Monthly Archives: December 2008

Killjoy

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This NY Times story about the Brooklyn company printing the inaugural invitations warmed my heart. The employees, all union members, are working overtime to produce the invitations, using traditional printing processes that require real craftsmanship. They cheered when they heard their company had been awarded the job. I read the story and felt happy for all of them, including the paper supplier (in Wisconsin) and the ink supplier (from Chicago). This will give some good working people a merry Christmas.

The story said,

According to Mr. Donnelly, Precise Continental was selected over rival printers because it is a union company, it uses recycled paper and it is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which promotes responsible forest management.

What’s not to like? Nevertheless, some people managed to turn this quote into another excuse to express their pathological hatred and resentment of Barack Obama.

BTD: You’re sick. Get help.

All the President’s Men, the Sequels

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In the Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr. looks back on the Post‘s glory days of Watergate and wonders how the same story would play out today. He says the basics of investigative reporting haven’t changed much, but media certainly have.

Then, Woodward and Bernstein worked alone for several months before the story became the center public attention. “Nixon was re-elected five months after the burglary in 1972,” Downie writes, “and Watergate was not much of an issue during the campaign. That would not happen today.”

As Downie says, everything happens faster today.

Now, from day one, the story would be all over the Internet, and hordes of reporters and bloggers would immediately join the chase. The story would become fodder for around-the-clock argument among the blowhards on cable television and the Internet. Opinion polls would be constantly stirring up and measuring the public’s reaction.

However, all manner of travesties have come out of the Bush Administration that make Watergate seem almost petty. Iraq intelligence manipulation, war profiteering by corporations connected to the Vice President, the U.S. Attorney scandal, torture, etc. etc. etc. And yet Bush hasn’t suffered the public humiliation that Nixon did (yet).

I think that if Watergate had happened five years ago, the Right-Wing Noise Machine would have drowned out whatever Woodward and Bernstein found, and both reporters would have been swift-boated into resigning. They might have written a book that made a little splash, but by now they’d be out of journalism altogether.

Now, I think the story would be getting more respect, and the Right would be less able to crush Woodward and Bernstein and destroy their careers. We still haven’t gotten to a point that a news story about wrongdoing in the White House has the impact it ought to have, however.

In 1973, I had the sense that people realized Nixon had done something wrong, but the average person might not have been able to articulate exactly what it was. Right-wingers today, of course, brush off Watergate as a simple burglary — no big deal — utterly ignoring the implications of what the burglars were up to and the other shenanigans, such as money laundering, that were traced back to the White House.

And today, for example, they refuse to acknowledge what the U.S. Attorney scandal actually is about. They huff that a President has the authority to fire attorneys, and of course he does, but that isn’t the issue. And you can explain the issue to them until you are purple, but it will do no good. It’s like talking to a wall.

But does the rest of the public really understand why the U.S. Attorney firings are significant? Has anyone sat them down and said “This is a big deal, because the Bush White House corrupted the Justice Department and the U.S. justice system in order to help Republicans win elections”? I doubt most people fully understand that.

Some things have changed; some things are the same.

The Cost of Conservatism

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Stirling Newberry explains the cost of conservatism:

The costs of conservatism, in a bi-partisan form, are those things that can’t be fixed by a Democratic President because they have become part of the political landscape: over-financialization of the American economy, the waste of privatized health care, over militarization of the American economy, and the externalization of global warming. …

…The cost of not having comprehensive national health care is roughly 5% of GDP because America spends 15% of GDP on health care, and a comprehensive system generally saves 1/3 over privatized systems. The cost of over financialization is estimated by Krugman to be 3% of GDP. The difference between the Bush defense department, including the neo-colonial wars, is 2% of GDP, that’s defense plus .

The costs associated with global warming are harder to pin down, but Stirling does some figuring and comes up with 2 to 4 percent of GDP.

These problems reinforce each other, insurance companies shift output from other activities, to financial ones. Spending on wars means there is less productive manufacturing, and more war manufacturing, pushing effort into juggling money. Tax breaks drain investment from private enterprise, making it harder, seemingly to shift the economy. In other words, we are like the person who drinks too much because they smoke too much.

The sad thing is, this nation has the wealth to afford decent living standards, retirement and health care for citizens, but we are squandering that wealth in stupid ways. Thanks to conservatism.

