which if they like it, is not replicable anywhere else. They are not currently taxed at an onerous rate and they can well afford to step up right now and help this state through this crisis.

I wonder what would happen if someone made a straight-up public appeal to the state’s wealthiest inhabitants. Maybe they wouldn’t respond, but we won’t know unless someone actually proposes it. Sadly, the right’s successful crusade against taxes has so indoctrinated everyone in this country, that such an appeal is considered political suicide. Better to put little children on the streets than ask a wealthy person to step up and pay more. Values, dontcha know.

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Deficit Schmeficit

by digby

Here are two important articles for everyone to read about the coming Deficit Hysteria Tour:

James Galbraith on why the fetish for deficit reduction is total nonsense

A reprise of William Greider’s seminal piece on Pete Peterson.

Bookmark these for later. We’re going to need them.

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Pulling Up The Ladder

by digby

This must-read piece by David Neiwert gives some needed perspective to the stomach turning poll numbers showing that 70% of respondents want racial profiling, and the nearly as many of those who think the fact that it will end up harassing leg immigrants and citizens is just fine. It’s worth remembering that one of America’s defining features has always been its “exceptional” form of racism and xenophobia.

Neiwert uses the example of the Japanese internment to illustrate his point. I’ll use this:

For decades, U.S. health authorities used noxious, often toxic chemicals to delouse Mexicans seeking to cross the border into the United States. Before being allowed to cross, Mexicans had to bathe, strip nude for an inspection, undergo the lice treatment, and have their clothes treated in a steam dryer.

The treatment included gasoline baths and toxic fumigations (including DDT). The Bath Riots began when 17-year-old Carmelita Torres rallied 30 others in 1917 to refuse.

The Mexican housekeepers who revolted had good cause to be upset. Inside a brick disinfectant building under the bridge, health personnel had been secretly photographing women in the nude and posting the snapshots in a local cantina. A year earlier, a group of prisoners in the El Paso jail died in a fire while being deloused with gasoline.

U.S. and Mexican troops eventually quelled the riot, and young Torres was arrested. Though she’s been compared to Rosa Parks, Torres’ protest had little effect, Romo says.

The baths and fumigations (DDT and other insecticides were later used) continued for decades, long after the Mexican typhus scare ended.

It’s worse than that:

In Ringside Seat to a Revolution, author David Dorado Romo reveals some of his findings from the National Archives in Washington DC:

I discovered an article written in a German scientific journal written in 1938, which specifically praised the El Paso method of fumigating Mexican immigrants with Zyklon B. At the start of WWII, the Nazis adopted Zyklon B as a fumigation agent at German border crossings and concentration camps. Later, when the Final Solution was put into effect, the Germans found more sinister uses for this extremely lethal pesticide. They used Zyklon B pellets in their own gas chambers not just to kill lice but to exterminate millions of human beings.

The lice treatments in Texas are an extreme example, but still a hauntingly nostalgic picture of what many Mexicans still encounter today.

But as Neiwert points out, this cruel impulse is usually mitigated by the return to sanity of decent people who see the error of their ways when it’s demonstrated for them. That’s why the voices of good conscience must continue to speak out. That process doesn’t happen if they don’t.

Humans often tend to kick those members of society who are of a lower ethnic or racial caste or are on a lower socio-economic scale because they feel impotent to do anything to those who are the real cause of their angst and insecurity. (And it’s a special feature of right wing populism.) Our unique American spin on this is that the immigrant melting pot has also made this particular impulse a rite-of-passage for more established immigrants to prove their American bona fides. (And we always have blacks to throw to the jackals if the rubes get really restless.)

Update: Plus this

Blue America Chat

by digby

Roxanne Conlin– Is She The Democrat Most Likely To Paint A Red Seat Blue In 2010?

Join the gang at C&L right now.

BTW: She’s running against that doddering fool Chuck Grassley.

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Truman Doctrine

by digby

Krugman wonders if this fall might end up being 1948:

I have no idea what’s going to happen in November. That graph shows quite a bit of volatility in the polls over a period of months. But I do think that we might be in for some surprises.

With that I’ll give you the intro to my pal Deep Insight’s report on the state of the electorate as we look to the fall:

Because he immerses himself in the issue
and understands it so well, the positions he
adopts may not be the ones that everyone
else in the caucus comes to.
Senator John Thune (R-SD) on
Senator Bob Corker (R-TN)

There is the modern Republican Party in all its twisted logic. Senator Thune, who is touted as Presidential material, is stating the obvious. If one of his fellow GOP Senators studies the facts of an issue, he may not parrot the talking points. Of course it is heresy in the GOP to admit to relying on empirical facts. Any hope for sane public policy now relies on help in the Senate from Southern conservatives like Corker and Lindsay Graham. God help the country and the world if the Republicans manage to gain power again. This is now a party where conservative Utah Senior Senator Bob Bennet is no longer pure enough. The tea party media stars, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, are the defacto leaders of the GOP. Beck’s income last year was $32 million, but he tells his clueless followers they should can fruit just like “Grandma used to do.” In his pitch toprivatize Social Security, he says that his kids might have to financially support him in his dotage. Despite the protestations of independence, the funding for this “grassroots” effort puts the political agenda squarely within the GOP.

