Here’s another must read — “I Was a Welfare Mother.” Outstanding.
Vanity Politics
There’s a must-read post by Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money called “Ralph Nader and the Structure of Progressive Change.” It’s not actually about Ralph Nader, but rather, Ralph Nader here is emblematic of why progressives never seem to get a movement going.
What we might call “Goldwater” conservatives, he said, began organizing at a local level in the 1960s. Eventually they took over the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, progressives have responded to the country’s rightward shift by running vanity candidates like Ralph Nader for president every four years. In 2008, progressives changed strategies when Barack Obama seemed to capture their dreams and then were shocked when he turned out to be the centrist he always was. But even in 2008, it was still a simplistic analysis of progressive change offered by his supporters that hadn’t learned much in the previous 8 years.
I oversimplify, sure. But the trajectory of the conservative movement should be teaching us many lessons. Not that we should be crazy extremists. But that party structures are actually not that hard to take over if you really want to do it. Yet progressives seem to almost NEVER talk about localized politics. We complain about education reform but don’t organize to take over school boards. Conservatives outflank us in part because they seem to understand that the presidency is not all-powerful. Perhaps local offices like county clerk and elected judges are as or even more important than the presidency, at least from a long-term perspective. Too many progressives believe in Green Lantern presidencies. Elect Obama in ’08 and he can force through all the changes we want.
No. That’s not how it works.
What Loomis is calling “Green Lantern presidencies” I’ve called the “magic candidate,” which is the syndrome that makes people believe all we have to do to counteract 50 years of relentless wingnut organizing is elect the right guy to be president.
Right now, the Dems appear to have embraced progressive populism more than I’ve seen them do since the 1960s. I don’t think progressive activists can take much credit for this, though. And we won’t know if the Dems really mean it until we get a real majority in both houses, instead of a majority that includes a mess of Blue Dogs. Still, the fact that so many are running on progressive populist themes is heartening. A strong populist progressive movement would reinforce this, if we had one.
But this takes us back to Why Progressives Can’t Organize. I can think of several reasons.
First, we look bad in comparison to the Right because the Right has always had deep-pocket sponsors installing astroturf wherever the grass roots weren’t sprouting. The media-think tank infrastructure, now decades old, that supports movement conservatism is all funded by a relatively small number of family trusts, for the purpose of manipulating public opinion to support whatever will make more money for the trustees. What George Soros has contributed to the Left is not even a drop in the bucket in comparison; more like a drop in Lake Erie.
Second, in spite of the fact that we’re supposed to be the “collectivists” and conservatives the “individualists,” when it comes to organizing it’s the other way around. If you were to tell one hundred conservative citizen-activists to show up on Fifth and Main Street at 9 am Tuesday wearing red, white and blue T-shirts to rally for X, I’d bet you’d get about 8o percent compliance. Do the same thing with progressives, and maybe 20 people would actually follow directions. You’d get at least 30 other people showing up (early or late) with signs and fliers promoting an entirely unrelated cause. And Code Pink members would organize a separate rally two blocks away to grab all the attention.
My irritation with the Occupy “movement” that was never a movement stemmed from my long frustration with leftie vocational demonstrators. Occupy seemed to be the ultimate in vanity demonstrating; truly, rebels without a cause. It was people showing up to vent personal frustration at the system, but with no clue about how to fix the system. And, sorry, standing outside a police station with a megaphone, yelling “F— the police” over and over again, is not “activism.” It’s a tantrum.
On the other hand, I understand some of the Occupy groups that formed around the country last year have morphed into community activist groups focusing on local situations, such as foreclosures, which is great.
This takes us to a complaint about organizing locally. Conservatives get elected to school boards to block teaching evolution, for example, whereas progressives are more focused on national issues. Beginning with takeovers of local Republican party structures, wingnuts eventually owned the entire Party. However, I don’t know what would keep liberals from running for school boards to keep evolution in science class.
It may make a difference that we’ve been playing defense and they’ve been playing offense lo these many years. We’ve been working to preserve Roe v. Wade and other civil rights gains; they’ve been working to strike them down. We’ve been working to preserve the New Deal; they’ve been chipping away at it. But the Right has chipped away so much stuff that we’re going back on offense now. For example, they’ve chipped away at reproductive rights enough that women finally are getting riled up about it. Go, team.
