Month: June 2012

Hating Bo

by digby

This is a fascinating piece at Slate about the “racialization” of attitudes, something I’ve never really thought of before, although it makes some sense once you think about it:

The wishful scenario many Republicans envisioned after Barack Obama’s change of heart this month on gay marriage—the president’s African-American base, far less supportive of expanding marriage than other parts of his coalition, becomes demobilized or even defects as a result of Obama’s stance—already seems unlikely to be realized. Last Thursday, Public Policy Polling revealed a 36-point swing in black support for gay marriage among Maryland voters, who will have the chance to legalize the practice in a November referendum, since PPP’s last poll on the subject in March. Then, 56 percent had been opposed to the new marriage law and 39 percent supported it. In May, PPP found the numbers nearly reversed: 55 percent supported, and 36 opposed. By all indications, black voters weren’t abandoning Obama over an issue on which they disagreed, but adjusting their opinions to match his…

Not only was Obama’s support pulling blacks toward his position, it was also pushing a segment of whites whom Tesler categorized as “racial conservatives” away from his position. In other words, Obama had such sway over race-conscious voters that they adjusted their positions on gay marriage because of him.

It’s been very unpopular among some political observers to even mention that race has played a part in the Obama phenomenon, whether for good or evil. But it’s been pretty clear to me that it has. And this shows how you can tell:

Tesler started looking for “issues that people don’t have strong feelings about, and issues that weren’t already folded into the current partisan alignment,” as he put it. Obama started feeding plenty of them—the stimulus, health care reform, cap-and-trade, all relatively new issues without firmly established loyalties. Tesler began working with the polling outfit YouGov to match how voters’ changing views on them matched up to their answers to the racial-resentment questions. He found a “spillover of racialization” into health care reform: Voters who heard descriptions of the contrasting components of the 1993 Clinton and 2009 Obama proposals were more likely to grow disapproving of Obama’s when they heard the presidents’ names—as long as they demonstrated racial resentment elsewhere in the survey.

Even presidential pets were viewed through the same lens. Tesler showed 1,000 YouGov respondents a picture of a Portuguese water dog and asked how favorably they felt toward it. Half saw the dog introduced as Bo Obama, and half as Ted Kennedy’s dog, Splash. (Both political dogs are the same breed, but the picture was of Obama’s.) Those with negative feelings toward blacks thought less of Obama’s dog.

The latest issue to fall into this pattern is gay marriage, although PPP’s Maryland findings seem to confirm that racialization can work in multiple directions. Tesler has repeatedly found that the polarization he has documented is partly a function of the voters he describes as “racial liberals”—those who score low on the resentment battery, a category that includes blacks and progressive whites—being more likely to support a policy when they learn that Obama does, too.

I think we see the downside of that, as well, don’t we? This is from the Washinton Post ABC poll:

The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Obama, who campaigned on a pledge to close the brig at Guantanamo Bay and to change national security policies he criticized as inconsistent with U.S. law and values, has little to fear politically for failing to live up to all of those promises.

The survey shows that 70 percent of respondents approve of Obama’s decision to keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay. . . . The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.

Obviously, I don’t know how much the above attitudes track with Tessler’s “racialization spillover” index so maybe it legitimately represents a major change of heart among liberals who now support the same repressive policies they hated during George W. Bush’s term. Clearly some of this is party tribalism as well. And there is a genuine trust and belief in Obama’s leadership which probably accounts for some of it. But whatever it is, there can be little doubt that this president, for whatever reason, has managed to persuade many liberals to support security policies they were adamantly opposed to just a few years ago.

Interestingly, I don’t think the racial resentment people have made the same switch on that one issue. They may hate Obama so much that they even hate his dog (which is unfathomable to me — I just don’t know how any human being can hate that dog.) But no matter how much they loathe him, they are so wedded to the idea of American bad-assedness that they’ll even get past their racial resentment and support the Obama policies. When it comes to killing foreigners, they can be remarkably color-blind.

I don’t know how much stock to put in all this. But I suspect there is something to it. I once knew a lady who wouldn’t eat licorice jelly beans because they were black. She called them “pickaninnies.” And she liked the taste of licorice. Some people can be very irrational when it comes to this stuff.

