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Brought To You BY The F*&#$%n’ Union

Marcy Wheeler has an amazing post up about that daring rescue of all those airline passengers in the Hudson River yesterday. Turns out that almost everyone involved in the rescue, top to bottom, was a union member. I’m going to borrow liberally from her post.

There’s the pilot:

“What might have been a catastrophe in New York — one that evoked the feel if not the scale of the Sept. 11 attack — was averted by a pilot’s quick thinking and deft maneuvers,

[snip]

On board, the pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger III, 57, unable to get back to La Guardia, had made a command decision to avoid densely populated areas and try for the Hudson,

[snip]

When all were out, the pilot walked up and down the aisle twice to make sure the plane was empty, officials said.”

Sullenberger is a former national committee member and the former safety chairman for the Airline Pilots Association and now represented by US Airline Pilots Association. He–and his union–have fought to ensure pilots get the kind of safety training to pull off what he did yesterday.

Then there are the flight attendants:

“One passenger, Elizabeth McHugh, 64, of Charlotte, seated on the aisle near the rear, said flight attendants shouted more instructions: feet flat on the floor, heads down, cover your heads.”

They are members of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. Yesterday’s accident should remind all of us that flight attendants are first and foremost safety professionals–they should not be treated like cocktail waitresses.

There are the air traffic controllers:

“The pilot radioed air traffic controllers on Long Island that his plane had sustained a ‘double bird strike.'”

They’re represented by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Someday, they’ll rename National Airport for the work these men and women do to keep us safe in the air.

There are the ferry crews:

“As the first ferry nudged up alongside, witnesses said, some passengers were able to leap onto the decks. Others were helped aboard by ferry crews.”

They’re represented by the Seafarers International Union. They provide safety training to their members so they’re prepared for events like yesterday’s accident.

There are the cops and firemen:

“Helicopters brought wet-suited police divers, who dropped into the water to help with the rescues.”

They’re represented by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association and the Uniformed Firefighters Association and Uniformed Fire Officers Association (IAFF locals).They’re the men and women who performed so heroically on 9/11–and they’ve been fighting to make sure first responders get the equipment to do this kind of thing.

Nobody’s saying that only union members call pull off rescues – but it sure helps when you have the membership, the ones who are on the ground, fighting for what’s necessary to make them successful. Unions fight against right-wing budget cutters, who would reduce funding for emergency services, as an example. To those who demonize the labor movement, stop for a moment and say Thank You to one of these heroes today.

And then maybe you’ll understand why all workers should have the free choice to join a union and have pride in their work.

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Zombie Conservatism Redux

by digby

The Shrill One:

Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government? Alternatively, we’re told that we don’t have to dwell on past abuses, because we won’t repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration’s political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won’t do it all over again, given the chance?In fact, we’ve already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it’s giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off — which isn’t too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

Yes, we have seen this movie before. It’s a zombie movie.
And the undead who were trained in the Bush administration will be more determined than ever to prove they were right. Now is the time to drive a stake through conservatism, not help them reanimate it.

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Q&A With Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney

by digby

When my fellow Californian Joan Walsh threw out Carolyn Maloney’s name as a possible successor to Hillary Clinton I had, coincidentally, just finished Maloney’s book and I wrote a post saying I thought she would be an excellent choice for senator. Her book was a bit of a tonic to me (at least to the extent that it ruefully validated my impressions during the previous year that women were not nearly as far along as I’d thought they were.) After I wrote the post, I asked if she could spare a few minutes to answer a couple of questions about that and other things and much to my delight, she agreed.

Q: I was a bit surprised by certain sexist attitudes across the media and even in the political establishment that were revealed during the election campaign —- and it seemed to me that I wasn’t the only one. Do you sense there is a new awareness about sexism among women in politics?

Carolyn Maloney: 2008 will go down in history as the year we finally came face to face with the level of stereotyping, sexism and misogyny that still persists in American society. While it was awe-inspiring to see Hillary Clinton as a major party candidate, the number of attacks on her because she was a woman was simply astonishing. It came from every direction – from the hecklers at rallies who held up signssaying “Iron My Shirt” to the netroots who created a website “Make Me A Sandwich and Get Out of the Race.”

The election season was a study in contrasts. Hillary’s historic run for the White House generated great enthusiasm and inspiration, especially among young women. Still, there are enormous hurdles apparent in the extraordinary sexist attitudes and remarks. I thought to myself “Someone ought to write a book” and then I realized, someone already has – My book is called Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: Why Women’s Lives Aren’t Getting Any Easier–And How We Can Make Real Progress For Ourselves and Our Daughters
In it I debunk the myths about how far women have come and discuss the many areas in which we have a long way to go: in workplace opportunities, family-friendly work policies, pensions and tax policy, violence against women, trafficking, reproductive rights and representation in government, among other things.