Maybe because they are better at trusting leaders, rightie issues organizations all these years have been better at long games. Even after they don’t get everything they want — and they don’t always, even though it seems otherwise sometimes — they come back in the next election cycle supporting the same candidates and hoping to build on whatever they did get.
Too many progressives don’t do long games. No public option? Kill the bill! Dump Obama!
Finally, there’s been a vacuum in leadership. Too many of the icons of progressivism have been more about grandstanding for the glorious cause than about making realistic progress toward achieving that cause. Ralph Nader is one such person; so is Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich served nine terms in the House with no substantive legislative accomplishments, but he was good at sound bites and introduced a lot of no-chance resolutions to impeach Dick Cheney, and progressives swooned. Why are so many of us so easily distracted by shiny objects?
Who are the real national leaders of progressivism? The only name coming to mind is Barney Frank.
Well, that’ today’s rant. What am I missing?
A Tipping Point?
Wow, what a day. What a week.
By now you’ve heard about Mitt’s creative tax returns and Paul Ryan being booed by the AARP. Meanwhile, at least part of the Right seems to be in circular firing squad mode. They are accusing each other of being disloyal and phony. Bill Kristol is not a real conservative. Peggy Noonan is not a real conservative. David Brooks is not a real conservative. This is all for being critical of Mitt Romney, a man of no discernible political convictions.
The only people who qualify as real conservatives right now are the demonstrably stupid (i.e., Erick Erickson), the demonstrably sociopathic (Rush Limbaugh), or the demonstrably demented (Dinesh D’Souza). At some point movement conservatism ceased being a political ideology and turned into a mass delusion/fantasy game. If you don’t play right, James O’Keefe appears to take away your magic sword, and you’re out of the game.
We’ve got 46 days to go. A lot could happen. Romney’s campaign is crumbling, and it appears the GOP’s chances of taking back the Senate are eroding by the hour. Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium says the GOP is in danger of losing the House, although I’m not going to hope for that until we’re a lot closer to the election.
Just as the Right seems to be breaking apart, the Dems are more unified than I have seen them since, well, decades. No Republican Lite; no triangulation; only a few of the Blue Dogs are still hanging around Washington. Praise be.
The Warren-Brown Debate
I didn’t watch the Elizabeth Warren-Scott Brown debate yesterday, but judging from the comments I’ve read there was no clear-cut “winner.” I suspect people inclined to vote for Warren liked her debate performance, and people inclined to vote for Brown liked his.
The question is, assuming there are a couple of undecided voters in Massachusetts somewhere, what might they have thought? We’ll see if there are any changes in the polls in a couple of days; currently, Warren has a slight lead.
For anyone who really doesn’t pay much attention to politics until elections are at hand, one part of the debate may have seemed downright weird — Scott Brown’s initial shot at Elizabeth Warren was to criticize her claim of being part Native American on her mother’s side. “Professor Warren [he always called her Professor Warren] claimed she was a Native American, a person of color. And as you can see, she’s not,†Brown said.
Warren responded by saying she had always been told by her family her mother was part Cherokee and Delaware, and she had no reason to doubt her mother. I understand no one has been able to confirm or debunk the story. Brown continued to push the issue in order to question Warren’s character, however.
Maybe it’s me, but I see no reason why anyone would give a hoo-haw about this. One, it’s not at all unusual for people who look entirely “white” to find out they had nonwhite ancestors. I suspect it’s true of most of us; we’re all mutts, really.
Second, it’s entirely possible that Elizabeth Warren’s mother has no Native American in her at all, and the Cherokee/Delaware thing is just some romantic family legend. It happens. I once met a guy who believed all his life one of his grandfathers was Irish, but after he retired he researched the family genealogy and found out Grandpa was English, and he had no connection to Ireland at all.
I remember my (fair and blue-eyed) mother telling me that there was a Native American on her family tree, somewhere, but she wasn’t sure who it was. Family legend on my Ma’s side says there were some slave-owning Confederates, also, and I haven’t been able to identify them, either. This could all be somebody’s fanciful notion that somehow was passed on to the young folks.
