"I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."
This is a statement that George W. Bush made in 2001 after his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia. They used to say that the Republicans wouldn't allow Newt Gingrich to meet with Bill Clinton alone when Gingrich was Speaker and Clinton was President because no matter how dedicated Gingrich was to opposing the President a single hour alone with Mr. Clinton could leave Gingrich happily agreeing to whatever the President proposed. Clinton was smarter than Gingrich. When I first read the above quote the first thing that lept to mind was, Putin is smarter than Bush. Not much of a revelation, but it's something to think about as I consider the last 6 years since that meeting.
Putin is stepping down, there will be a new election in 2008, and that is the impetus of this reflection. Viktor Gerashchenko, a banker and former chairman of Yukos oil company, has become the voice of the opposition, however, that oppposition is so fractured that barring a miracle Putin's pick will likely succeed him as President. Who that heir might be is anyone's guess, remember that Yelstin picked Putin out of the blue, to the surprise of nearly everyone.
Putin becamse President of Russia on December 31, 1999, before that he was the head of the KGB-esque Federal Security Service (FSB). Putin wasn't the head of the FSB very long at all, in fact he was appointed in July of 1998 when Yeltsin fired Nikolai Kovalyov for no apparent reason. Before being named to head the FSB, Putin served a five year term in East Berlin for the KGB from 1985 to 1990. After the break-up of the Soviet Union he returned to his native St. Petersburg and worked primarily as an advisor to the mayor, Anatoly A. Sobchak. Sobchak was Putin's law school professor and leader of the early Russian democracy movement. Putin served as Deputy Mayor and First Vice Mayor and was placed in charge of international relations. As the New York Times describes, Putin "reportedly became known as the city administration's 'gray cardinal,' an indispensable adviser regarded with respect and a touch of fear (Gray Eminence Compels Respect and Even Fear). Putin was a supporter of Yeltsin and went to Moscow where he worked with Anatoly B. Chubais (one-time head of Russia's privitization program, this was the guy who make billionaires out of thugs) and headed an internal auditing department that was in charge of dealing with Russia's 89 regions. He became part of Yeltsin's inner circle which included Gen. Aleksandr I. Lebed, financier Boris A. Berezovsky, and Minister of the Interior Sergei V. Stepashin. Then in 1998 he was named to head the FSB.
Shortly after being named to head the FSB, Yeltsin supporter, oil tycoon, and head of the largest TV station, Boris A. Berezovsky claimed that the FSB had tried to assassinate him. Berezovsky was an outspoken proponent of market liberalization and supported both Yeltsin and Putin for president. Berezovsky was forced into exile because he was charged with corruption, but likely has more to do with his growing opposition to the state taking over all Russian media (Russian Billionaire's Bitter Feud With Putin A Plot Line in Poisoning). However, The Times reported that Putin secretly visited Berezovsky illegally while he was in exile and vacationing in Spain (Leader's Secret Holidays to Spain). Since then he has become a business partner of Neil Bush (George W. Bush's little brother), claimed to be organizing a revolution from exile in London ('I am Plotting a New Russian Revolution'), and has become a central character in the Ludlum-esque political scandal involving the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210 (Russian Billionaire's Bitter Feud With Putin A Plot Line in Poisoning). Berezovsky claimed that Litvinenko saved his life during an assassination attempt in the 1990s, and saw Litvinenko the day he became ill (November 1). Police reportedly found radiation in Berezovsky's office. Berezovsky claimed that Putin murdered his old friend. Putin's administration claims Berezovsky poisoned him in an attempt to smear Putin in order to engineer his "new Russian revolution". Berezovsky claims he became disillusioned by Putin's autocratic policies, and Putin's representatives claim that Berezovsky was angry that Putin refused to be his 'puppet'. Litvinenko was a former FSB operative who accused the FSB of engineering the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999 that killed 300 people and were blamed on Chechen radicals. These bombings led the Russians into the Second Chechen War and helped bring Putin to power (he was named head of the FSB in July of 1998, the bombings happened in August and September 1999, and Putin was named Prime Minister in August 1999 and replaced Yeltsin in December). Litvinenko also claimed that Putin ordered him to assassinate Berezovsky. The Washington Post describes the feud between Putin and Berezovsky as having grown to "shakesperean proportions" and notes that "he is the only one in London who appears to have tighter security than the royal family" (Russian Billionaire's Bitter Feud With Putin A Plot Line in Poisoning).
Did Putin orchestrate the assassination of Litvinenko? Was he killed to send a message to Berezovsky? Was Litvinenko correct in his accusation that Putin orchestrated the bombings of the two apartment buildings in Moscow to serve as a pretense for the Second Chechen War? Or, did Berezovsky orchestrate the elaborate death of Litvinenko to smear Putin as part of his "new Russian revolution"? I don't know, but what I do know is that under Putin military expenditures has tripled (Russia Plans Sharp Military Spending Hike). And, Russia has recently announced a $200 billion investment in their military over 8 years with the stated goal of exceeding the Soviet army in combat readiness (Big rise in Russian military spending raises fears of new challenge to west). According to Moscow, the jump in military spending is in response to the Bush administration's investment in deep penetration low-yield nuclear weapons, aka "bunker busters", which could target Russian missile control centers located in mountains, and their investment in US missile defense. Russian planners are also building up their offensive military capabilities with regard to space warfare. In response to America's development of the reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV), Russia is now attempting to develop it's own stratospheric military arsenal. You might say, US missile defense doesn't work and the HCV isn't much more than a drawing and a dream, well, both China and Russia, like the US operate on the assumption that the possible is real and you should create deterrants and contingency plans accordingly, so as the Bush administration broke the bank funding his flights of fantasy he created an arms race the scale of which has been absent since Reagan. And, maybe that's appropriate, as the '80s become vintage and retro recalls the depths of that decade, perhaps it's fitting that our foreign policy seem similar yet slightly less-than, like a copy of a copy. Bush fancies himself a "Reagan-esque" president. Reagan was never an anyone-esque president, neither was Roosevelt or Lincoln. Bush is just a sad retro throw-back, too bad he's become the single biggest threat to our future.
Be Brave. Be Loud. Be Outspoken.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Thursday, May 31, 2007
F*ck Those Guys
Maybe you've heard about Lilly Ledbetter, as in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. You see, Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Gadsden, Alabama. When she was hired her pay was in line with her male colleagues, but over the years the smaller raises that she ALWAYS received created a significant pay gap, and in case you're saying "so what?" pay gaps are illegal, not to mention sexist and immoral. After years of the discriminatory pay, Ms. Ledbetter discovered her employer's duplicitousness and filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). A jury sided with Ms. Ledbetter and found that Goodyear had violated her civil rights. This decision was upheld by the court of appeals and was recently decided upon by the Supreme Court you know the one, the gender and racially conscious body made up of 7 white men and one woman and one black guy (it's Clarence Thomas, so I'm not sure he even counts).