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Conservative perverts and their polluted souls

by digby

Zunguzungu has posted a rather perfect example of everything that’s wrong with … everything. He discusses the work of Maria Gunnoe a West Virginia coalfield activist, sharing this video explaining it and the remarks she was scheduled to deliver(.pdf) before the House Committee on Natural Resources, along with a link to the slide show she planned to accompany her testimony.

It’s bad enough. But then comes this:

Maria was going to show another picture to the House subcommittee yesterday, this photo, which is a photo of a five year old child bathing in that kind of brown, poisonous water. The child is naked, as you normally are when you bathe. I’d invite you to click that link, and think about what, if anything, distresses you about it.

The photo was taken by photojournalist Katie Falkenberg, who gave it this caption:

Erica and Rully Urias must bathe their daughter, Makayla, age 5, in contaminated water that is the color of tea. Their water has been tested and contains high levels of arsenic. The family attributes this water problem primarily to the blasting which they believe has disrupted the water table and cracked the casing in their well, allowing seepage of heavy metals into their water, and also to the runoff from the mountaintop removal sites surrounding their home. The coal company that mines the land around their home has never admitted to causing this problem, but they do supply the family with bottled water for drinking and cooking. Contaminated and colored water in has occurred in other coalfield communities as well where mountaintop mining is practiced.

Now, that photo of Makayla Urias is a photograph of a naked child, a child exactly as naked as nine-year-old Kim Phuc was when, forty years ago, an Associated Press photographer snapped a picture of her, while she was running and crying from American napalm. You’ve probably seen that photo. It’s iconic. The photographer got a Pulitzer prize for taking it.

Yesterday, on the other hand, Maria was told that she would not be allowed to show that photo. It was not appropriate. She had the blessing of the child’s parents, but Republicans on the subcommittee alerted the capitol police (according to Spencer Pederson, a spokesman for GOP panel members), and after the hearing, the capitol police took Maria aside for questioning about “child pornography.”

These people truly are vile. Click on the picture. There is not one thing even remotely sexual about it and only disgusting perverts would think there was. But the picture is obscene. And it’s that obscenity these horrible, horrible people are trying to cover up.

Be sure to rad the whole post to get a full picture of the horrors of this polluted environment — and the polluted souls of those Republicans creeps.

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Don’t make trouble

by digby

Amity Schlaes wins my wanker of the week-end with this execrable screed:

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is anti-woman.

That’s the position of Ellen Pao, a junior partner at the venture capital firm who filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court contending “discriminatory treatment of Plaintiff and other female employees, specifically in advancement and compensation because of their gender.” Pao is also saying she was sexually harassed and that after she complained to higher- ups she suffered retaliation.

The greater question here isn’t whether certain executives at Kleiner Perkins treated Pao poorly. That’s entirely possible. This column isn’t suggesting otherwise. The question is whether such a lawsuit is pro-woman — whether its consequences will be good for women in the specific field of venture capital on a net basis, as they say in business schools. The answer is: probably not.

You can make the case that Pao’s action may work against women who want to be entrepreneurs.

Schlaes believes this is because such women are labeled trouble makers and nobody will like them and then Human Resources won’t hire any women at all to be entrepreneurs. (Do entrepreneurs get hired by HR departments?)

Anyway, yes we have heard all this before. Since the 1970s.

Her action may reduce the very kind of access she enjoyed for those who followed her. Setting Kleiner Perkins aside, consider the rest of the sector. Human-resources specialists aren’t idiots. They see how much Pao, still merely alleging, is costing a firm such as Kleiner Perkins: time, image and distraction from its main work, finding value. Other businesses will work harder to avoid a litigious hire. They will scour candidates’ resumes for similarities to Pao’s. Her husband, Alphonse Fletcher Jr., had filed lawsuits. Any job candidate with a record of suing, or with a litigious spouse, will get a cooler reception. Starting last week. In other words, some highly qualified candidates will be excluded. Will HR departments admit what they are doing? Never.

Once again, I’m reminded of classic Yiddish joke:

There were these two Jewish men standing before a firing squad in Czarist Russia. Their crime? Being Jewish. So the Cossack captain heading the firing squad looks at Abie and Yankele and shouts, “Jews, take off your hats.” Abie takes off his hat. But Yankele says, “No, I won’t take off my hat.” So Abie leans over to Yankele and whispers, “Yankele, don’t make trouble.”