To me, the most startling display of sexism came from the media stars who chose to attack Hillary, not for her policies or campaign strategy, but solely on the basis of her gender. Her supporters were called castratos in the eunuch chorus; she was compared to “everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court”; one commentator said she was scary, castrating and that he involuntarily crossed his legs when she came into the room; another said that when she spoke, men heard “Take out the garbage”; yet another queried whether Americans will want to watch a woman growing older before their eyes on a daily basis. You can go here to see some of these attacks for yourself. It’s so over the top that you almost have to see it to believe it. If that’s what they thought about someone as accomplished, intelligent and gracious as Hillary Clinton, what must they be thinking of us?

Many women, including me, were surprised and disappointed by the attitudes of these commentators. On the other hand, as Hillary Clinton herself has said, she received more votes than any woman in history and put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling. Her success opens the door for other women to follow her. I hope some of those women who were startled by Hillary’s rejection will seize the opportunity to run for office. We need more good women in public service.

Q: With the obvious necessity for a big stimulus to deal with the economic crisis, there’s a lot of talk about creating green jobs and infrastructure projects. But as Linda Hirshman pointed out in a recent op-ed piece, these jobs will go almost exclusively to men. Are there any initiatives contemplated to ensure that stimulus job creation will be aimed at jobs that affect women as well?

CM: I think the economic stimulus plan will wind up providing a great deal of help to women. First, many women are working in industries that were formerly the province of men and hopefully more women will try to compete for jobs created by the stimulus package. Second, women are disproportionately represented in city and state jobs and would benefit from the portions of the stimulus plan that will provide aid to local government. Third, the plan will likely include help for vulnerable populations – likely including assistance for unemployment assistance, the earned income tax credit, food stamps, child care, among other things. Finally, there is always an indirect benefit when an unemployed member of a family gets a job, even if that person is a man. When one member of a family is unemployed, the entire family suffers.

On Sunday January 11th, the Obama camp released a video addressing this precise issue. In it Chair-designate for the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, explains the many ways in which women would benefit from the stimulus package. She explains: “The balance of the program, the fact that it does have the investments in education and health care, it does have the state fiscal relief, it does have themiddle class tax cuts. All those pieces are creating jobs in some of the sectors like health care, education and retail trade, where women are a disproportionately large fraction.”

For my part, I definitely want to make sure that women are included in this package. In fact, I am working with my colleagues to try to ensure that the bill will include a diversity requirement, although there is no guarantee that this will make it into the final bill. In any event, I believe that moving forward with long-delayed, ready-to-go infrastructure projects would have long-term impacts from which our entire community will benefit.

Q: Your book makes clear that participation by women electoral politics is essential in order to challenge assumptions and correct many existing imbalances. (In fact, I would argue that it requires not just women, but feminists like yourself) .) Why do you think there are so few women in politics in proportion to their numbers in the population? I find it difficult to wrap my mind around.

CM: In my experience, it is women who fight for women, children and families. Look at the impassioned dissent written by Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the Lily Ledbetter case. Although women are 51% of the population, we have only 17% of the seats in Congress.

In my book, Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, I talk about the 30% solution – sociologists say that once the percentage of women members of a legislature reaches 30%, women’s issues begin to be addressed. Twenty four countries have reached this critical mass. The United States isn’t anywhere near it. The 111th Congress which has just convened includes 75 women in the House and 17 women in the Senate, or 17% of Congress. That’s a record high – in the 110th Congress, women constituted 16% of the members. At the current rate of 1% every 2 years, it will be 2034 before the United States reaches the magic 30% number. Small wonder, then, that Congress hasn’t passed any new bills to improve family/work balance since the Family and Medical Leave Act back in 1993. It’s a lot easier to diagnose the problem than to answer the question of why more women do not enter the political world. I hope that Hillary’s historic run will prompt other women to step forward and run.

Q: I keep hearing “Blue Dogs this and Blue Dogs that” in the press, but I wonder how you think the Progressive Caucus will work in the House with its larger membership and a clear mandate for change? Is there any hope of a similar level of organization and public relations as what we see with these other groups?

CM: There are many caucuses and many coalitions that work on particular issues. The Blue Dogs are one and the Progressive Caucus is another, but there are many others and some of them are extremely effective and share progressive ideals – I personally have done a lot of work with the Congressional Caucus on Women’s Issues. We have worked together to pass a wide range of bills. In fact, two of the first bills we voted on in the House in the 111th Congress that just began are bills the Women’s Caucus supported — the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, both of which make it more difficult to discriminate against women in pay.

Q: In terms of the new economic initiatives, what do you think are the chances of passing the credit card bill of rights and the cram down legislation? Those seem to be to be obvious political (and substantive) winners to me and yet the press reports indicate they are not necessarily going to make it. What’s the problem?

