If Obama is NOT “Caving” to Corporate Interests, Neither Should We

Published on Sunday, July 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Obama is NOT “Caving” to Corporate Interests

by Jeff Cohen

In a campaign almost as frenzied as the effort to get Barack Obama into the White House, liberal groups are now mobilizing against the White House and reported deals that would cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. They accuse President Obama of being weak and willing to “cave” to corporate and conservative forces bent on cutting the social safety net while protecting the wealthy.

Those accusations are wrong.

The accusations imply that Obama is on our side. Or was on our side. And that the right wing is pushing him around.

But the evidence is clear that Obama is an often-willing servant of corporate interests -- not someone reluctantly doing their bidding, or serving their interests only because Republicans forced him to.

Since coming to Washington, Obama has allied himself with Wall Street Democrats who put corporate deregulation and greed ahead of the needs of most Americans:

• In 2006, a relatively new Senator Obama was the only senator to speak at the inaugural gathering of the Alexander Hamilton Project launched by Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary and deputy secretary. Obama praised them as “innovative, thoughtful policymakers.” (It was Rubin’s crusade to deregulate Wall Street in the late ‘90s that led directly to the economic meltdown of 2008 and our current crisis.)
  
• In early 2007, way before he was a presidential frontrunner, candidate Obama was raising more money from Wall Street interests than all other candidates, including New York presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.
  
• In June 2008, as soon as Hillary ended her campaign, Obama went on CNBC, shunned the “populist” label and announced: “Look: I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.” He packed his economic team with Wall Street friends -- choosing one of Bill Clinton’s Wall Street deregulators, Larry Summers, as his top economic advisor.
  
• A year into his presidency, in a bizarre but revealing interview with Business Week, Obama was asked about huge bonuses just received by two CEOs of Wall Street firms bailed out by taxpayers. He responded that he didn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus to J.P. Mogan’s CEO or the $9 million to Goldman Sachs’ CEO: “I know both those guys, they are very savvy businessmen,” said Obama. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”

After any review of Obama’s corporatist ties and positions, the kneejerk response is: “Yes, but Obama was a community organizer!”

He WAS a community organizer. . .decades before he became president. Back when Nelson Mandela was in prison and the U.S. government declared him the leader of a “terrorist organization” while our government funded and armed Bin Laden and his allies to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. That’s a long time ago.

It’s worth remembering that decades before Reagan became president, the great communicator was a leftwing Democrat and advocate for the working class and big federal social programs.

The sad truth, as shown by Glenn Greenwald, is that Obama had arrived at the White House looking to make cuts in benefits to the elderly. Two weeks before his inauguration, Obama echoed conservative scares about Social Security and Medicare by talking of “red ink as far as the eye can see.” He opened his doors to Social Security/Medicare cutters -- first trying to get Republican Senator Judd Gregg (“a leading voice for reining in entitlement spending,” wrote Politico) into his cabinet, and later appointing entitlement-foe Alan Simpson to co-chair his “Deficit Commission.” Obama’s top economic advisor, Larry Summers, came to the White House publicly telling Time magazine of needed Social Security cuts.

At this late date, informed activists and voters who care about economic justice realize that President Obama is NOT “on our side.”

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- widely seen as “America’s Senator” -- is so disgusted by recent White House actions that he called Friday for a challenge to Obama in Democratic primaries: “I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.”

Although Sanders has said clearly that he’s running for reelection to the senate in 2012 – not for president -- his comment led instantly to a Draft Sanders for President website.

Imagine if a credible candidate immediately threatened a primary challenge unless Obama rejects any deal cutting the safety net while maintaining tax breaks for the rich. Team Obama knows that a serious primary challenger would cost the Obama campaign millions of dollars. And it may well be a powerful movement-building opportunity for activists tired of feeling hopeless with Obama.

It’s time for progressives to talk seriously about a challenge to Obama’s corporatism. Polls show most Americans support economic justice issues, and that goes double for Democratic primary voters.

If not Bernie, who? If not now, when?

Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media - and a cofounder of the online action group, www.RootsAction.org.

AlterNet.org

WORLD

AlterNet / By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Vision: How Hacker Activists Are Risking Jail for Everyone's Right to Internet Freedom

Since WikiLeaks, authorities have been more aggressive about arresting citizen cyber activists. Yet new actions by the biggest "hacktivists" show they're willing to risk it.