Traitors in Our Midst

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I just want to call out this bit from Michael Lind’s “The Economic Civil War“:

If the major U.S. automobile companies go under, it will be partly because timely federal aid for them was blocked by members of Congress like Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, whose states have created their own counter-Detroit in the form of Japanese, Korean, and German transplant factories. The South will have risen by bringing down the North. Jefferson Davis will have had his revenge.

The most shocking thing about the alliance between the Southern states and America’s friendly but earnest economic rivals to destroy America’s most important industry is the fact that so few people find it shocking. Contrast the U.S. with the European Union. The nation-states of the European Union collaborate with each other in order to compete against foreign economic rivals, including the U.S., Japan, and China. By contrast, many states, particularly in the South, collaborate with foreign economic rivals of the U.S. in order to compete against other American states. Any British or French or German leader who proposed collaborating with Japan or the U.S. in order to wipe out industry and destroy jobs in neighboring EU member states would be jeered out of office. But it is perfectly acceptable for American states to connive with Asian and European countries in the destruction of industry elsewhere in the U.S.

It’s particularly galling when you realize most of the “Red” states receive more federal dollars than they pay in federal taxes, while most of the “Blue” states receive less federal dollars than they pay in federal taxes. However, Lind says that’s the way things have to be:

Second, the race to the bottom in taxes and public services must be stopped by means of federal revenue-sharing. In most industrial democracies, the central government contributes much of the money for local services. In the 21st century U.S., too, a much greater percentage of state and local public service funding should come from the federal government, in the form of general revenue sharing (a popular and effective program abolished by Reagan) as well as special purpose grants and loans for some needs like infrastructure.

This means that more tax money, not less, will flow from blue states to red states. But it is the price the blue states must pay for the survival of their own way of life in their own regions. Ruthless Southern state governments have been willing to underfund public education and other public services, while lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars to bribe Nissan, Toyota, and other foreign corporations into opening up factories in their borders. The Southern states cannot be forced to raise state and local taxes. But federal revenue-sharing can raise the level of public services in Mississippi and Louisiana, thereby leveling the playing field by leveling up, not down. Nor is revenue-sharing unfair to the blue state rich, because the federal government taxes the rich everywhere, including the rich few in poor states. Moreover, the gradual equalization of public service spending nationwide might be compensated for by reductions in high blue-state tax levels.

I suppose that makes sense, but right now I don’t think I like it.

Head On Interview

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Muffin Betsy has posted raw audio files of an interview with me for Head On Radio Network. The interview took place during the 2007 Yearly Kos convention in Chicago, so a few comments are out of date.

At one point I discuss Barack Obama’s church, by which I believe I meant the United Church of Christ, not Barack Obama’s congregation specifically. The UCC are mostly your old-style mainline Protestants, albeit from the more progressive end of the old-style mainline Protestant pool. In 2007 the entire UCC was under fire from the Right for ordaining gay ministers.

Rick Warren

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There is much weeping and wailing on the Left today, because Rev. Rick Warren, God Nazi and pastor of the fundie Saddleback Church, will give the invocation at the inaugural.

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.”

Warren isn’t just a walking insult to LGBT Americans; he’s a walking insult to our species, especially women. What Warren represents makes my skin crawl. His presence in the inaugural program is particularly galling to religious liberals, who have been vilified and marginalized for years by the so-called “Christian” Right. And then to have religion represented by this creep at the inauguration … . well, yes, people are angry. This is certainly understandable.

On the other hand, one could see the Warren invocation as a fairly meaningless conciliatory gesture that (I assume) is meant to signal Americans that Obama intends to be the POTUS of all Americans, not just the ones who support him, as was the case with G.W. Bush. Warren’s presence on the inaugural program is hardly a signal that Warren is going to be given a cabinet position.

I do not think, as some have assumed, that Obama is trying to pick up rightie religious voters in future elections. If he is, then he’s stupid, but I don’t think Obama is that stupid. Certainly Warren and his followers will not stop being opponents of everything beneficial and humane in government policy. However, Warren’s participation in the program may send a signal to not-crazy Christians that, see, we aren’t opposing the religious Right’s agenda because we want to destroy them. We tolerate them, more than they tolerate us. We just disagree with them. It’s not personal. This is not a bad signal to send. If nothing else, it shows that Obama is bigger than they are.

Overlooked in the anger over the choice of Warren is the choice of the Reverend Dr. Joseph E. Lowery to give the benediction.