CM: As the Author of the Credit Cardholder’s Bill of Rights, I will continue to push for its passage and I believe we will be successful. We have made great headway to date with winning overwhelming passage in the House of Representatives last year and with the Federal Reserve announcing that they will bar many of these unfair and deceptive practices starting next year. As for the cram down legislation, which would allow bankruptcy judges rework the mortgages of distressed homeowners, I believe there is growing momentum to get it done. Just this week there was a major breakthrough with Citigroup announcing announcing that they will now support the legislation with certain changes..

Q: The Democratic Party has made much of its outreach to social conservatives in recent cycles. Inclusive rhetoric about faith aside, do you believe that one party can accommodate those who sincerely believe abortion and gay marriage are crimes with those who believe they are fundamental matters of civil rights and civil liberties? If you do, what kind of compromises do you believe are possible to make that happen?

CM: The Democratic Party has always been a broad umbrella. We do not always agree, and that’s probably a good thing. It allows us to form a broader coalition and work effectively together. The Democratic Party has been clear on its support for abortion rights and gay marriage. If people have different opinions on those issues but still choose to vote Democratic, it’s because the Democratic Party stands for much more – they may be Democrats because of economic issues, or the party’s tradition of providing a social safety net, or they may prefer our record of competence in running the government.

The Democratic Party will always support reproductive rights, civil rights and gay rights. Nonetheless, social conservatives who believe in helping the poor, expanding health care and preserving Social Security and Medicare are right to vote as Democrats even if they do not join us on every issue.

Q: Finally, you’ve been endorsed by major women’s groups in New York to fill Hillary Clinton’s senate seat and after reading your book, it seemed to me that you would be an excellent choice. If that doesn’t happen, can we expect to see you run for higher office in the future?

CM: I am honored by their support, and yours. I have been endorsed by, among others, the National Organization for Women Political Action Committee, National Foundation for Women Legislators, Inc., Business and Professional Women’s BPW/PAC, Feminist Majority Political Action Committee and the National Women’s Political Caucus. As for the future, one never knows what opportunities may come.

I sincerely appreciate Congresswoman Maloney taking the time to answer these questions during this busy and eventful time and hope that she will continue to interact with the netroots on these issues. I think we need more of this perspective.

There is a lot of chatter in the New York press that Kennedy should be chosen because of her close relationship to Obama (with the implication that he bears some animosity toward New Yorkers who supported their Senator for president in the primaries.) I think that’s utter nonsense. Clinton is about to become one of Obama’s most important cabinet members and, say what you will about him, he has proven time and again that he doesn’t bear grudges (sometimes to a fault, in my view.) And in any case, with what they’ve been through in Illinois, I don’t think they are touching this senate appointment with a ten foot pole.

Carolyn Maloney would be a huge asset in the Senate, an unabashed progressive feminist with a ton of experience navigating the treacherous shoals of the beltway. New Yorkers would be well represented and so would women throughout the country. She’s earned it.

Here’s hoping that David Paterson is looking as closely at Carolyn as he is at Caroline.

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Whatever It Takes

by digby

Bruce Wilson has written an incredible expose of the man the Religious Injdustrial Complex is asking us to accept as a decent and moral voice of healing, (despite a few mild differences between us on icky issues nobody wants to talk about anyway.) It turns out that his activities in Africa are a trifle less impressive than advertised once you look into them. In fact, they’re downright horrifying.

But then I’m always a little bit horrified at people who say things like this:

During his Anaheim speech, Warren revealed that he’d received a message from God to seek more influence, power and fame. God, Warren narrated, led him to Psalm 72, “Solomon’s prayer for more influence… in Psalm 72 [Solomon] says ‘God, I want you to make me more influential. God, I want you to give me more power. I want you to bless my life more. God, I want you to spread the fame of my name through other countries.'”

“It sounded pretty selfish,” mused Warren but, as he explained to the crowd, God had led him on a path towards solving the five biggest global problems.

Beyond ‘spiritual poverty’, egocentric leadership is the next most oppressive ‘global giant’, according to Rick Warren, and thus a higher priority than HIV/AIDS, poverty, and other material afflictions. “The world is full of little Saddams,” he observed, “they’re in every country, they’re in every church, they’re in every business, they’re in every homeowner’s association. They’re everywhere. You give a guy a little power and it goes to his head.”

Wow. Talk about some serious lack of self-awareness…

But it shouldn’t be surprising that he’s saying such internally inconsistent things and supporting authoritarian dictators and killers, considering that he seems to admire such people and their propaganda to the point of instructing his followers in their methods.

This is the new voice of evangelical moderation, America’s pastor:

“What is the vision for the next 25 years ? I’ll tell you what it is.

It is the global expansion of the kingdom of God.

It is the total mobilization of his church.

And the third part is the goal of a radical devotion of every believer.

Now, I choose that word ‘radical’ intentionally, because only radicals change the world.

Everything great done in this world is done by passionate people.

Moderate people get moderately nothing done. And moderation will never slay the global giants. . .”

[ minute 48:45 ]

“In 1939, in a stadium much like this, in Munich Germany, they packed it out with young men and women in brown shirts, for a fanatical man standing behind a podium named Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil.