The tea party ideology is opposition to government spending to “save America.” No surprise, one of the Republican “tea party” candidates for Congress receives $200,000 annually in “farm support” payments. Other full time “organizers” are on Social Security disability. Most of the tea baggers at the “Tax Day” rallies are seemingly unaware that 95% of them received a tax cut from the stimulus bill or that the overall tax burden is the lowest since 1950. The neo confederate elements of the tea party and the GOP areobviously quite happy together. As someone noted, they are a confused group of misled people and just what the Republicans ordered. Still, the Republicans stand an even chance of regaining a majority in the House. The generic vote for Congress gives the Democrats only a narrow lead. Given off year voting patterns and the way Democratic votes are distributed nationwide,this generic vote must be closer to double digits for the Democrats to feel comfortable.

The Democrats look likely to lose both the Hawaii and maybe the Pennsylvania special
elections this month, which will help the Republican fundraising for the fall. The President’s approval rating hovers around 50% and by historic measure if he his rating improves with the economy, the Democrats have a far better chance at holding Congress. Any more Democratic retirements, like that of liberal stalwart David Obey, will be very problematic.

A good assumption this year is that any undecided voters close to Election Day are going to vote against the incumbent. Senator Specter is likely to find this out in nex tweek’s Pennsylvania Democratic Primary. Indicative of the nation’s mood, only 43% of those polled think their own Representative should be reelected. This is the lowest figure in a generation. The Democrats could yet be saved by Republican candidates. Take Sue Lowden, the TV newsreader and chair of the Nevada GOP, who is the leading Republican in the race against Senator Harry Reid. When criticizing the recent health care bill, she brought up the concept of “bartering” with doctors like our grandparents once did. When given a chance to clarify, she discussed “bringing a chicken to the doctor or offering to paint his house.” The Arizona and Georgia Legislatures passed bills requiring the President produce a birth certificate or be banned from the 2012 ballot. Then the Arizona Legislature also produced its odious “target a Hispanic” bill. The Maine GOP just passed as its official platform a series of Rightwing talking points such as “fighting one world government.”

The economy remains the number one issue for voters. Many Americans remain angered and frustrated in the aftermath of the financial meltdown. Despite the marked improvements in the larger economic picture and specifically job creation, the unemployment rate is not falling nor is family income growing fast enough right now to benefit Democrats. By fall the economic picture should be better. Democrats and allies must successfully pose the question to voters: Do they prefer to return to the failed conservative policies responsible for driving the economy down or give the Democratic policies a chance? The GOP’s “stay the course” 1982 advertising campaign limited their losses in that off year recession election. The Democrats need to try a variation to stress an overall plan rather than issues or policies. It is an over used word but a narrative is needed.

The President needs to repeat the “car in the ditch” metaphor to describe the inherited 2009 economic situation. This recession has been brutal on construction and manufacturing jobs, and a higher percentage of college graduates are unemployed than in past recessions. White men make up half of those who have lost jobs in the past three years. The Republicans in the Senate continue to think that holding up unemployment benefits is good politics. Given the recent details of the collapse of Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers and Goldman’s, shall we say, elastic ethical treatments of “clients,” the Democrats have a strong political advantage in pressing for the financial reform bill. This legislation is just another example of an effort to save capitalism from itself. The GOP filibuster of this bill was short lived. This is not the 80s or the Internet bubble, and business leaders are no longer cultural rock stars. A stronger bill needs to come from the House/Senate conference.

While the Right will go more batty (if that is possible), the immigration bill, like financial reform, is another opportunity to do the right thing and splinter the Republican coalition. In polling, the country wants a comprehensive solution to this issue. There will be nervous Democrats but any current political difficulty will be rewarded in the long term. Whether this bill survives a filibuster under the ridiculous Senate rules is very unclear. The House is clearly going to wait on the Senate on this vote.

The climate bill offers the Democrats another important opportunity, albeit not one comprehensive enough. In a rational policy world, the ongoing disaster in the Gulf would push this bill forward. Not surprisingly, the corrupt regulators of the BushAdministration did not require BP to install the same acoustic regulator to shut down deep-sea wells that is required by Norway and Britain. Drill baby drill. If proper incentives are in place, a cleaner energy economy offers a chance for a revitalized manufacturing sector. A domestic clean energy industry would also slow the cash flow to the Saudis and Iranians. It is crazy to hand the Chinese another emerging industry. The Democrats need to force another GOP filibuster; the oil and coal industries are not very popular today.

The Catholic Church has obviously played politics since its inception. The social justice wing of the Church, evident in the 1960s and 1970s, has been marginalized by the Right wing in the Vatican. It is not an accident that the new Archbishop of Los Angeles is Hispanic and also a member of Opus Dei. As more details of the worldwide pedophile scandal and attendant cover-ups emerge, the authority of the Bishops and the hierarchy inRome will continue to erode. With their bitter opposition to the healthcare bill, the Catholic Bishops demonstrated their clear allegiance to the Republican Party. Fortunately, many nuns and Catholic hospitals challenged the Bishops. As Catholics in many of the larger states are swing voters, their switch to Democrats in 2006 and 2008 will be tested in the fall.

Though the President negotiated a nuclear drawdown with the Russians and an important treaty to try to safeguard nuclear materials, he received credit for neither accomplishment from the neo conservatives. Since combating “terrorism” is their calling card, one would hope they might drop their partisanship for a moment, but think again. As one pundit put it, their main interest is “cultural counterterrorism.”

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