Goodyear and it's supporters in such justice-oriented organization as the National Federation of Independent Business Legal Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believed that the complaint with the EEOC and the subsequent jury award had violated the statute of limitations since her last discriminatory raise was before the 180 day limit. In previous cases the EEOC, the Courts of Appeal, and the Supreme Court ruled that each pay check based on discrimination violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Well, not any more, thanks to your favorite five male Justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts) a long standing precedent of civil rights law has been destroyed and an important protection for all of us has disappeared.
As the nation debated when life began, very few people actually saw that the Supreme Court rules on more than abortion cases (although they also upheld an amazingly offensive Partial-Birth Abortion Ban). Perhaps it's fitting that the last defender (ok, the last quasi-sometimes-defender) of our rights has been turned into a political arm of the ultra-conservative Republican Party. We are living in a time of unprecedented corporate power, a new Gilded Age, and now we have our Gilded Age Supreme Court.
However, the decision was 5-4, and that means there were 4 sane voices. These four voices were represented in the oral dissent of Justice Ginsburg, the court's only female. This was Justice Ginsburg's second oral dissent this year, which marks the first time in her career that she gave to oral dissents in one year. She is often regarded as a collegial member who is often focused more on etiquette and backroom chats than the spectacle of oral dissents (oral dissents are regarded as theatrical indulgences and are rarely used). Justice Ginsburg's new found boldness is profiled in the New York Times, Oral Dissents Give Ginsburg a New Voice on Court.
Goodyear and it's supporters in such justice-oriented organization as the National Federation of Independent Business Legal Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believed that the complaint with the EEOC and the subsequent jury award had violated the statute of limitations since her last discriminatory raise was before the 180 day limit. In previous cases the EEOC, the Courts of Appeal, and the Supreme Court ruled that each pay check based on discrimination violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Well, not any more, thanks to your favorite five male Justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts) a long standing precedent of civil rights law has been destroyed and an important protection for all of us has disappeared.
As the nation debated when life began, very few people actually saw that the Supreme Court rules on more than abortion cases (although they also upheld an amazingly offensive Partial-Birth Abortion Ban). Perhaps it's fitting that the last defender (ok, the last quasi-sometimes-defender) of our rights has been turned into a political arm of the ultra-conservative Republican Party. We are living in a time of unprecedented corporate power, a new Gilded Age, and now we have our Gilded Age Supreme Court.
However, the decision was 5-4, and that means there were 4 sane voices. These four voices were represented in the oral dissent of Justice Ginsburg, the court's only female. This was Justice Ginsburg's second oral dissent this year, which marks the first time in her career that she gave to oral dissents in one year. She is often regarded as a collegial member who is often focused more on etiquette and backroom chats than the spectacle of oral dissents (oral dissents are regarded as theatrical indulgences and are rarely used). Justice Ginsburg's new found boldness is profiled in the New York Times, Oral Dissents Give Ginsburg a New Voice on Court.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Newt Gingrich Thinks He Can Be President
So, Newt Gingrich thinks he can be President. Newt Gingrich is out of his mind.
First, let's get one thing straight, 1994 was not a revolution. The midterm elections saw a paltry 38.8% nationwide turnout, and the Republicans only received 19% of the eligible vote. The number of Dems voting declined across much of the nation, while Republican turnout increased. The nation saw a 21% drop in the reported participation rates of those with incomes of $15,000 and lower, while there was a 33% increase in the share of the vote cast by those whose incomes were $50,000 and over. African Americans turnout saw a decline of 2 percentage points and turnout among young people declined to 14.5% of eligible voters. And men only slightly increased their share of the electorate (disproving the "angry white guy" myth). The 54 seat pickup for Republicans in the House and 8 seat pickup in the Senate has been seen as the culmination of a decades long realignment in the states of the old Confederacy. Even as Democrats had a significant registration advantage (37.8% to 22.4%) the region had been voting for Republican Presidential candidates since Nixon. This "realignment" has often been cast as a revolt at the base of the Democratic Party because of the "race issue," i.e. the Democratic support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act which essentially destroyed much of the legal infrastructure of Jim Crow. This "southern strategy" mythology has been widely discredited, in fact there was little or no significant shift at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder from support for the Dems to the GOP. Once again, the myth of the disaffected, poor, angry white man was true in anecdote only. The real "realignment" happened much further up the economic ladder. Which makes it not much of a realignment since Americans with upper incomes typically vote Republican. The depressed turnout among Democratic loyalists (the poor, the young, and black folks) accounts for the 1994 turnout. The questions that remain are: 1. What drove down Democratic turnout? 2. What drove up Republican voter turnout? and 3. How many registered Democrats voted for Republicans? Gingrich likes to sell his "revolution" narrative over the "realignment" narrative and the "turnout" narrative, because it portrays him as savior of the Republican Party. The fact that the Republican majority lasted from 1994 to 2006 has as much to do with the privileges of incumbency and gerrymandering as a lasting electoral realignment, let alone a revolution. The presidential and congressional elections of 1996 demonstrate that the post-World War II southern economic development revitalized a southern Republican party, but still didn't signal a "revolution" by any means. The Presidential vote in Kentucky, Virginia, and Georgia were all within 2 percentage points. The 1998 House elections saw a nation wide pick-up of 5 seats for the Democrats (reaction against the "overreaching" by Congressional Republicans during impeachment, likely because they began believing their own "revolution" mythology). The 1998 Senate remained unchanged, divided 55 to 45 in the hands of Republicans. The 2000 election once again saw a South that was closely divided, and in that way more similar to the nation as a whole than different. The South is not an ideologically distinct and homogeneous region, at least not any more.
If anything was revolutionary about 1994 it was the revolutionary nature of the new Congressional Republicans, especially the leadership. 1994 saw the elevation of Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's chair and Tom DeLay to Majority Whip. Under their leadership the power of committee/subcommittee chairs was dramatically weakened and centralized power under their leadership. A six-year chairmanship limit was imposed on the committees, and the 1970 "subcommittee bill of rights" was repealed. Gingrich also bypassed the system of seniority appointments to chairmanships by appointing Gingrich loyalists to chair the influential Appropriations, Judiciary, and Commerce Committees (Appropriations is all about money and Judiciary and Commerce are all about regulations, these are the money committees).
Gingrich likes to sell himself as a savior but is not a savior. He is a strange little man. He likes to write obnoxious historical "what-if" fiction. The whole genre is annoying speculations about different historical possibilities. For example, in his 1995 novel, 1945, Gingrich imagines that Hitler was in a plane crash and spent several months in a coma. So, he never attacked the US and is now set out to attack post-Churchill England and cripple the US by attacking Oak Ridge, the location of the development of the atomic bomb. More recently he wrote Gettysburg, which imagines a Civil War where the Confederacy wins the battle of Gettysburg, and strangely portrays the Confederacy as a group of disciplined citizen-soldiers led by wise and honorable gentlemen and the Union as a bunch of ruffians led by "hot-tempered and vindictive" leaders.