And in that stadium, those in brown shirts formed with their bodies a sign that said, in the whole stadium, “Hitler, we are yours.”

And they nearly took the world.

Lenin once said, “give me 100 committed, totally committed men and I’ll change the world.” And, he nearly did.

A few years ago, they took the sayings of Chairman Mao, in China, put them in a little red book, and a group of young people committed them to memory and put it in their minds and they took that nation, the largest nation in the world by storm because they committed to memory the sayings of the Chairman Mao.

When I hear those kinds of stories, I think ‘what would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ, would say ‘Jesus, we are yours’ ?

What kind of spiritual awakening would we have ? “

[ minute 51:50 ]

“Jesus said, ‘I want you to do this publicly.’ So what I want you to do is take the card, and in just a minute, and if you say ‘Rick, I am willing to serve God’s purposes in my generation.’

I want you to open up to the sign that says ‘Whatever it takes.’

Whatever it takes.

And I want you to just say, ‘This is my commitment, before God and in front of everybody else. I’m in.’ “

And I would invite you to just stand quietly and hold up ‘Whatever it takes’. . .

I’m looking at a stadium full of people who are saying ‘whatever it takes’.

Whatever it takes, God. Time, talent, energy, money, effort, vision… God, whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes, that’s what I’m going to do.

And I believe that today we are making history. We’re making history that’s going to start a movement that will bring a new Reformation in the church of God and a new spiritual awakening in our world. And, our world needs it.

And today, as you say ‘whatever it takes,’ you’re saying publicly, “I’m in, God. I’m in…

…I’m in.’ “

I’m not in. In fact, I’m definitely out. I don’t want to be anywhere near this creep and I don’t think politicians should be anywhere near him either.

As Wilson points out in the piece, he doesn’t point to the methods of great spiritual leaders like Ghandi or Martin Luther King. He doesn’t even point to the positive ideals of political or revolutionary leaders like the founding fathers. He stands before a roaring crowd of 30,000 followers in a huge sports stadium and points to the 20th century’s worst genocidal madmen as inspiration! And from his work in Africa, it appears he practices what he preaches.

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Obama Goes To China

by digby

EJ Dionne was at the meeting of less conservative writers yesterday (less conservative by contrast to the George Will dinner the night before, anyway) and he came away with a little character study that is quite interesting. First, he discusses the fact that Barack is non-ideological, which I think is quite clear. But he says it in an interesting way that’s worth examining:

There are at least three keys to understanding Obama’s approach to (and avoidance of) ideology. There is, first, his simple joy in testing himself against those who disagree with him. Someone who knows the president-elect well says that he likes talking with philosophical adversaries more than with allies.

This part of him was once the detached writer and professor who could view even his own life from a distance and with a degree of abstraction. Seen with perspective, after all, the ideological differences in the United States are rather small. We have no major socialist party, and when it comes down to it, even conservatives are reluctant to dismantle our limited social insurance and welfare programs.

But Obama’s anti-ideological turn is also a functional one for a progressive, at least for now. Since Ronald Reagan, ideology has been the terrain of the right. Many of the programs that conservatives have pushed have been based more on faith in their worldview than on empirical tests. How else could conservatives claim that cutting taxes would actually increase government revenue, or that trickle-down economic approaches were working when the evidence of middle-class incomes said otherwise?

I would guess that it will remain the terrain of the right because there is no ideology on the left, at least among politicians. At this point I’m not sure there is such a thing as liberal ideology at all.

The fact that Dionne says this is temporary puzzles me. How exactly does one change the fact that Republican ideology is the default position in American politics unless it’s challenged? Is it not just as likely that in the event that Obama is successful, the public will believe that conservatism is “what works” since nobody tells them differently? And will they not be inclined to vote for someone who offers a more pure version of what they believe is “what works” once their memories of the loathed Bush fade away?

I suppose this all depends upon whether or not you think that politics is a matter of smart people getting together and agreeing on how the world should be run or whether you think it’s a system designed to organize society and government by testing and challenging varying ideologies and worldviews against competing interests and values. The first is a very nice, clean way of doing things and the second is somewhat messy and difficult. But the truth is that I’ve never seen the first kind of politics work. (Indeed, Obama would be wise to put down his Lincoln histories for a few minutes and pick up a copy of The Best and the Brightest.)

Even the most pragmatic of presidents, Franklin Roosevelt, had no illusions about the forces arrayed against his programs (and against him personally) and he wasn’t afraid to lay it out for the American people:

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

Under pressure from the right, he pulled back a lot of New Deal programs the next year and it caused unemployment go back up, so rhetoric isn’t everything. But he had no illusions about how political power is won and used for the greater good and he didn’t give the Republicans tools to gain political power by pretending they were anything but the opponents they were. His lasting legacy, however pragmatically it was envisioned and implemented, was that people trusted the Democrats for generations and the New Deal programs were woven into the fabric of America. Liberalism, not conservatism, was the default ideology because Roosevelt made his arguments in stark and clear ideological terms.