The ethos of the financial sector is so redolent of swashbuckling machismo that it seems to be quite far behind the rest of the corporate world in recognizing its systemic sexism. But then these are people who believe they are doing God’s work, and even the small suggestion that they might be flawed in any way sends them into a rage, so I suppose it’s to be expected. But I must say that I’ve been really stunned by some very high profile and highly influential liberal female financial wizards who hold terribly retrograde views on feminism as well in private conversation. Perhaps they are so steeped in delusions of meritocracy that some of these women believe that because they have done well it simply isn’t important if other women experience discrimination or endure sexual harassment. After all, the meritocracy always rewards the best, so the worst thing that could happen is if trouble-makers start casting aspersions on it. Why some people might get the idea that the Masters of the Universe aren’t as purely superior as they clearly believe themselves to be.

I’m sure I don’t have to say it out loud, but I will anyway. Discrimination hurts everyone. It is the opposite of meritocracy, holding down some of the best people, pushing them to the margins. And sexual harassment makes for a workplace filled with hostility, fear and distraction — for everyone. My observation over decades of working in corporate environments is that things got easier fro men as well as women when women began to speak up for themselves and created a more professional workplace.

Maybe Schlaes thinks that the world of Mad Men, with everyone boozing and fucking all day was truly more “creative” but in a more competitive world, where you’ve got people all over the planet ready and willing to step in a do these jobs, it might make sense for everyone to keep their mind on business. If they like their meritocracy so much, they should be going to great pains to make sure they aren’t overlooking the talent and skills of 50% of the population.

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“We won our war, they didn’t, and from the looks of them, they couldn’t.”

by digby

Me at Mojo on military worship:

Earlier in the week the discussion was all about what defines a hero, and the question came up frequently about when we became so reverent toward military service. Now, it’s probably true that we’ve always had a special place for martial heroism, most societies do. But as one who grew up in a military family I can say that it’s changed a bit over the years in this country. Military service in the two World Wars and Korea was respected, but it was also the subject of satire and criticism to an extent that I honestly don’t think you could do today. There’s not even a Sergeant Bilko or Mister Roberts, much less scathing satire like Catch-22. (In fact, have we had even one great wartime novel emerge during our last 10 years of non-stop war?)

The question is why that would be, and I think the consensus is that it’s a response to the Vietnam Syndrome and the poor way that Vietnam vets were treated by civilians. President Obama referred to it himself in his speech the other day:

When the honourable service of the many should have been praised, you came home and sometimes were denigrated when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.

He’s right about that. But I’m fairly sure that he and virtually everyone else has no idea who were among the worst perpetrators.

Let’s just say they didn’t wear tie-dye.

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No exceptions

Two ways to decrease conservative power, voting booth edition

by David Atkins

I wrote yesterday on the need for progressives to mobilize and organize in order to have a real impact on the political direction of the country, and mentioned that some of the forms this would take might not seem immediately germane to the people powered issues at hand. One avenue would be campaign finance reform, a subject that brings dull stares to most audiences, but which is absolutely essential to restoring our democracy.

But another is simply allowing more of the 99% to actually vote at the polls. Big corporate interests can spend a lot of cash on elections very effectively, but it only goes so far and it can only fool so many people. Significantly broaden and deepen the voting pool to include those to less receptive to conservative messaging, and buying elections becomes a much more difficult and expensive proposition even for the likes the Koch brothers.

They know this quite well, which is why we’re seeing so much effort on the Republican side to restrict voting rights. But the news is not all grim: the California Assembly has passed a same-day voter registration law, allowing voters to register to vote all the way until election day. This is a no-brainer and doesn’t open up the potential for fraud, as voters registered on the same day would still be checked to make sure no multiple votes were cast. As a volunteer working every day on the election here in Ventura County, I’ve already talked to about a dozen people who are unable to vote here because they discovered they weren’t registered here, and only discovered that within the 15 day window prior to election day. Those people and thousands like them have been needlessly disenfranchised. Allowing for same-day registration will significantly increase the pool of voters especially among the young and “others” on the fringes of society, making it more difficult for conservatives to purchase elections.