On the third hand, if I had one, I think that if there is going to be prayer and other religious expression at what is a government function, religions other than Christianity ought to be represented. Otherwise, the program appears to be a form of religious establishment.

Update: Read Pastor Dan’s take. Pastor Dan believes the choice of Warren was strictly personal on Obama’s part, not part of some political calculation. I am inclined to agree with that. Also,

One of the reasons “Wrightgate” didn’t take off is that Americans don’t like folks coming between them and their pastors. The dynamic is going to be the same with Warren, except that it’ll have the added benefit of fueling the “liberals hate God” line of crap. I can almost guarantee you that Bill O’Reilly has his storylines already written: the nutroots can’t stand religion because they don’t like poor little Ricky Warren. As if that weren’t bad enough, because it’s a personal choice, Obama is more than likely going to get his back up about it. Standard disclaimers apply: I’m not telling anyone not to protest this, just understand what you’re getting into, blah blah blah…

On the other hand,

On a strictly professional level, this is a goddamn embarrassment.

Republicans Hate the Middle Class

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Kevin Drum explains what has to happen to restore the economy:

One way or another, there’s really no way for the economy to grow strongly and consistently unless middle-class consumers spend more, and they can’t spend more unless they make more. This was masked for a few years by the dotcom bubble, followed by the housing bubble, all propped on top of a continuing increase in consumer debt. None of those things are sustainable, though. The only sustainable source of consistent growth is rising median wages. The rich just don’t spend enough all by themselves.

The flip side of this, of course, is that rich people are going to have to accept the fact that they don’t get all the money anymore. Their incomes will still grow, but no faster than anyone else’s. …

But … but … but … that’s class warfare! (To be fair, so far I haven’t seen any right-wing reactions to this post.)

How do we make this happen, though? I’m not sure. Stronger unions are a part of it. Maybe a higher minimum wage. Stronger immigration controls. More progressive taxation. National healthcare. Education reforms. Maybe it’s just a gigantic cultural adjustment. Add your own favorite policy prescription here.

This isn’t just a matter of social justice. It’s a matter of facing reality. If we want a strong economy, we can only get it over the long term if we figure out a way for the benefits of economic growth to flow to everyone, not just the rich.

In other words, “spread the wealth around.” See also Paul Krugman and Tim F. at Balloon Juice.

To get the economy moving again, we need to find ways to get more cash into more hands, so that more people go out and buy stuff, which increases demand for goods and services, thereby creating more jobs and growing the economy. This is so obvious one would think even Jonah Goldberg could figure it out. Yet, even as I keyboard, no doubt conservative think tanks are cranking out somber-sounding white papers presenting tortured and historically revisionist arguments that paying workers more money is bad for workers (see, for example, George Will, no doubt working off notes he got from the Heritage Foundation).

At the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson sings the praises of the UAW and discusses their role in elevating the middle class —

… by the early 1950s, the UAW had secured a number of contractual innovations — annual cost-of-living adjustments, for instance — that set a pattern for the rest of American industry and created the broadly shared prosperity enjoyed by the nation in the 30 years after World War II.

The architects did not stop there. During the Reuther years, the UAW also used its resources to incubate every up-and-coming liberal movement in America. It was the UAW that funded the great 1963 March on Washington and provided the first serious financial backing for César Chávez’s fledgling farm workers union. The union took a lively interest in the birth of a student movement in the early ’60s, providing its conference center in Port Huron, Mich., to a group called Students for a Democratic Society when the group wanted to draft and debate its manifesto. Later that decade, the union provided resources to help the National Organization for Women get off the ground and helped fund the first Earth Day. And for decades after Reuther’s death in a 1970 plane crash, the UAW was among the foremost advocates of national health care — a policy that, had it been enacted, would have saved the Big Three tens of billions of dollars in health insurance expenses, but which the Big Three themselves were until recently too ideologically hidebound to support.

That last part is concrete proof that Ayn Rand was an idiot.

Over the past several weeks, it has become clear that the Republican right hates the UAW so much that it would prefer to plunge the nation into a depression rather than craft a bridge loan that doesn’t single out the auto industry’s unionized workers for punishment. …

…In a narrow sense, what the Republicans are proposing would gut the benefits of roughly a million retirees. In a broad sense, they want to destroy the institution that did more than any other to raise American living standards, and they want to do it by using the power of government to lower American living standards — in the middle of the most severe recession since the 1930s.

As they say, hammer, nail, head.