It has been my experience and reading of history generally that politics is rarely a gentlemanly debate about the public good but is rather a struggle between competing interests. And ideology is usually what binds these interests together through common values and worldviews. In our system those interests have historically formed coalitions within the two political parties which fight it out before the public. I’m sorry that’s unpleasant, but it’s usually the best humans can do short of killing each other.

But perhaps change is upon us and for the first time in history we will have a functional one party government of earnest like-minded public servants dedicated to the betterment of the people. (We have had a functional one party government of like-minded public servants dedicated to the continuation of the ruling class and the status quo many times, so that much is certainly possible.) But everybody calmly sitting down together and agreeing on “what works” would be a first.

Unfortunately, it would appear that Obama is going to go to China — or rather, he’s going to “reform entitlements,” which is the Democratic equivalent. Dionne reports that they’ve adopted Stephanopoulos’ characterization of a Grand Bargain (which just shows that the beltway echo chamber is in full effect.) Obama told the Washington Post today that he’s doing this in order to prove to somebody (who I’m not sure) that he is “serious.”

Obama To Hold Fiscal Responsibility Summit

President-elect Barack Obama will convene a “fiscal responsibility summit” in February designed to bring together a variety of voices on solving the long term problems with the economy and with a special focus on entitlements, he said during an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors this afternoon.

“We need to send a signal that we are serious,” said Obama of the summit.

Those invited to attend will include Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (N.D.), ranking minority member Judd Gregg (N.H.), the conservative Democratic Blue Dog coalition and a host of outside groups with ideas on the matter, said the president-elect.

Obama’s comments came in a wide-ranging, hour-long interview that came just five days before he will be inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States and become the first African American to hold that title.

Obama said that he has made clear to his advisers that some of the difficult choices–particularly in regards to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare – should be made on his watch. “We’ve kicked this can down the road and now we are at the end of the road,” he said.

Normally another Democratic run bipartisan commission on social security reform wouldn’t alarm me so much as annoy me. After all, Clinton was forced by the incoherent “centrist” Bob Kerrey into appointing a social security commission and Bush promised to appoint one after the failure of his attempt to privatize the system. But this time could be different. The scope and complexity of the economic crisis could lead to politicians rushing forward with some bad plans just to appear to be doing something.

I believe that everything about this is a huge mistake. It validates incorrect right wing economic assumptions, incorporates their toxic rhetoric about “entitlements,” focuses on the wrong problems and continues the illusion that social security is in peril when it isn’t. The mantra of shared sacrifice sounds awfully noble, but it isn’t very reassuring to talk about the government going broke at the moment, particularly when the cause of our problems isn’t the blood-sucking parasites who depend on government insurance when they can’t work, but rather the handiwork of the vastly wealthy who insist on operating without restraint and refuse to contribute their fair share. I would have thought that a bipartisan commission on financial system reform might have at least been on the agenda before social security.

Obama is empowering the Republicans and the Blue Dogs with this fiscal responsibility rhetoric and perhaps he believes they will reward him by acting in good faith. And maybe they will.Or perhaps he thinks he can jiu-jitsu the debate in some very clever way to actually bolster social security and enact universal health care. But it’s a big risk. I believe that all this talk about “entitlements” and fiscal responsibility will make it much tougher to sell universal health care and easier to dismantle some of the safety net at a time when many people have just lost a large piece of their retirements, their jobs and their homes. It’s very hard for me to understand why they think it’s a good time to do this.

I know it’s probably right that we give him a chance before we completely go postal about this, but I also know that if this were a Republican saying these things I’d certainly be doing everything in my power to oppose it. But then that’s the beauty of the Nixon goes to China gambit, isn’t it? It neatly shuts down the most fervent opposition. That’s why it’s so frightening. He might just get it done.

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The Real Bush Legacy Project

by dday

For the last several weeks, and I’m sure until George Bush steps aside next week as well as in tonight’s “farewell address,” officials of the outgoing Administration are wearing themselves out selling an image of him as a wise, judicious, successful President with bold vision and unflappable will. 65-70% of the country think this is insane, nor do they believe it, and going on television to proudly announce that the death of 4,500 soldiers was well worth the foreign policy catastrophe created in Iraq, for example, isn’t helping. The question of how history will judge these individuals can at this point only be altered by whether or not they are prosecuted for the crimes they willingly committed.

I’m wondering if they even need to bother with all this. The Bush regime will have a legacy, and not just the expansion of executive power or the model for future Presidents on how to break the law repeatedly, treat Congress with nothing but scorn, and get away with it. No, there’s an even more tangible legacy than that, which will play out every day for the next couple decades at 1 First Street NE in Washington:

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that evidence obtained from an unlawful arrest based on careless record keeping by the police may be used against a criminal defendant.