There’s another way to increase voter turnout, too: moving elections to weekends. The fact that American voter turnout is so low is partly because we vote on a day that is not amenable for many working-class people. Of course, mail ballot voting has helped to assuage this problem, but most Americans still vote at the polls on “Election Day.” Why do we vote on Tuesdays? For no terribly good reason. It goes back to an 1845 law, established to give people traveling by horse-drawn carriage to take all of Monday to travel to the county courthouse after allowing Sunday to be devoted to rest. Yes, that’s the actual reason.

No, these aren’t huge advances that will suddenly make single-payer healthcare possible. But they’re small ratchets away from conservative power. It’s in small ratchets like these that conservatives have made it possible for them to gain power, as Hacker and Pierson amply demonstrate. And it’s in small ratchets that we can help take it back, too.

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Friday Cat Blogging, Rhubarb edition

It’s not a policy thing. It’s an ideology thing.

by David Atkins

I get tired of saying this sometimes, but Paul Krugman is a must read again today. The first half of his column dissects for what seems like the millionth time the economic reasons why austerity is a bad idea, including the unapplicability of economy-as-household metaphor. The difference between macro- and micro-economics is so obvious to anyone with even elementary knowledge of the subject that it’s impossible for key policymakers to be quite as stupid as their many conservative voters. So Krugman delves into their ulterior motives based on his conversations with prominent austerians:

Well, that’s where it gets interesting. For when you push “austerians” on the badness of their metaphor, they almost always retreat to assertions along the lines of: “But it’s essential that we shrink the size of the state.”

Now, these assertions often go along with claims that the economic crisis itself demonstrates the need to shrink government. But that’s manifestly not true. Look at the countries in Europe that have weathered the storm best, and near the top of the list you’ll find big-government nations like Sweden and Austria.

And if you look, on the other hand, at the nations conservatives admired before the crisis, you’ll find George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer and the architect of the country’s current economic policy, describing Ireland as “a shining example of the art of the possible.” Meanwhile, the Cato Institute was praising Iceland’s low taxes and hoping that other industrial nations “will learn from Iceland’s success.”

So the austerity drive in Britain isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of course, exactly the same thing that has been happening in America.

In fairness to Britain’s conservatives, they aren’t quite as crude as their American counterparts. They don’t rail against the evils of deficits in one breath, then demand huge tax cuts for the wealthy in the next (although the Cameron government has, in fact, significantly cut the top tax rate). And, in general, they seem less determined than America’s right to aid the rich and punish the poor. Still, the direction of policy is the same — and so is the fundamental insincerity of the calls for austerity.

The big question here is whether the evident failure of austerity to produce an economic recovery will lead to a “Plan B.” Maybe. But my guess is that even if such a plan is announced, it won’t amount to much. For economic recovery was never the point; the drive for austerity was about using the crisis, not solving it. And it still is.

It’s not about the policy they feel is right at any given time. It’s about an ideologically-driven, compulsive need to dismantle the supports of basic moral civilization.

And Krugman is right. There will be no “Plan B.” If the deregulation-fueled banking crisis itself didn’t cause a soul-searching reevaluation of the world’s economic structures, the failure of austerity policy in its wake won’t do the trick, either. The political history of the last thirty years is of the revenge of the right wing after finding itself discredited for a generation after the Great Depression and the fall of fascism. We’re living in a grand period of conservative revanchism, one that I fear will not end without entire economies and and civilizations being destroyed in the process.

That is, after all, what happens when rabid ideologues of any stripe come to power. The problem now is recognizing that, for all the surface niceties of our democratic institutions, we’re in the grip of anti-government cultists just as detached from reality and morality as any other ideological authoritarian regime.

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Twoops!

by digby

Now this is fun.

Today we’re proud to unveil Politwoops, the only comprehensive collection of deleted tweets by U.S. politicians. From minor typos to major gaffes, Politwoops is now there to offer a searchable window into what they hoped you didn’t see.

As Anthony Weiner proved, there’s something about twitter that makes people say and do things they wouldn’t otherwise say or do in public. I don’t know why. So it makes sense that somebody would track politicians’ twitter feeds. You never know when they might accidentally say what they really think.

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