I also understand that it used to be common for mostly white people with some African-American ancestry to explain their appearance by claiming to be part “Indian.” A lot of family legends of Cherokee ancestors may have started that way. I’m not saying that’s what happened with Elizabeth Warren, but it’s a possibility.
And as long as she’s not trying to claim a portion of casino profits, who the bleep cares? Yes, there is an implication that Warren claimed nonwhite status to get preferential treatment when she was being considered for a teaching position at Harvard in 1995. But Harvard denies this. And if she were unsuited for the position, I suspect someone would have noticed by now. And, y’know, didn’t they get a look at her in an interview?
But if you ever follow the rightie bloggers, you’d know this Native American heritage thing is a BIG DEAL to them. They went ON AND ON AND ON about it for weeks, I swear. You’d think they had found out she was an escaped felon. And this was the very first issue Scott Brown chose to bring up in the debate. It dominated some of the headlines.
Today wingnut bloggers (see, for example, William Jacobson and Little Lulu) are high-fiving because Brown chose to highlight the Native American issue. They think this is a score.
But I’m thinking an uncommitted voter who is not steeped in the Wingnut Worldview would find it puzzling that Brown even brought it up. I’m saying it’s one of those things you’d have to be a wingnut to care about at all. Obviously it’s some sort of dog-whistle to them, but it’s not entirely clear to me what they’re whistling about.
The Right used to be really good at creating a Big Deal out of some innocuous thing and using it to swing elections. (John Kerry windsurfs! Al Gore wears earth tones!), but lately it doesn’t seem to be working for them. I could be wrong, though, especially since I’m watching this from outside Massachusetts. We’ll see if the polls change direction.
Romney Jazz
Brilliant as ever.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Chaos on Bulls**t Mountain | ||||
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Poor Whites Obey Republican Party and Die Sooner
Seriously, this is a startling statistic — American white people without a high school diploma have lost four years of life expectancy since 1990. Four years is a lot.
And lesser-educated white women got smacked worse — they lost five years of life expectancy, while the men lost only three.
Interestingly, the life expectancy of blacks and Hispanics without high school diplomas increased in the same time period; see the charts. What appears to be happening is that the life expectancy of less-educated whites is leveling off to be the same as less-educated African Americans. It seems whiteness alone is not the built-in advantage it used to be.
The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.
Another factor to consider is that the percentage of Americans without a high school diploma is a lot smaller now than it was in 1990. Americans without a high school diploma made up 22 percent of the population in 1990 and are now 12 percent. The whites remaining in the no-diploma pool may be those who are just plain not coping with life in the 21st century very well, for one reason or another. I’d be interested to know if this group is disproportionately living in rural rather than urban areas; the article doesn’t say. And whatever is slamming the less-educated whites is not affecting less-educated nonwhite Hispanics.
This Is a Campaign Ad
New Shoe Drops: Ryan Disses Social Security, Medicare
This is on the website of America: The National Catholic Weekly. Back in 2005 Paul Ryan made a speech to the Atlas Society in which he praised Ayn Rand and admitted that he wanted to target Social Security and Medicare to be privatized to reduce government dependency.
This is the America blogger, Vincent Miller:
It is impossible to summarize these statements without sounding like a breathless conspiracy theorist. Here’s what Ryan says. Don’t trust my bullets. Read the transcript. Don’t trust my transcript, listen to the audio on the Atlas Society site.
- Ryan describes Social Security and Medicare as “collectivist†and “socialistic.â€
- Ryan’s strategic plan: privatize Social Security and Medicare in order to convert people from “collectivism†to believers in a “capitalistic individualistic†philosophy. So that there will be “more people on our team†who “won’t listen to†Democrats.
- Ryan’s acceptance of Pinochet’s Secretary of Social Security José Piñera’s similar program of Social Security privatization as a “moral revolution†that made Marxists into capitalists who started to read the Chilean equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. Ryan is overheard, “Yeah†“That’s right.â€
For Ryan “defined benefit†programs such as Social Security and Medicare are problems in themselves. This isn’t something he saves for gatherings of the Ayn Rand Society, such concerns about “dependency†are scattered throughout his Path to Prosperity—again hidden in plain sight. This transcript doesn’t so much reveal a secret, as highlight a clear theme in his policy rationale that is always present, but in more public settings subordinated to his prophecies of fiscal apocalypse. Thus, it is no surprise his budget cuts the safety net and radically reshapes Medicare first and addresses the deficit later.