The 5-to-4 decision revealed competing conceptions of the exclusionary rule, which requires the suppression of some evidence obtained through police misconduct, and suggested that the court’s commitment to the rule was fragile.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that the exclusion of evidence should be a last resort and that judges should use a sliding scale in deciding whether particular misconduct by the police warranted suppressing the evidence they had found.

“To trigger the exclusionary rule,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system.”

That price, the chief justice wrote, “is, of course, letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go free.”

The case itself is noteworthy. Bernie Herring had an adversarial history with a cop in his Alabama town. His truck was impounded and he went to the sheriff’s office to pick it up. The cop ran a check for outstanding warrants and found what he thought to be one, he arrested Herring. The officers detained Herring, and found a gun and traces of methamphetamines on him. Minutes later, the officers discovered that the arrest warrant was faulty. Nevertheless, he was tried for drug possession and sentenced to 27 months(!).

And the Supreme Court now has ruled that the evidence, gained through what amounts to a warrantless search, is admissable.

The decision in the case, Herring v. United States, No. 07-513, may have broad consequences, said Craig M. Bradley, a law professor at Indiana University.

“It may well be,” Professor Bradley said, “that courts will take this as a green light to ignore police negligence all over the place.”

Chief Justice Roberts, who was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., said the exclusionary rule was unlikely to deter isolated careless record keeping and should be reserved for “deliberate, reckless or grossly negligent conduct, or in some circumstances recurring systemic negligence.”

Of course, these 5 will decide what ought to be considered negligent conduct for the near future. And that line will get moved, and moved, and moved. Scott Lemieux has a lot more.

We’ll be dealing with reactionaries on the Supreme Court for a long time, two of them placed there by this President. Civil liberties, women’s rights, consumer protection, and a host of other issues will be at stake. Among the next up is the Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to examine whether a central component of landmark civil rights legislation enacted to protect minority voters is still needed in a nation that has elected an African American president.

The court will decide the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that seeks to protect minority voting rights by requiring a broad set of states and jurisdictions where discrimination was once routine to receive federal approval before altering any of their voting procedures.

The Supreme Court has upheld the requirement in the past, saying the intrusion on state sovereignty is warranted to protect voting rights and eliminate discrimination against minorities. But challengers say it ignores the reality of modern America and “consigns broad swaths of the nation to apparently perpetual federal receivership based on 40-year-old evidence.”

This comes conveniently before the 2010 Census and the next round of reapportionment and redistricting in the states.

That right-wing bloc on the Court is relatively young, incidentally. Weep not for George W. Bush. He’s got a legacy. Not content just to screw us for eight years, the pain will be felt for decades.

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They Call It Blowback

by dday

Nobody could have anticipated that Israel couldn’t bomb its way to peace with Palestine.

Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.

But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.

The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians.

“The Palestinian Authority is one of the main losers in this war,” said Ghassan Khatib, an independent Palestinian analyst in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “How can it make gains in a war in which it is one of the casualties?”

This is a pretty familiar outcome – what rises from the ashes of an attack like this is typically not more moderate or agreeable to the offensive power. Fatah was already disliked and now they are seen to be cooperating, either directly or indirectly, with the bombing of civilians.

I bring this up because Tom Friedman can’t bother to read his own paper or talk to any regional expert, and would rather just tell the Palestinians to suck on this.

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future. […] In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims.

Yes, it is quite educational to murder women and children, and it almost always leads to a more learned and chastened militant group. Just read any history book. I guess the theory of “education” doesn’t extend to Friedman, who can’t seem to learn that collective punishment induces radicalism and rage.

Very. Serious. Monster.

UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz writes in to mention his look at Friedman’s reaction to being “educated” on 9/11.

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Learning

by dday

Well, this certainly changes things.

President-elect Barack Obama’s hopes of scoring significant bipartisan support for his stimulus package are fading, as the debate over the nearly $800-billion plan morphs into a classic Washington impasse: two rival parties in irreconcilable conflict.

Obama had hoped to induce Republicans to back his plan by putting forward a series of business tax cuts. But GOP support is peeling off as the party crafts alternative ideas that rely even more heavily on tax reductions.

Obama’s stimulus package is on track to pass before the Presidents Day recess in mid-February. But it is increasingly doubtful that he will pick up the 80 Senate votes he had hoped to win in the first major legislative test of his presidency. Instead, the bill is likely to pass on the strength of the Democrats’ majority.

Republicans probably made the calculation that falling in line behind the President would not help them down the road if the plan ultimately failed. Keeping their distance would allow them to blame the Democrats for that failure. Not to mention the fact that their ideology of “tax cuts in a boom, tax cuts in a bust, tax cuts whenever” prevents them from accepting the mere concept of a fiscal stimulus. The plans they’re drafting are all across-the-board tax cuts.

In addition, these efforts to woo Republicans ultimately alienated Democrats, and thus far Obama has been willing to accommodate members of his own party and dial back things like the tax cuts for businesses. The stimulus has grown in size, and the percentage devoted to tax cuts has dipped. Obama has moved in the Democrats’ direction by about $75 billion dollars.