Perhaps his most bizarre public speech, his videotaped "Renewing American Civilization." Names the five pillars of American civilization as 1. The Historic Lessons of American Civilization, 2. Personal Strength, 3. Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise, 4. The Spirit of Invention and Discovery, and 5. Quality as Defined by Deming. How 1-4 are not lessons of American Civilization is beyond me, and how he came up with these 5 still baffles me. Gingrich likes enumerated lists, like when he lists the 5 reasons to study American history: 1. History is a Collective History, 2. American History is the History of our Civilization (REALLY???), 3. There is an American Exceptionalism that can be Best Understood Through History, 4. History is a Resource to be Learned from and Used, and 5. There are Techniques that can help you Learn Problem-Solving from Historical Experience. As Joan Didion states, "the attempt to track from one to five... leaves the tracker fretful, uneasy, uncertain just whose synapses are misfiring." Gingrich's writing abounds with enumerated lists, just as he did on a recent episode of Meet the Press where he enumerated the six (yes, only six) steps to save Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: But specifically, how would you win the war in Iraq militarily?
MR. GINGRICH: First of all, you, you would empower General Petraeus. You’d pass the supplemental immediately. You’d give him the money. Second, you would encourage the Iraqis to triple the size of their regular army. Third, you would, you would encourage the development of a, of a military tribunal system to lock people up the way Abraham Lincoln would’ve done it. Fourth, you would establish a nationwide ID card with biometrics so you can actually track everybody in the country. Fifth, you would make sure that the State Department actually staffed the embassy with people in favor of winning the war and you actually had your fully, fully equipped intelligence and economic development teams. Six, you would say to the Iranians, “If you don’t cut off everything you’re doing, we’ll begin to bring enormous pressure to bear with you,” if necessary, blockading the flow of gasoline into Iran, which has to import 40 percent of its gasoline because it only has one refinery in the entire country.
To describe Gingrich's thinking as schematic is an understatement as he declares there to be "Seven key aspects" and "nine vision-level principles" of his second pillar of American Civilization, "Personal Strength." There are also "five core principles" of "Quality as defined by Deming" (Pillar 5). There are "three big concepts" of Pillar Three (Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise) as well as "five enemies of entrepreneurial free enterprise." And finally, the "seven welfare state cripplers of progress" under Pillar Four (Spirit of Invention and Discovery), one of which is simply described as "Ignorance." Then in his Window of Opportunity, he gives us the truly astounding list of the "great force changing our world is a synergism of essentially six parts." Only six, not seven, not five, six. When discussing health care he described the "eight areas of necessary change," on arms control, he gives us the "seven imperatives that will help the free world survive in the age of nuclear weapons." Then there are two initiatives, "three broad strategic options for the next generation," and finally, "six realistic goals which would increase our children's chances of living in a world without nuclear war." There is also Gingrich's most famous list, the Contract with America. On the first day of the session Gingrich promised to pass eight reforms and to in the following 100 days to bring another ten bills to a vote.
So what? I can hear you ask, he likes lists, who doesn't? It's an easy way to organize information and it shows that he is an action oriented person. This list-making reflects the memo-world of management with it's enumerated "action items" and other jargon-laden garbage. Not only does it show a lack of big-picture holistic thinking, they do nothing to advance discussions on the most important issues facing our nation and sometimes they slide into nonsense. For example, in To Renew America, he proposes several interesting questions like, "Why not aspire to build a real Jurassic Park?" Then he waxes poetic on the possibilities of space honeymoons, actually saying "imagine weightlessness and its effects and you will understand some of the attractions." What does that even mean? Earlier in Window of Opportunity, he writes, "one reason I am convinced space travel will be a growth industry is because I represent the Atlanta airport, which provides 35,000 aviation-related jobs in the Atlanta area."
His two early political screeds, Window of Opportunity and To Renew America are filled with these lackluster enumerated lists and flights of fantasy and seem to make sense when we consider that Mr. Gingrich manages his days by breaking them into 15 minute increments (I seriously wonder if Gingrich himself isn't some sort of Nick Hornby character, think "top fives" from High Fidelity and Will from About a Boy who states, "I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour.") The truth is Mr. Gingrich got the idea of 15-minute activity blocks from Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive. His favorite thing to do in an activity block? Read biographies, the bottom rung of the history ladder, no wonder he imagines himself to be a savior and revolutionary, he still thinks history is made by "great men" who have biographies written about them which tend to ignore the social and economic forces that shape history.
Let's just get this straight, Newt Gingrich has lost his damn mind. According to Mr. Gingrich, Forrest Gump proved that "the counterculture destroys human beings and basic values." I always thought that it simply proved that life was a lot like a box of chocolates. Then last month in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women he argued that English should be the official language of the United States, beating out such aspirants as Esperanto and Tagalog. In this speech he called Spanish the "language of the ghetto." Then in his non-apology he blaimed his "word choice was poor" and that he had been taking Spanish classes for some time. The man is insane. At a recent event hosted by the Federalist Leadership Center and the Lincoln Club of Orange County Mr. Gingrich estimated that he had around 25 ideas a minute. A journalist covering the event for the Red County Magazine believed him and wrote an article calling him a one man think-tank. In the ensuing interview Newt once again turns to his favorite past-time, enumerated lists. Citing three lessons from history that are important for us all to think about; 1. Intelligence can fail, 2. You may not understand the culture of your opponent, and 3. Technology matters (for what isn't clear). Then he outlines his four critical components of healthcare reform, which he says should be visualized as a box with four quadrants (WTF?!). The first quadrant is financing. Another quadrant focuses on "the need for individual responsibility" (like for not getting sick? like not working in a coal mine?). The third quadrant addresses "issues related to society and culture" (I don't know what that means, oh wait, I bet he's talking about the sexual habits of non-whites, how silly of me). The fourth quadrant addresses "the healthcare system itself" (now my brain hurts). On immigration he suggests a two fold enumerated list (sorry, no awesome boxes with quadrants this time) that is comprised of the visionary suggestions: Control the Border and Enforce the Law. Holy shit, he's done it, he's solved the immigration "problem". From there he follows with an another list that includes among other things national id cards with biometrics that will be organized and managed by credit card companies. Up until now I kind of thought Mr. Gingrich was like that adorably idiotic uncle that everyone humors, but now I realize he's simply the stupidest man alive.