For the audio file, go to this page, scroll down to the bottom of the post, and click on the little audio icon.
Vincent Miller has transcribed parts of the 2005 speech that were not transcribed before. Ryan really is calling Medicare and Social Security “collectivist” and “socialist,” and he is calling for complete privatization of both.
So if there were any Social Security/Medicare recipients out there who didn’t believe the 47 percent included them, this should clear things up.
Medicare Getting Stingier With Power Scooters
It’s been a couple of years, but I’m sure many of you remember Matt Taibbi’s description of a Tea Party rally in Kentucky:
Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn’t a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — “Government’s not the solution! Government’s the problem!” — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
“The scooters are because of Medicare,” he whispers helpfully. “They have these commercials down here: ‘You won’t even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!’ Practically everyone in Kentucky has one.”
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.
I’m sure that not “everybody” in Kentucky got a power scooter. But it appears the power scooter industry is very unhappy with the feds days, because they’re tightening up on the power scooter give-a-ways.
Wheelchair suppliers raised concerns Wednesday about a new government program that requires Medicare contractors to sign off before power wheelchairs can be delivered to elderly and disabled consumers.
Federal health officials countered that the changes are needed because nearly 80 percent of the power wheelchair claims submitted to Medicare don’t meet program requirements. That error rate represents more than $492 million in improper payments annually.
Reading between the lines a bit — it seems two different kinds of fraud have been going on. Some people in the motorized scooter industry are making money on improper payments, obviously. But it also appears some of the old folks are being scammed into thinking that they’re getting a free chair and only find out after delivery that they have to pay for it, because they don’t meet Medicare requirements for getting it for free.
So in a test program, Medicare is tightening up on the motor-scooter-application process. The old folks have to meet face-to-face with a doctor first, who writes a prescription for the chair. Then an authorization request is sent to Medicare by either the doctor or the chair supplier. The chair cannot be delivered until after Medicare has approved the request.
An attorney for the Scooter Store complained that every request submitted under the new program has been denied. Can’t be good for business, I guess.
I shouldn’t be too sanguine about the power scooters, since with all my back issues I may end up needing one someday. But I have long wondered about all the advertisements on the teevee, whether there was really such a big volume of Medicare-paid scooters that it warranted the advertising. So now we know, there isn’t.
Missing Video Found!
Today the Right was making much of an apparent gap in the Mittens “parasite” video. The video is posted in full at Mother Jones (here is the transcript). But halfway through there is an apparent gap in the tape. This is noted in the transcript:
And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like. I mean, when you ask those people…we do all these polls—I find it amazing—we poll all these people, see where you stand on the polls, but 45 percent of the people will go with a Republican, and 48 or 4…
[Recording stops.]
Romney: …and about twice as much as China, not 10 times as much like it’s reported. And we have responsibility for the whole world. They’re only focused on one little area of the world, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, that’s it.
So, there is a snip missing, we are told of one or two minutes, but there is no credible claim [although lots of utterly ridiculous claims] that the rest of the video, in which Mitt goes on and on and on without interruption, has been tampered with.
Still, desperate people will grasp at straws, and William A. Jacobson is using the gap to argue that “Maybe Romney answer was “inelegant” only because Mother Jones didn’t disclose that part of tape was missing.” In other words, Jacobson appears to be arguing that whatever we’re not seeing was so elegant it would have neutralized the ugliness in the entire 40 something minutes of raw plutocratic elitism in the rest of the video.
And I’m thinking, wow, what could Mittens have been doing while the person making the recording was fumbling with his recorder? And now I know — this must be it.
As you can see, it is a huge departure from the rest of the video and does cast Romney in a different light, as well as make him look Swedish.
Jacobson is trying to say that the initial video clip was dishonest or taken out of context or something because David Corn didn’t disclose his initial post of four snips wasn’t the entire video, although seems to me it was obvious. And Jacobson obviously is in denial that it’s the entire video that is devastating to Romney, not just the “47 percent” part. And then Corn posted the entire video and transcript. So there’s no explanation for Jacobson’s raving except that he needs to be medicated.