I hope Obama’s people learn something from this, and I trust they have. Republicans are committed to opposing a popular plan (extremely popular – 80-85% support job creation on various initiatives like energy and infrastructure) for nakedly ideological reasons. At this point, their support is going to be meager at best. Ultimately, this could be a very good lesson. Obama extended the hand of friendship and it was rebuffed. He can now take the high road and move the bill even further in the direction of job creation. After all, he tried. And he can take that message right to the people.

Still, Obama is taking no chances. On Friday he will visit a wind turbine manufacturing plant in Bedford Heights, Ohio, to make the case for his plan.

If the lesson from this is that bipartisanship is nothing more than a nice theory, that will be very valuable in the future.

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CYA

by digby

The other day I wondered why there was so much being written and discussed among the villagers about how Obama should (and mostly shouldn’t) deal with the torture regime, when I didn’t see it as being a top agenda item among the public. I guessed that the intelligence community was probably heavily lobbying, but beyond that the whole discussion seemed bizarrely outsized considering how disdainful the establishment is toward civil libertarians. Why are they working so feverishly to ensure that the new administration let bygones be bygones on this?

Greenwald hits the nail on the head: the members of the political establishment are all complicit. It hadn’t occurred to me that they were frantic to ensure that torture is removed from the realm of taboo because they all advocated breaking it. I should have realized that if these people had publicly indulged themselves in violent expressions of primitive bloodlust, one can only imagine what they must have been saying to each other in private. They have to excuse the torture and insist that it was necessary because they’ve all told each other for years that was so. Theydon’t want to play the blame game because they are all guilty.

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Full Court Press

by digby

Oh Goody. More bipartisan establishment institutions join with Pete Peterson to give the Republicans and the Blue Dogs excuses to ensure that the government can’t do what’s necessary to stave off a depression:

To modernize an outdated Congressional budget process in light of the daunting economic challenges facing the nation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) today announced a landmark partnership to build bipartisan consensus for a core set of reforms. The Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform will convene the nation’s preeminent experts to make recommendations for how best to strengthen the budget process used by federal lawmakers. CRFB will manage and staff the commission under the leadership of its prestigious board of directors.

“The need for this effort could not be more urgent,” said David M. Walker, president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “The budget process lacks transparency and our federal budget path itself is unsustainable. The Peterson Foundation was established to address the nation’s growing fiscal challenges, and this commission will be central to achieving this goal.”

“The federal budgeting process lays the foundation and should establish the rules of the game for all policy decisions,” said Rebecca W. Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts. “Pew is proud to partner with a prominent group of budget experts from both sides of the aisle to address these critical reforms.”

The commission will meet over the next two years to address a number of shortcomings in current budget rules, concepts and processes. Among these shortcomings:

· Congress routinely fails to pass a budget.

· The existing process tends to ignore long-term obligations.

· Most of the budget is on automatic pilot and lacks adequate oversight.

· Accounting standards are outdated and inconsistent—including those used to track the costs of the current economic stabilization policies.

· Congress routinely uses gimmicks to circumvent the rules and enforcement mechanisms that are in place

Well hell. There’s nothing wrong with that. The budgeting process is a mess. Of course, the real reason why it’s necessary to do this isn’t efficiency or modernization:

Significant emphasis on budget reform over the next few years is imperative given the current economic conditions, the tremendous amount of borrowing taking place to help stabilize the economy, and the large and growing promises for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

Conflating the current economic crisis with the overall health care crisis and the non-existent social security crisis is a recipe for confusion, obstruction and failure.

And if you think that this is about anything but destroying social security, think again. Peterson has been hustling the village for decades. This article is from 1997:

A Crusader in Clover
Pete Peterson, Enemy of Social Security, Counts Journalists as Friends

By John L. Hess

Where does the man find the time to earn all that money? You can’t turn on the tube but there’s Peter G. Peterson, telling some awestruck talking head that Social Security and Medicare are gobbling up our kiddies’ porridge. Or he’s writing it on your favorite op-ed page, or in magazines, or relaying the message through a thousand media converts. Or he’s presiding over the Council on Foreign Relations or the Concord Coalition, or gracing the society page in a dinner jacket, at all the really important social functions, sometimes as host. Or you can find him more informally at Sunday brunch in the Hamptons, with such useful tablemates as Diane Sawyer, Mort Zuckerman, Leslie Stahl, Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters and so on.

Vanity Fair (8/93) called on the great crusader at his spectacular beachside retreat in 1993 for an admiring profile. It said the interview was interrupted by telephone calls arranging the appointment of Leslie Gelb (ex-New York Times) as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and of James Hoge (ex-New York Daily News) as editor of the organization’s journal. Peterson made another call inviting former Sen. Warren Rudman (R.-N.H.) to join the board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health-policy appendage of the great health supply company Johnson & Johnson (of which Peterson’s third wife is a director).