First, let's get one thing straight, 1994 was not a revolution. The midterm elections saw a paltry 38.8% nationwide turnout, and the Republicans only received 19% of the eligible vote. The number of Dems voting declined across much of the nation, while Republican turnout increased. The nation saw a 21% drop in the reported participation rates of those with incomes of $15,000 and lower, while there was a 33% increase in the share of the vote cast by those whose incomes were $50,000 and over. African Americans turnout saw a decline of 2 percentage points and turnout among young people declined to 14.5% of eligible voters. And men only slightly increased their share of the electorate (disproving the "angry white guy" myth). The 54 seat pickup for Republicans in the House and 8 seat pickup in the Senate has been seen as the culmination of a decades long realignment in the states of the old Confederacy. Even as Democrats had a significant registration advantage (37.8% to 22.4%) the region had been voting for Republican Presidential candidates since Nixon. This "realignment" has often been cast as a revolt at the base of the Democratic Party because of the "race issue," i.e. the Democratic support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act which essentially destroyed much of the legal infrastructure of Jim Crow. This "southern strategy" mythology has been widely discredited, in fact there was little or no significant shift at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder from support for the Dems to the GOP. Once again, the myth of the disaffected, poor, angry white man was true in anecdote only. The real "realignment" happened much further up the economic ladder. Which makes it not much of a realignment since Americans with upper incomes typically vote Republican. The depressed turnout among Democratic loyalists (the poor, the young, and black folks) accounts for the 1994 turnout. The questions that remain are: 1. What drove down Democratic turnout? 2. What drove up Republican voter turnout? and 3. How many registered Democrats voted for Republicans? Gingrich likes to sell his "revolution" narrative over the "realignment" narrative and the "turnout" narrative, because it portrays him as savior of the Republican Party. The fact that the Republican majority lasted from 1994 to 2006 has as much to do with the privileges of incumbency and gerrymandering as a lasting electoral realignment, let alone a revolution. The presidential and congressional elections of 1996 demonstrate that the post-World War II southern economic development revitalized a southern Republican party, but still didn't signal a "revolution" by any means. The Presidential vote in Kentucky, Virginia, and Georgia were all within 2 percentage points. The 1998 House elections saw a nation wide pick-up of 5 seats for the Democrats (reaction against the "overreaching" by Congressional Republicans during impeachment, likely because they began believing their own "revolution" mythology). The 1998 Senate remained unchanged, divided 55 to 45 in the hands of Republicans. The 2000 election once again saw a South that was closely divided, and in that way more similar to the nation as a whole than different. The South is not an ideologically distinct and homogeneous region, at least not any more.
If anything was revolutionary about 1994 it was the revolutionary nature of the new Congressional Republicans, especially the leadership. 1994 saw the elevation of Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's chair and Tom DeLay to Majority Whip. Under their leadership the power of committee/subcommittee chairs was dramatically weakened and centralized power under their leadership. A six-year chairmanship limit was imposed on the committees, and the 1970 "subcommittee bill of rights" was repealed. Gingrich also bypassed the system of seniority appointments to chairmanships by appointing Gingrich loyalists to chair the influential Appropriations, Judiciary, and Commerce Committees (Appropriations is all about money and Judiciary and Commerce are all about regulations, these are the money committees).
Gingrich likes to sell himself as a savior but is not a savior. He is a strange little man. He likes to write obnoxious historical "what-if" fiction. The whole genre is annoying speculations about different historical possibilities. For example, in his 1995 novel, 1945, Gingrich imagines that Hitler was in a plane crash and spent several months in a coma. So, he never attacked the US and is now set out to attack post-Churchill England and cripple the US by attacking Oak Ridge, the location of the development of the atomic bomb. More recently he wrote Gettysburg, which imagines a Civil War where the Confederacy wins the battle of Gettysburg, and strangely portrays the Confederacy as a group of disciplined citizen-soldiers led by wise and honorable gentlemen and the Union as a bunch of ruffians led by "hot-tempered and vindictive" leaders.
Perhaps his most bizarre public speech, his videotaped "Renewing American Civilization." Names the five pillars of American civilization as 1. The Historic Lessons of American Civilization, 2. Personal Strength, 3. Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise, 4. The Spirit of Invention and Discovery, and 5. Quality as Defined by Deming. How 1-4 are not lessons of American Civilization is beyond me, and how he came up with these 5 still baffles me. Gingrich likes enumerated lists, like when he lists the 5 reasons to study American history: 1. History is a Collective History, 2. American History is the History of our Civilization (REALLY???), 3. There is an American Exceptionalism that can be Best Understood Through History, 4. History is a Resource to be Learned from and Used, and 5. There are Techniques that can help you Learn Problem-Solving from Historical Experience. As Joan Didion states, "the attempt to track from one to five... leaves the tracker fretful, uneasy, uncertain just whose synapses are misfiring." Gingrich's writing abounds with enumerated lists, just as he did on a recent episode of Meet the Press where he enumerated the six (yes, only six) steps to save Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: But specifically, how would you win the war in Iraq militarily?
MR. GINGRICH: First of all, you, you would empower General Petraeus. You’d pass the supplemental immediately. You’d give him the money. Second, you would encourage the Iraqis to triple the size of their regular army. Third, you would, you would encourage the development of a, of a military tribunal system to lock people up the way Abraham Lincoln would’ve done it. Fourth, you would establish a nationwide ID card with biometrics so you can actually track everybody in the country. Fifth, you would make sure that the State Department actually staffed the embassy with people in favor of winning the war and you actually had your fully, fully equipped intelligence and economic development teams. Six, you would say to the Iranians, “If you don’t cut off everything you’re doing, we’ll begin to bring enormous pressure to bear with you,” if necessary, blockading the flow of gasoline into Iran, which has to import 40 percent of its gasoline because it only has one refinery in the entire country.
To describe Gingrich's thinking as schematic is an understatement as he declares there to be "Seven key aspects" and "nine vision-level principles" of his second pillar of American Civilization, "Personal Strength." There are also "five core principles" of "Quality as defined by Deming" (Pillar 5). There are "three big concepts" of Pillar Three (Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise) as well as "five enemies of entrepreneurial free enterprise." And finally, the "seven welfare state cripplers of progress" under Pillar Four (Spirit of Invention and Discovery), one of which is simply described as "Ignorance." Then in his Window of Opportunity, he gives us the truly astounding list of the "great force changing our world is a synergism of essentially six parts." Only six, not seven, not five, six. When discussing health care he described the "eight areas of necessary change," on arms control, he gives us the "seven imperatives that will help the free world survive in the age of nuclear weapons." Then there are two initiatives, "three broad strategic options for the next generation," and finally, "six realistic goals which would increase our children's chances of living in a world without nuclear war." There is also Gingrich's most famous list, the Contract with America. On the first day of the session Gingrich promised to pass eight reforms and to in the following 100 days to bring another ten bills to a vote.
So what? I can hear you ask, he likes lists, who doesn't? It's an easy way to organize information and it shows that he is an action oriented person. This list-making reflects the memo-world of management with it's enumerated "action items" and other jargon-laden garbage. Not only does it show a lack of big-picture holistic thinking, they do nothing to advance discussions on the most important issues facing our nation and sometimes they slide into nonsense. For example, in To Renew America, he proposes several interesting questions like, "Why not aspire to build a real Jurassic Park?" Then he waxes poetic on the possibilities of space honeymoons, actually saying "imagine weightlessness and its effects and you will understand some of the attractions." What does that even mean? Earlier in Window of Opportunity, he writes, "one reason I am convinced space travel will be a growth industry is because I represent the Atlanta airport, which provides 35,000 aviation-related jobs in the Atlanta area."