June 24, 2011 |

Photo Credit: Altemark at Flickr.

Last week, British authorities arrested an alleged member of the self-proclaimed “hacktivist” collective LulzSec, accusing the 19-year-old of breaking into websites belonging to the US Senate and the CIA. Ryan Cleary, allegedly outed by “snitches,” was arrested in Essex in a joint raid with the FBI, on the same day LulzSec claimed in a blog post it had obtained the database of the entire British census. “It’s a very significant arrest,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson told the Independent. “The challenges around cyber crime are extraordinarily significant and deeply worrying.”

For many in mainstream culture, the concept of hacking may still invoke quaint ‘90s images of Neil Stephenson books, bad Billy Idol phases and career-best Angelina Jolie movies. But since WikiLeaks’ pro-information dominance, a spate of high-profile arrests has propelled the hacker concept back into mass consciousness, proving that not only are web “hacktivists” a hugely influential, powerful bunch, but that the powers that be are taking them ever more seriously. Last month, the US government proved how grave an offense they perceive cyber sabotage to be; in May, the Pentagon ruled that any country caught trying to hack into state systems would be considered an act of war. Matthew Broderick Pong tricks, this ain’t.

Though their methods have changed since their emergence and cultural dominance -- fanzines have been replaced with 4chan, targets range from Tumblr to State websites -- clearly hacktivists remain some of the most important and powerful subversives in the global information society. It’s ironic, too, that a hacker is at the center of one of the biggest news stories in the world: Adrian Lamo, who was cuffed in 2004 for hacking into the websites of Yahoo and Microsoft, is now best known as the man who identified -- or, as many put it, snitched on -- alleged Wikileaker Bradley Manning.

But with their power comes righteousness. While some hackers' actions are just bent on mischief -- Josh Holly, for instance, the 19-year-old who breached teen queen Miley Cyrus' email and leaked her suggestive photos -- the two largest groups, LulzSec and Anonymous, are increasingly dedicated to First Amendment ideals -- freedom of information and the right of the people to know what their government is doing in their name. As a whole, their tactics might be a little more radical than your average protester engaging in street actions. But they're also extremely effective. This week, the two banded their amorphous groups together to declare "war" on governments and banks everywhere, stating in a manifesto, “Whether you're sailing with us or against us, whether you hold past grudges or a burning desire to sink our lone ship, we invite you to join the rebellion. Together we can defend ourselves so that our privacy is not overrun by profiteering gluttons. Your hat can be white, gray or black, your skin and race are not important. If you're aware of the corruption, expose it now, in the name of Anti-Security.” (There is, thank goodness, already an awesome, LulzSec-approved, Anti-Sec theme song, by the hacker/rapper YTCracker.)

And the actions have already started. Yesterday, LulzSec unleashed a Wikileaks-style data-dump protesting Arizona for being what they called a "racial-profiling, anti-immigrant police state." Calling the action "Chinga La Migra" ("Fuck the Border Police"), they released "private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement." Gizmodo, the leading technology website, offered this analysis: "This is the first time LulzSec's purported to release personal information of government agents, rather than just disrupting their websites (see: CIA, US Senate). This is a powerful move. Home addresses are home addresses—about as personal as personal data gets."

While LulzSec's actions raise some legal issues as to how the information was attained, the more compelling -- and inspiring -- issue is the moral one: addresses are one thing, but what if the dump reveals information that shows the AZ police force was being overtly racist (on government computers!) or engaging in illegal behavior? Isn't this the kind of thing the public has a right to know about? (And, in fact, they did discover that the AZ police force was being overtly racist, illegal and unethical -- including hiring contracted Marines to go "migrant hunting" -- in case that is somehow surprising to you.) In a way, LulzSec is transforming itself into a self-standing whistleblower, with an explicitly political manifesto: "Every week we plan on releasing more classified documents and embarassing [sic] personal details of military and law enforcement in an effort not just to reveal their racist and corrupt nature but to purposefully sabotage their efforts to terrorize communities fighting an unjust 'war on drugs.'" Think what you want about their tactics -- the fact is, LulzSec is on our side.