Peterson told Vanity Fair he was writing about health policy at that very moment, for his second book, Facing Up: How to Rescue the American Economy From Crushing Debt and Restore the American Dream. That would be the chapter that said: “The issue isn’t whether these new [universal health] benefits would be nice to have. They would. The issue is whether we can afford it. We can’t.”

That’s our boy. His remark lends piquancy to his wife’s explanation that her husband needed his $2.5 million, $1,500-an-hour helicopter to safeguard his health.

The question is not whether this kind of health care is nice. It is. The question is whether he can afford it. He can.

While he is reticent about his income, Vanity Fair put his take-home in 1992 at $7 million, not an excessive sum for an investment banker of his rank. His partner Stephen Schwartzman, who is regarded in the financial press as the sparkplug of their firm, the Blackstone Group, said that year that investors in its venture fund should expect returns of 25 to 30 percent during the 1990s—again, not unreasonable, since the Dow Jones average rose more than 26 percent last year.

Such rates of return are, again, piquant, because Peterson has described the indexation of Social Security, which lately has raised benefits by roughly 3 percent a year, as “one of the greatest fiscal tragedies of American history.” Piquant? Wait. Peterson was at President Nixon’s side as his economic adviser and secretary of commerce when that “tragedy” was enacted in 1972. (Conservatives thought making the cost-of-living adjustment automatic would deter Congress from voting more generous benefits.)

Peterson denounces the “mad, drunken bash” of the Reagan years. That would be the time when the top income-tax rate was cut from 70 percent to 28 percent, military spending went sky-high, and trillions were made (and lost) on savings and loans and takeovers financed by junk bonds. He was himself, of course, making out like a bandit, hustling for his share of the action, and contributing his bit to Republican campaign funds. He also led a chorus of corporate executives who keened about the exploding federal deficit. His contribution was a key series of articles in the New York Review of Books in 1982 (12/2/82, 12/16/82) that prepared the intellectual climate for the 1983 Social Security “rescue,” which raised payroll taxes and lowered benefits.

The series purported to prove with mathematical certainty that the entitlements of the elderly were snatching food from babies and driving the nation toward bankruptcy. George Will called it “the most important journalism of 1982.” (Washington Post, 12/19/82). Its charts persuaded such liberals as Tom Wicker and Anthony Lewis. Leslie Stahl of ABC said Peterson “really began to educate me.” (She has since repaid the favor with appearances by her mentor on 60 Minutes.)

All the journalists he met seemed impressed by his expertise, and by his generosity in offering to surrender his own entitlements. It does not seem to have occurred to any of his interviewers that a rise of 1 percentage point in his income tax rate would cost him perhaps twice as much as his Social Security and Medicare benefits combined. Nor have any observed how policies he has supported have transferred the tax burden from the wealthy to the wage earner. Indeed, in Facing Up, Peterson remarks with pleased surprise that nobody had clamored for a cut in the Social Security payroll tax to match cuts in benefits.

If opinion-makers consider Peterson an expert on finance, experts on finance tend to consider him more of an opinion-maker. Ken Auletta’s book Greed and Glory, about the near collapse of Lehman Brothers in the 1980’s, describes Peterson as, in the eyes of his partners, an arrogant bungler dying to make killings in leveraged buyouts, an obsessed reactionary, a name-dropping snob, and, all told, so much a pill that his partners paid him $18 million to get rid of him.

Now to return to the question with which we began: How does Peterson find the time to make all that money? It would seem to be the new-fashioned way of tapping the gusher of wealth flowing from the economy. Peterson took his severance pay to Schwartzman and formed the Blackstone Group, which played the arbitrage game, bought up failing companies, shopped the savings-and-loan auctions, and made money.

A towboat operated by one of their subsidiaries and piloted by a man who had flunked his licensing exam seven out of eight times hit a railroad bridge and caused 47 deaths. Another Blackstone company drilled a hole in the Chicago River and caused that city’s costliest disaster since the Great Fire. A major partner resigned last October under the cloud of an ugly scandal alleging fraud.

These things happen. Peterson is a busy man. Journalists may be forgiven for not connecting him with these misfortunes, or even knowing about them. What is not forgivable is their swallowing his ideological book, line and sinker.

Now CNN is simply turning over their airwaves to him for hours at a time, with no competing views or any independent investigation.

Read up on Blackstone Group and its activity in the more exotic realms of finance and ask yourself if Peterson might just be working on behalf of some interests other than the average Joe taxpayer. He has been on this phony crusade for decades, adjusting his tactics with each change in circumstances, but always with one goal in mind. He wants to destroy the American safety net, period. As he nears the end of his life he is putting billions into the project and like the disaster capitalist he is, he sees the current crisis as the best opportunity to make his move.

David Walker is a decent person and I’m sure the people at the PEW Trust are decent people too. But they are either being willfully blind or they are too genuinely myopic to see they are being used.

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