His two early political screeds, Window of Opportunity and To Renew America are filled with these lackluster enumerated lists and flights of fantasy and seem to make sense when we consider that Mr. Gingrich manages his days by breaking them into 15 minute increments (I seriously wonder if Gingrich himself isn't some sort of Nick Hornby character, think "top fives" from High Fidelity and Will from About a Boy who states, "I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour.") The truth is Mr. Gingrich got the idea of 15-minute activity blocks from Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive. His favorite thing to do in an activity block? Read biographies, the bottom rung of the history ladder, no wonder he imagines himself to be a savior and revolutionary, he still thinks history is made by "great men" who have biographies written about them which tend to ignore the social and economic forces that shape history.
Let's just get this straight, Newt Gingrich has lost his damn mind. According to Mr. Gingrich, Forrest Gump proved that "the counterculture destroys human beings and basic values." I always thought that it simply proved that life was a lot like a box of chocolates. Then last month in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women he argued that English should be the official language of the United States, beating out such aspirants as Esperanto and Tagalog. In this speech he called Spanish the "language of the ghetto." Then in his non-apology he blaimed his "word choice was poor" and that he had been taking Spanish classes for some time. The man is insane. At a recent event hosted by the Federalist Leadership Center and the Lincoln Club of Orange County Mr. Gingrich estimated that he had around 25 ideas a minute. A journalist covering the event for the Red County Magazine believed him and wrote an article calling him a one man think-tank. In the ensuing interview Newt once again turns to his favorite past-time, enumerated lists. Citing three lessons from history that are important for us all to think about; 1. Intelligence can fail, 2. You may not understand the culture of your opponent, and 3. Technology matters (for what isn't clear). Then he outlines his four critical components of healthcare reform, which he says should be visualized as a box with four quadrants (WTF?!). The first quadrant is financing. Another quadrant focuses on "the need for individual responsibility" (like for not getting sick? like not working in a coal mine?). The third quadrant addresses "issues related to society and culture" (I don't know what that means, oh wait, I bet he's talking about the sexual habits of non-whites, how silly of me). The fourth quadrant addresses "the healthcare system itself" (now my brain hurts). On immigration he suggests a two fold enumerated list (sorry, no awesome boxes with quadrants this time) that is comprised of the visionary suggestions: Control the Border and Enforce the Law. Holy shit, he's done it, he's solved the immigration "problem". From there he follows with an another list that includes among other things national id cards with biometrics that will be organized and managed by credit card companies. Up until now I kind of thought Mr. Gingrich was like that adorably idiotic uncle that everyone humors, but now I realize he's simply the stupidest man alive.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Bill's Back and Better than Ever
Bill Moyers is back on PBS with his classic Bill Moyers Journal. The first episode aired tonight and he takes on the press and the shameful lack of integrity and "truthiness" that has besmurched (yes, besmurched) journalism during the run-up to the War in Iraq. Now, Moyers is not the first member of the fourth estate to attempt to explain how journalists got it so incredibly wrong, but he is the best. In fact, Moyers is far and away the best journalist working in America, and he isn't even a practicing journalist anymore. The truth is not all journalists got it wrong, the heroes of Moyers' documentary are the Kinght Ridder team of Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel. Landay and Strobel weren't alone in their reporting, but their tireless and largely ignored reporting demonstrates that even as the majority of "mainstream" (read: corporate) journalists went from being watchdogs to lapdogs there was still real journalism going on.
A couple things struck me as I watched the report. First, if Iraq had worked (I don't think it ever could have, but if it did) would all the lies have been ignored and justified by the success of the mission? Silly question, I know the answer, as do you, but I was momentarily saddened by the obvious truth that facts don't matter.
Second, I was also momentarily hopeful. "This is the kind of thing that needs to happen to change things, maybe the Times will see the error of their ways, maybe the Post will see the structural flaws that led it down this path." But, the report ends by reminding us that it's business as usual across the media spectrum. There are no liberal voices on television. The Cross Fire-esque he-said, she-said nature of modern journalism (read: stenographers for hire) is still dominating journalism, especially television journalism (but not only). And, most of the incredibly wrong journalists and pundits still comprise the starting line-up of opinion making journalism. It's amazing. Get the biggest story of our lifetimes wrong and you keep your job. I guess someone has to make the case for Iran, if it's not them then someone else.
Third, I had to wonder how long news will continue to exist in its present form. Newspapers, magazines, and television news (with the notable exception of certain alternative and public sources) are mostly owned by corporations with, as Dan Rather pointed out on the program, "big needs, legislative needs, repertory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that's the case." News doesn't make money. That's the line, it just costs money. But is that true? NO!!! But it's repeated so often it sounds true and it justifies massize layoffs, which lead to more profits, and an excuse for the stenography that bills itself as journalism. And stenography is what they want, and that's all they want. Stenographers with the stamp of objectivity. The Bush Administration and the Iraqi National Congress used the press in the most obvious ways, and they went along with it, happily. Journalism and reporting are not the same things. We have lots of professional readers stalking the airwaves of television journalism. They report. They read. The question is, who is writing what they read? We need journalists not just reporters and stenographers, but should we be hopeful? What is the alternative? More public money to support journalism? Non-profit newspapers? Citizen journalism via blogs and the Internet?
Fourth, I was shocked at how much of the lack of true journalism was the result of the uninterest of the public, the incest of Washington elite journalism, and pure, pathetic laziness. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, told a story about how the Post had a "Truth Squad", "We used to do at the Post something called truth squading. --President would make a speech. We used to do it with Ronald Reagan the first five or six months because he would make so many-- factual errors, particularly in his press conference." The Post stopped the "truth squad" not because of pressure from the White House, but because Americans thought it was in bad taste. As Pincus recalled, "And after-- two or three weeks of it-- the public at large, would say, 'Why don't you leave the man alone? He's trying to be honest. He makes mistakes. So what?' and we stopped doing it." What replaced the "truth squad"?
I can remember when criticizing Bush got you silenced, fired, or ridiculed (think Phil Donahue, the Dixie Chicks. every Democrat save Joe Lieberman). Now, it's hip to hate Bush. It's hip for Keith Olbermann to stick it to the man, or Stephen Colbert to openly mock him. Journalists weren't tougher on the President because no one wanted them to be.
The incestious relationship between government, corporations and the Washington Press corps is stunning. These people live toghether in a bubble. That's one reason that Knight Ridder was successful at seeing through the spin and lies, they were outside of DC. But this meant that they were largely ignored by the "opinion making" journalists, columnists, and pundits that dominate the corporate media. As Walter Pincus stated, "The administration can withstand the Knight Ridder critique because it-- it wasn't reverberating inside Washington. And therefore people weren't picking it up."