And in certain ways, these groups were been inspired and/or liberated by the global prominence (and power) of Wikileaks. Think back to December, when Anonymous launched "Operation Payback," in which they crippled credit card companies and banks like Visa and Mastercard to punish them for blocking payments to the information site. The latter two sites were shuttered for the better part of a day, and a spokesperson for the group told Agence France Presse they were targeting those with an "anti-WikiLeaks agenda." Not long after, Dutch authorities fingered two Dutch teenagers for the hack -- 19-year-old Martijn Gonlag, and another 16-year-old, who allegedly confessed. In an interview with TechEye, Gonlag was calm but resolute, though he publicly renounced his hacker tactics (as many do... publicly). "While I want to keep working for the things I believe in, I will of course do it now, as always, in legal ways.” he said.

In January, a month after the Dutch teens were arrested for the WikiLeaks money hacks, five people -- ranging in age from 15 to 26 -- were detained in the UK for allegedly having a hand in it as well. Then, on January 27, the FBI announced they were conducting raids stateside, producing over 40 search warrants across the country. In response, Loz Kaye, leader of Pirate Party UK, condemned the arrests, and pointed out the hacks were a form of citizen’s resistance. "These arrests, and comments by ACPO threatening 'more extreme tactics' to deal with hacktivists represent a worrying ratcheting up of confrontation. Many in the online community frankly feel under siege. It is time for engagement from mainstream politicians, or otherwise radicalization can only increase."

The Pirate Party is another groundbreaking group that non-web-entrenched progressives should familiarize themselves with; they run on a specific platform of "represent[ing] the changes demanded by technology that governments and industries are resisting with all their might." And for them, perhaps said radicalization comes in the form of hacking masterclasses for senior citizens, held last month in order to teach the elderly how to obtain euthanasia assistance blocked by government filters. Earlier this month, they released a statement and action against the UK's Digital Economy Act, which would block specific websites and "threat[en] freedom of expression, would harm innocent and vulnerable people, and are wholly disproportionate measures."

This month has been a particularly banner one for the crackdown on hackers, yet most news outlets are focusing on their arrests rather than the reasons for their actions. For instance, on June 10, three alleged members of Anonymous were arrested in different Spanish cities for attacking government websites in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand. The Spanish government called the hackers a “threat to national security.” Yet if you look at a list of the countries attacked, you note that each has enforced forms of internet censorship, keeping its citizens from information that could be vital to their liberation. It's hard to reconcile the hypocrisy that our own president thinks he can wage physical war in Libya without Congressional approval, yet a few hackers -- likely very young -- can't get away with cyber crackdowns that aren't killing anyone. The whole world praised Facebook for its role in disseminating information about the Egyptian uprising.... yet those protesting the government censorship of such sites are being arrested?

It seems quite backwards -- and Anonymous seems to think so, too. In retaliation, the group kicked down the website of the Spanish police, taking credit for pulling it offline via Blogspot. The BBC:

In its statement, Anonymous said the DDoS attack was a "direct response to the Friday arrests of three individuals alleged to be associated with acts of cyber civil disobedience attributed to Anonymous."

The group said DDoS attacks were a legitimate form of peaceful protest. Some of its members are thought to have carried out similar attacks on Turkish government websites to protest against net censorship.

Turkey will soon impose a new filter on the internet that some say will be used to illegally monitor the web activities of citizens. In protest, members of Anonymous took down various government websites in the country (on June 13, some 32 people were arrested for their alleged involvement).

Earlier this month, over 50,000 people in Istanbul took to the streets to peacefully protest the Turkish government's web censorship. Anonymous' retort was, simply, an act of cyber solidarity, waged in the very space that would be affected by the government's actions. In ideology, there is little difference between the two forms of protest... it's just that one is deemed legal (in some places), and one is not.

Last week, the BBC interviewed Peter Sommer, the man who helped forge hacking when he wrote The Hacker's Handbook in the 1980s. "There has always been a streak within hackerdom of ideology mixed with technology," he said:

The hacker, explains Mr Sommer, is distinct from the cyber-criminal, whose motivations are generally larceny and whose relationship with technology is akin to the housebreaker's relationship to the jemmy - it is a tool of the trade.

Hackers are interested in the mechanism of attack as much as they are in the target.

"One strong element in hacking is seeing how things work. Here is a technology, can I make it do something else?" says Mr Sommer.

That love of technological innovation, and the internet in particular, gives rise to a philosophy.