Exactly how much of this the average worker understands I do not know. I think a lot of people who are opposed to the auto industry “bailout” don’t understand how their own jobs and incomes might be affected if Chrysler or GM disappear.

But see “The case of the vanishing GOP voter” in today’s Boston Globe. At the very least, the Right is no longer connecting with people the way it used to.

Need a Whopper?

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This is too damn funny. Keep clicking the spray bottle when it pops out. The 4th screen is too much. Makes me wonder what sort of “whopper” they’re selling.

[Update: I stopped too soon. Keep clicking after the 4th screen. Hysterical. Eventually it comes back to the beginning.]

Um, Yes?

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You’ll never guess who wrote this:

Perhaps the most irksome characteristic of the Bush administration has been the Rio Grande-wide gap between rhetoric and action.

The president has consistently talked a good game when it comes to democracy promotion, stopping weapons proliferation and other important goals, but his actions have just as consistently fallen short. Inaction is defensible — because there is always a good case to be made for caution in international affairs. But why then has his rhetoric been so incautious? The combination leads to the suspicion that there is no underlying strategy, merely a disconnect between what the White House speechwriters churn out and what the rest of the government actually does.

The combination leads to the suspicion that there is no underlying strategy, merely a disconnect between what the White House speechwriters churn out and what the rest of the government actually does. This has been the Bush Administration from the get-go. I dimly remember writing a blog post in the Mahablog’s early days in which I said the Bush Administration is not so much a presidency as it is a pageant. It’s all staging and props. Nobody actually does anything, or at least, anything legal or normal.

Put another way, the Bush Administration all along has been a political machine dressed up to look like an administration. But I wonder if some of the major players, particularly Bush and Karl Rove, actually know the difference.

I sincerely believe the biggest reason Bush resorts to underhanded methods like signing statements to get what he wants from Congress is that he lacks either the ability, or the inclination, or both, to actually do the job of president and play the role presidents normally play in relation to Congress. It’s not so much that he wants to destroy the separation of powers and the Constitution; it’s just that he doesn’t know any other way to function in the job.

But also, one of my biggest early frustrations as a blogger was that righties were always taking Bush at his word, whereas I was judging him by what he actually did. These two factors were never in the same continent, much less the same ball park.

Here’s a post I wrote on this subject back in October 2005. It holds up, I think. Bush sometimes (not always, of course) makes speeches that are perfectly reasonable speeches, and in his speeches he promotes values and ideals that are also my values and ideals. However, his actions in office undermine those same values and ideals he promotes in his speeches. And righties, on the whole, have been too thick to see it. They embraced his rhetoric as if his words represented what he was actually doing in office.

Among other things in the October 2005 post, for example:

You can still find righties who get all misty-eyed about the “bullhorn moment” but are not at all bothered by the fact that Osama bin Laden was never brought to justice. It’s as if the rhetoric itself is all that matters, and reality is just an inconvenient minor detail.

In the final days of his Administration, the propaganda machine is churning out the notion that “victory” has been won in Iraq, and all that’s left is the mopping up. But they could have held the same pageant a year ago, or two years ago, or five years ago. Again, war supporters are too thick to see how they are being played. But I think all they ever really wanted was the pageant, the victory parade. What actually happens to Iraq is just an inconvenient minor detail. As soon as they can declare we “won,” they will utterly lose interest in what we actually did in Iraq.

Here’s another little glimmer of reality from the writer quoted above:

The “freedom agenda” has suffered as much as Bush’s anti-proliferation efforts. His claims to be “pressing nations around the world” on reform will come as news to dissidents like Ayman Nour, who had the temerity to run against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt’s 2005 presidential election and has been rotting in jail ever since, even as the U.S. continues to give Mubarak $2 billion a year in aid.

Bush’s entire administration has been one long mockery of the word “freedom.” The writer I’m quoting hasn’t come to grips with the full range of Bush’s mockery, but at least this one little piece of light broke through the fog. But here the writer demonstrates that he is still pretty foggy:

Bush has not felt the need to ratchet down his promises to bring them into closer alignment with what his own administration has been able to achieve.

Why would we expect him to? He’s done nothing from the beginning but say one thing and do something else. The only policy he has been rock-hard consistent about is tax cutting, and even then he has been nothing but duplicitous in his rhetoric about which taxes actually were being cut.

The writer is Max Boot, by the way. I’m not holding my breath waiting for Boot to measure the gap between his own rhetoric and reality.