Another shocking source of this stenography-as-journalism is just straight up laziness. As Dan Rather said in the report, "Reporting is hard. The substitute for reporting far too often has become let's just ring up an expert. Let's see. These are experts on-- international armaments. And I'll just go down the list here and check Richard Perle... This is journalism on the cheap if it's journalism at all. Just pick up the phone, call an expert, bring an expert into the studio. Easy. Not time consuming. Doesn't take resources. And-- if you-- if you're lucky and good with your list of people, you get an articulate person who will kind of spark up the broadcast." No one in the report exemplified this better than journalist(?) and host of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, "What my concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them." "I wish my phone had rung," are you serious? That's journalism? Waiting for someone to call you and tell you a big story? That's the laziest and stupidest thing I have ever heard.
Now, it's more than just journalistic laziness, there is a huge and perverse incentive structure to just report. Being first, "scooping" a big story is the goal for everyone, and in an age of 24 hour media filling the hours of the day means repetition and much more reporting than investigating. It's the structure of the media more than laziness or incestious relationships. The corporate dominated media that care more about bottom lines than "truthiness", the passive public that cares more about American Idol than the American Constitution, a self-reinforcing Beltway groupthink that listens more to the Times' Judith Miller than Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay, and a culture within journalism that cares more about filling the hours of the day and scooping a story than actually investigating the truthfulness of public pronouncements. All these things are created. Thus is not the world, thus have we made it. But, what is the incentive to change? I got nothing. Perhaps it's the lack of incentive to change that will lead people away from our current form of journalism for something different. Maybe that's the incentive, change or disappear.
Check out the Show at Bill Moyers Journal at PBS.com
Also check out the Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) coverage of the Iraq Pre-War Intel
A couple things struck me as I watched the report. First, if Iraq had worked (I don't think it ever could have, but if it did) would all the lies have been ignored and justified by the success of the mission? Silly question, I know the answer, as do you, but I was momentarily saddened by the obvious truth that facts don't matter.
Second, I was also momentarily hopeful. "This is the kind of thing that needs to happen to change things, maybe the Times will see the error of their ways, maybe the Post will see the structural flaws that led it down this path." But, the report ends by reminding us that it's business as usual across the media spectrum. There are no liberal voices on television. The Cross Fire-esque he-said, she-said nature of modern journalism (read: stenographers for hire) is still dominating journalism, especially television journalism (but not only). And, most of the incredibly wrong journalists and pundits still comprise the starting line-up of opinion making journalism. It's amazing. Get the biggest story of our lifetimes wrong and you keep your job. I guess someone has to make the case for Iran, if it's not them then someone else.
Third, I had to wonder how long news will continue to exist in its present form. Newspapers, magazines, and television news (with the notable exception of certain alternative and public sources) are mostly owned by corporations with, as Dan Rather pointed out on the program, "big needs, legislative needs, repertory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that's the case." News doesn't make money. That's the line, it just costs money. But is that true? NO!!! But it's repeated so often it sounds true and it justifies massize layoffs, which lead to more profits, and an excuse for the stenography that bills itself as journalism. And stenography is what they want, and that's all they want. Stenographers with the stamp of objectivity. The Bush Administration and the Iraqi National Congress used the press in the most obvious ways, and they went along with it, happily. Journalism and reporting are not the same things. We have lots of professional readers stalking the airwaves of television journalism. They report. They read. The question is, who is writing what they read? We need journalists not just reporters and stenographers, but should we be hopeful? What is the alternative? More public money to support journalism? Non-profit newspapers? Citizen journalism via blogs and the Internet?
Fourth, I was shocked at how much of the lack of true journalism was the result of the uninterest of the public, the incest of Washington elite journalism, and pure, pathetic laziness. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, told a story about how the Post had a "Truth Squad", "We used to do at the Post something called truth squading. --President would make a speech. We used to do it with Ronald Reagan the first five or six months because he would make so many-- factual errors, particularly in his press conference." The Post stopped the "truth squad" not because of pressure from the White House, but because Americans thought it was in bad taste. As Pincus recalled, "And after-- two or three weeks of it-- the public at large, would say, 'Why don't you leave the man alone? He's trying to be honest. He makes mistakes. So what?' and we stopped doing it." What replaced the "truth squad"?
BILL MOYERS: You stopped being the truth squad.
WALTER PINCUS: We stopped truth squading every sort of press conference, or truth squading. And we left it then-- to the democrats. In other words, it's up to the democrats to catch people, not us.
BILL MOYERS: So if the democrats challenged-- a statement from the president, you could-- quote both sides.
WALTER PINCUS: We then quote-- both sides. Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: Now, that's called objectivity by many standards isn't it?
WALTER PINCUS: Well, that's-- objectivity if you think there are only two sides. and if you're not interested in-- the facts. And the facts are separate from, you know, what one side says about the other.
I can remember when criticizing Bush got you silenced, fired, or ridiculed (think Phil Donahue, the Dixie Chicks. every Democrat save Joe Lieberman). Now, it's hip to hate Bush. It's hip for Keith Olbermann to stick it to the man, or Stephen Colbert to openly mock him. Journalists weren't tougher on the President because no one wanted them to be.
The incestious relationship between government, corporations and the Washington Press corps is stunning. These people live toghether in a bubble. That's one reason that Knight Ridder was successful at seeing through the spin and lies, they were outside of DC. But this meant that they were largely ignored by the "opinion making" journalists, columnists, and pundits that dominate the corporate media. As Walter Pincus stated, "The administration can withstand the Knight Ridder critique because it-- it wasn't reverberating inside Washington. And therefore people weren't picking it up."
Another shocking source of this stenography-as-journalism is just straight up laziness. As Dan Rather said in the report, "Reporting is hard. The substitute for reporting far too often has become let's just ring up an expert. Let's see. These are experts on-- international armaments. And I'll just go down the list here and check Richard Perle... This is journalism on the cheap if it's journalism at all. Just pick up the phone, call an expert, bring an expert into the studio. Easy. Not time consuming. Doesn't take resources. And-- if you-- if you're lucky and good with your list of people, you get an articulate person who will kind of spark up the broadcast." No one in the report exemplified this better than journalist(?) and host of Meet the Press, Tim Russert, "What my concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them." "I wish my phone had rung," are you serious? That's journalism? Waiting for someone to call you and tell you a big story? That's the laziest and stupidest thing I have ever heard.