And the philosophy is increasingly in action. Just this week, Anonymous reacted to Malaysia's censorship of WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay by taking down government sites. On June 20, various websites belonging to the city of Orlando, Florida, were pulled down to protest the arrests of members of Food Not Bombs, who were distributing food to the homeless in a city park (which, apparently, violated city ordinances).

While some hackers may simply be intent on causing mischief or flexing their programming chops, it's plain to see that these actions are not for nothing... they're forms of protest that we can recognize as parallel to our rallies, petitions and actions. Meanwhile, the media usually mis-assesses the situation when it paints hacktivists as simply online troublemakers -- a concept rooted in the group's more anarchic roots in the early '00s, as characterized by a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. "This really is a techno arms race," Pure Hacker security chief Robert McAdam told the Australia Herald-Sun. "Except this time instead of graduating from throwing rocks to bullets and bombs, technology is the weapon and it's growing exponentially." He was sort of right -- while there’s a radical resistance at work, comparing web sabotage to the nuclear arms race is a little extreme.

But in December, Anonymous' Coldblood agreed. In an interview with the BBC, he said, "I see this as becoming a war. Not a conventional war. This is a war of data. We are trying to keep the internet open and free for everyone, just as the internet has been and always was. But in recent months and years we have seen governments, the European Union trying to creep in and limit the freedom we have on the internet."

As First Base Technologies' Peter Wood put it to the BBC on June 22, "I can't condone anyone breaking the law... but I do understand where they are coming from." Another way to look at it: "hacktivism" is the future of peaceful protest; these brave, super-smart cyber activists are defending all of our right to expression, defending our freedom on the battleground of now and the future. As more and more governments want to clamp down on the way we can use the internet, the best of the hacktivists are working on keeping it free.

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is an associate editor at AlterNet and a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. Formerly the executive editor of The FADER, her work has appeared in VIBE, SPIN, New York Times and various other magazines and websites.

AlterNet.org

ENVIRONMENT

AlterNet / By Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben

Our Lives Are Under Threat From Some of the Most Powerful and Richest Entities -- Here's How We Can Fight Back and Win

We need to rebuild the kind of mass movement that marked 1970: bodies, passion, and creativity are the currencies we can compete in. It's not impossible.

April 8, 2011 |

Photo Credit: 350.org

Not for forty years has there been such a stretch of bad news for environmentalists in Washington.

Last month in the House, the newly empowered GOP majority voted down a resolution stating simply that global warming was real: they've apparently decided to go with their own versions of physics and chemistry.

This week in the Senate, the biggest environmental groups were reduced to a noble, bare-knuckles fight merely to keep the body from gutting the Clean Air Act, the proudest achievement of the green movement. The outcome is still unclear; even several prominent Democrats are trying to keep the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.

And at the White House? The president who boasted that his election marked the moment when 'the oceans begin to recede' instead introduced an energy plan heavy on precisely the carbon fuels driving global warming. He focused on 'energy independence,' a theme underscored by his decision to open 750 million tons of Wyoming coal to new mining leases. That's the equivalent of running 3,000 new power plants for a year.

Here's what we think is going on, in the broadest terms.

The modern environmental movement was born on Earth Day 1970, in an unprecedented burst of mass organizing--by some estimates 20 million Americans, a tenth of the population, took to the streets. It was a young movement, at a time when large numbers of people were serious about not just cleaning the air but stopping wars and ending official discrimination. That popular base inspired--or, more likely, cowed--Washington: the next four years saw the passage of virtually all the environmental legislation that still forms the core of green law.

It also saw the birth or rebirth of many of the organizations we think of when we think of environmentalism. Powered by that initial burst of mass support, they were able to make real headway in DC, and so they concentrated on important and professional tasks: patient lobbying of subcommittees, careful report-writing. And they kept making substantial gains: Superfund toxic cleanups, acid-rain control.

But in recent years two things have happened. One, that battery wound up on the first Earth Day has finally wound down: congressmen, it turns out, can tell the difference between an aging membership list and a vibrant political movement. As the DC political bible Politico put it last month: "green groups are being forced to play defense in a world where D.C. pols aren't scared of them."

Second, the key issue has changed. Forget acid rain and Superfund; these were important but relatively easy fights that didn't directly confront anyone's business model. You could clean up acid rain by putting a filter on your power plant. But global warming is different--you'd have to shut down that power plant, and replace it with a windmill or a solar panel.