Now, it's more than just journalistic laziness, there is a huge and perverse incentive structure to just report. Being first, "scooping" a big story is the goal for everyone, and in an age of 24 hour media filling the hours of the day means repetition and much more reporting than investigating. It's the structure of the media more than laziness or incestious relationships. The corporate dominated media that care more about bottom lines than "truthiness", the passive public that cares more about American Idol than the American Constitution, a self-reinforcing Beltway groupthink that listens more to the Times' Judith Miller than Knight Ridder's Jonathan Landay, and a culture within journalism that cares more about filling the hours of the day and scooping a story than actually investigating the truthfulness of public pronouncements. All these things are created. Thus is not the world, thus have we made it. But, what is the incentive to change? I got nothing. Perhaps it's the lack of incentive to change that will lead people away from our current form of journalism for something different. Maybe that's the incentive, change or disappear.
Check out the Show at Bill Moyers Journal at PBS.com
Also check out the Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) coverage of the Iraq Pre-War Intel
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Iran-Contra Redux
If you haven't read Seymour Hersh's most recent piece in the New Yorker then you must do so immediately (The Redirection). If you don't know what Iran-Contra is, then you should write a letter to your high school social studies teacher and insult them. Iran-Contra was an illegal, blackbag operation that utilized Olie North's lack of ethics to illegally sell weapons to Iran through Israel and then funneled the money garnered from the arms sales to the fascist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The Contras were also very much part of a large CIA-run drug smuggling ring that brought crack-cocaine to America, gang wars to LA, and may have even included Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton (The Dark Alliance, Mysterious Mena: CIA Discloses, Leach Disposes).
According to Hersch, the veterans of Iran-Contra got together to discuss the lessons learned from Iran-Contra. Their chief lesson, run everything out of the Veep's office and not the CIA or the DoD. Well, they put that lesson to good use and now you have blackbag operations within the Veep's office. Using tens of millions of dollars from undisclosed sources (likely missing Iraqi oil money, Saudi money, and miscellaneous siphoned cash from our $416 billion already spent) the US government funneled cash to aid the adminsitration's choosen group of electors during the January 30 Iraqi election. This slate, led by the now Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, won on 14% of the returns, but it proved enough to prevent the sectarian Shi'ite parties from winning a clear mandate. On top of the financial support, there is also evidence that the election results were simply falsified to swing more support for Allawi et al. Cash was also funneled to the Lebanese Sunni-dominated government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, which, in turn, distributed that money to Sunni extremist groups.
So, the US is fighting a "Global War on Terror" against Sunni terrorist organizations tied to Al Qaeda and it's supporting such groups in Lebanon. The US is also fixing Iraqi elections to support Shi'ite parties and accusing "Iran" of supporting different Iraqi Shi'ite political parties and "insurrgents". The US is trying to rollback the Sunni organization in Palestine, Hamas, and Shi'ite organization in Lebanon, Hezbollah. The US is planning an attack on Iran, and actually crossing the border into Syria and Iran. Wow. And this is what we know about. Imagine what we don't know about.
According to Hersch, the veterans of Iran-Contra got together to discuss the lessons learned from Iran-Contra. Their chief lesson, run everything out of the Veep's office and not the CIA or the DoD. Well, they put that lesson to good use and now you have blackbag operations within the Veep's office. Using tens of millions of dollars from undisclosed sources (likely missing Iraqi oil money, Saudi money, and miscellaneous siphoned cash from our $416 billion already spent) the US government funneled cash to aid the adminsitration's choosen group of electors during the January 30 Iraqi election. This slate, led by the now Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, won on 14% of the returns, but it proved enough to prevent the sectarian Shi'ite parties from winning a clear mandate. On top of the financial support, there is also evidence that the election results were simply falsified to swing more support for Allawi et al. Cash was also funneled to the Lebanese Sunni-dominated government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, which, in turn, distributed that money to Sunni extremist groups.
So, the US is fighting a "Global War on Terror" against Sunni terrorist organizations tied to Al Qaeda and it's supporting such groups in Lebanon. The US is also fixing Iraqi elections to support Shi'ite parties and accusing "Iran" of supporting different Iraqi Shi'ite political parties and "insurrgents". The US is trying to rollback the Sunni organization in Palestine, Hamas, and Shi'ite organization in Lebanon, Hezbollah. The US is planning an attack on Iran, and actually crossing the border into Syria and Iran. Wow. And this is what we know about. Imagine what we don't know about.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Will the Real Obama Please Stand Up?
"Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely..." and with those words the most extraordinary political talent in a generation introduced himself to America.
I remember when I first heard about Barack Obama. It was 2 A.M. and I was watching one of Stu Rothenberg's seminars at American University about handicapping races. At the end he paused and he said that there was a little known candidate in a tight race for the Democratic nomination for an Illinois Senate seat, he was running third, but Rothenberg told his students, that he hadn't seen a politician with this much talent, ever. He told them to remember the name, Barack Obama. So, I got involved in following the race through whatever news I could get, it wasn't a lot. I wrote a research paper on the race for a class while an undergrad at Michigan, and while I was writing it Obama won the primary after the front-runner dropped out due to a sex scandal (Blair Hull). Obama began a campaign against the self-proclaimed pious, daily-church-going-Catholic, millionaire-ex-investment-banker-turned-high-school-teacher-of-black-kids, celebrity-husband-of-actress-Jerri-Ryan, Jack Ryan. Mr. Ryan, although a self-declared pious man, began the campaign, in classic Chicago fashion, from the gutter, hiring a guy to follow Obama around with a camera firing insults at him. Things looked extremely tight until Mr. Ryan was forced to drop out because of a sex scandal. Then the nearly dead Illinois Republican Party asked Alan Keyes to run against Obama, there is no punch line, that's what really happened. Needless to say Obama won, ignited a huge following across the state, and after giving the 2004 Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention became a household name.
I was personally on the bandwagon. Obama was the biracial son of a Kenyan-born economist and a Kansas-born anthropologist, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, educated at Occidental then Columbia, and a graduate of Harvard Law School (magna cum laude), where he was elected to the position of editor of the Harvard Law Review, the most prestigious position within any law school on the planet, and to top it off, the first black to hold the position. Between Columbia and Harvard he worked within the business community and as a community organizer in Chicago, part of a Gamaliel organized alliance of churches. During this time he embraced the Christian faith and was baptized. While interning for a summer during his study at Harvard he interned at Sidney & Austin corporate law firm and met Michelle Robinson, his current wife. After Harvard instead of taking any number of prestigious and well-paying corporate jobs or clerking jobs he returned to Chicago and led a massive voter registration drive for the 1992 Presidential and Senate elections that delivered Bill Clinton to the White House and Carol Mosely Braun to the Senate. He then took a job at Miner, Barnhill & Galland in the civil rights division and taught constitutional law at University of Chicago. In 1996 he ran for Illinois' State Senate from the 13th District (Chicago's South Side). While in the State Senate he helped author an Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit, a bill requiring police interrogations be video tapped, a laudable effort to amend the Illinois state constitution to define healthcare as a right and guarantee full coverage within 5 years, and he led efforts to crackdown on predatory lending. He ran against Rep. Bobby Rush in 2000 and was humiliatingly defeated 61% to 30%. Then in 2004 he ran for the US Senate and won.
During the campaign he sounded like a true progressive and when the build-up to the war in Iraq began he spoke out eloquently against what he called a "stupid war".
Once in the Senate he hired some very interesting staffers including, former Dashcle chief-of-staff, Karen Kornbluh, an economist who is directly tied to Robert Rubin to serve as policy advisor, and Samanth Power, a Pulitzer-winning human rights author. Again and again he worked both sides of the left and center-left spectrum. He worked in corporate law and civil rights law. He worked as a investment banker in the business community and as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago. He hired Samantha Power and a leading proponent of Rubinomics. He was praised by the DLC but asked that his name be removed from their list of "New Democrats" (Obama to Have Name Removed From DLC List). He has been praised as a "Hamiltonian" by Republican NYT columnist David Brooks (Run, Barack, Run). He is a blank slate to so many that he seems to be everyone's savior. He is the consumate pragmatic politician, seeing both sides and never taking a stand.
A recent NYT article about Obama's time at Harvard Law mentions his seeming "fair-mindedness". "He proved deft at navigating an institution scorched with ideological battles, many of which revolved around race. He developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once" (In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice). Perhaps this explains his on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand approach to political issues that has allowed so many to project so much onto him in such a short period of time. But, campaigns are about definition and it will be soon time for Obama to take some stands. I, for one, hope they are as politically astute and courageous as his stand on the Iraq War, however, I have my doubts.
For starters, Obama supported neoconservative Joe Lieberman's "independent" Senate race against anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont (Obama Endorses Lieberman for Senate). Obama even requested that Lieberman be assigned his "Senate Mentor" (Joe Lieberman: Barack Obama's Mentor in the Senate). Then there is Obama's hiring of a protege of Robert Rubin and his support of the Brookings Insitute's Hamilton Project, a corporate-funded neoliberal think tank founded by Rubin himself (Mr. Obama Goes to Washington). There was the "distancing" Obama attempted after Dick Durbin's courageous likening of Guantanamo Bay to Nazis or Stalin-era camps (Obama's Game), and his pre-emptive critique of an Alito filibuster (Alito Filibuster Won't Work, Obama Says).
He told Joe Klein that he hadn't even thought about Al Gore's well-publicized "carbon tax" even as he wouldn't shut up about Ethanol and energy independence (The Fresh Face). Speaking of Ethanol, Obama's defining cause of his short term in the US Senate has been energy, particularly the manufacture and use of E85 fuels and their corresponding flexfuel cars, trucks, and SUVs. In this Obama looks less like a true fresh face, but the same-old tired political message dressed up in a new suit. Agribusiness and the auto industry loves E85 (named for the 85% Ethanol levels). Agribusiness because it makes them mountains of profits, and the auto industry because it allows them to look green while still manufacturing the low-gas-mileage autos that can run on either E85 or regular gasoline. Besides, every report ever made shows that there is likley little or no net environmental benefit to ethanol after you factor in the manufacturing and transportation costs (Barack Obama, Inc.). Instead of delivering a truly progressive and visionary energy agenda he is dressing up ethanol in military fatigues, talking about how our national security relies on decreasing energy dependence, meaning we need more ethanol. I wonder if it is just a coincidence that one of the companies making the most profit off of E85 is Archer Daniels Midland Corporation, an Illinois based agribusiness behemoth? Obama has since worked with Republicans on a bill to raise fuel economy standards 4% annually, a truly modest proposal, but one made before the Democrats won back the Senate. As with the Democratic Party as a whole, Obama will hopefully be judged by what he does now. As he said, "most of the legislation I’ve proposed will be more modest in its goals than it would be if I were in the majority party" (Barack Obama, Inc.).
I still have my doubts. Although Obama has made ethics reform another priority of his Senate identity, he hasn't blushed, even for a moment, at pork barelling. Obama helped to get Illinois $6.2 billion in pork in the infamous 2005 transportation bill (including the Prairie Parkway--that mess of a brand new road that was supposed to make Hastert a rich man). He also supported the corporate backed class action lawsuit "tort reform" bill that made it harder to get corporate accountability.
Perhaps worst of all for me personally he dismissed my personal hero, Paul Wellstone, as a gad-fly. He seems to be positioning himself as a progressive centrist who is not beholden to anyone and willing to "speak honestly" to liberals. Like his wholly inappropriate blog posting surrounding the Roberts nomination (Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party). Obama is about positioning himself constantly. Nothing new you might say. Ok, I agree, but let's please remember that and stop annointing Obama as a wunderkind or messiah. Obama is not a movement, hell, he's not even a leader. Sure, he supports some progressive issues, but we cannot stop pushing him, because he is, exclusively a politician. Don't forget that.
Be Brave. Be Kind. Be Loving.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Swift Boating Osama, I mean Obama
As you have probably heard the smearing of Barack Obama is in full swing. There was the Hussein flap. His middle name is Hussein. Clearly he hates America. Yes, that's right, we've taken to pointing out the obvious. Nice.
Then there was the madrassa allegation. When he was a boy he lived in Indonesia and attended an Islamic school for two years and a Catholic school for two years. Clearly he is a Muslim Manchurian Candidate, and we must be vigilent for a Muslim invasion, perhaps a law making Islam the national religion should Osama take office. Never mind it wasn't a Wahhabi school (the ones that Bush's dear friends the Saudi's have been funding and have been responsible for the spread of radical violent Islam throughout Central Asia--The Saudi Connection, U.S. Ties to Saudi Elite May Be Hurting War on Terrorism, Bush Advisers Cashed in on Saudi Gravy Train) or that he WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD. Clearly the radical right is justified to worry that a seven year old was brainwashed trained, in two years to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, a brilliant and progressive politician and orator, and a professor of constitutional law, you know that document that the Bush Administration keeps forgetting about.
Read this
Smearing Barack Obama
and this
Obama Smeared As Former ‘Madrassa’ Student, Possible Covert Muslim Extremist
Then there was the madrassa allegation. When he was a boy he lived in Indonesia and attended an Islamic school for two years and a Catholic school for two years. Clearly he is a Muslim Manchurian Candidate, and we must be vigilent for a Muslim invasion, perhaps a law making Islam the national religion should Osama take office. Never mind it wasn't a Wahhabi school (the ones that Bush's dear friends the Saudi's have been funding and have been responsible for the spread of radical violent Islam throughout Central Asia--The Saudi Connection, U.S. Ties to Saudi Elite May Be Hurting War on Terrorism, Bush Advisers Cashed in on Saudi Gravy Train) or that he WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD. Clearly the radical right is justified to worry that a seven year old was brainwashed trained, in two years to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, a brilliant and progressive politician and orator, and a professor of constitutional law, you know that document that the Bush Administration keeps forgetting about.
Read this
Smearing Barack Obama
and this
Obama Smeared As Former ‘Madrassa’ Student, Possible Covert Muslim Extremist
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