And so the full power of the fossil fuel industry--the most profitable business in the planet's history--has been brought to bear on the fight, and they play hard and dirty. The Koch Brothers spend huge sums to underwrite the network of global warming skeptics; the US Chamber of Commerce emerged as the biggest campaign funder of them all, shuttling 94% of its donations to climate deniers. This kind of clout carried the day: the biggest dream of DC Washington groups was the so-called 'cap-and-trade' bill, behind which they mustered every insider technique they'd spent the last four decades perfecting. But in the end they didn't come close: Harry Reid refused to even schedule a floor vote, knowing that he was far short of the votes needed to pass the bill. The White House stayed on the sidelines.

To us, the lesson is pretty clear. Since we're never going to have as much money as the fossil fuel industry, we need to rebuild the kind of mass movement that marked 1970: bodies, passion, and creativity are the currencies we can compete in. It's not impossible. Working with next to no money, the fledgling campaign at 350.org managed over the last three years to coordinate 15,000 rallies in 189 countries--every nation on earth save North Korea. It's been active in every US state and Congressional district. And this week, it combined forces with another important American grass roots climate campaign, 1Sky, for extra reach.

1Sky was founded in the same spirit, and at the same time, as 350.org, and has worked to develop leaders around the country and help build a base of hundreds allies. Together, we'll be smarter, bolder, faster, and more creative than we were before.

This new and expanded 350.org will mobilize on a large scale--circle Sept. 24 on your calendar for a worldwide day of bike-based action. But it's also going aggressively after the backroom money, with a far-reaching new campaign that tackles the US Chamber of Commerce for its climate stance.

This youth-based campaign is linking up with labor, with faith communities, with frontline communities who have the most experience trying to shut down dirty power plants in their backyards. Most of all it's actually out in the streets, organizing new blood. The idea is not to supplant the Washington green groups, but instead to give the whole movement new clout--enough clout to withstand the crushing power of oil money. And enough energy to let us get off defense and back on the attack.

We don't know if we'll win in the end: the science of climate change grows darker by the day, and the window for effective action is swiftly closing. But any chance requires people power replacing corporate power. In the year of Tunisia and Egypt and Wisconsin, it's worth a try.

Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben are board members of 350.org.

AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Tony Newman

Thousands in Mexico Take to Streets To Protest Drug War – We Need to Do the Same Here!

This June will mark the 40th anniversary of the drug war -- let’s take inspiration from our brothers and sisters in Mexico, and demand an exit strategy from this unwinnable war.

April 7, 2011 |

Thousands came out yesterday across Mexico to protest the drug war. The protests were led by journalist and poet Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed last week in drug prohibition-related violence.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since President Calderon launched his “surge” against cartels in December 2006.

The bloody, unwinnable war is leading more and more elected officials to speak out against drug prohibition. In 2009, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Drug Policy – co-chaired by three former presidents (Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico) – issued a groundbreaking report declaring the drug war a failure. The report further advocated the decriminalization of marijuana and the need to "break the taboo" on open and honest discussion about international drug prohibition. Since then, former Mexican President Vicente Fox has also said that legalizing drugs would reduce the daily massacres in Mexico.

While elected officials and the “grasstops” are incredibly important voices against the drug war, it is obvious that we need the “grassroots” – we need people to hit the streets against the unwinnable drug war. That’s why yesterday’s protests in Mexico are inspiring.

The war on drugs is also America’s war at home. Every day, there’s violence in our streets due to drug prohibition. We also arrest 1.7 million people every year for drug law violations, 750,000 for marijuana possession alone. Our state budgets are collapsing because we spend billions of dollars every year locking up people behind bars who don’t belong there.

The heartbreaking carnage in Mexico and in our streets is not due to drugs or drug use, but drug prohibition. There is nothing inherently evil or violent about marijuana and coca, but prohibiting these highly-sought-after plants inevitably leads to violence, as people are willing to kill each other over the enormous profits. Now that alcohol is legal, no one is murdered over a case of Budweiser.

This June will mark the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon launching the war on drugs. The Drug Policy Alliance will be teaming up with organizations across the country to protest this disgraceful anniversary in cities and towns across the country.

Let’s take inspiration from our brothers and sisters in Mexico, hit the streets, and demand an exit strategy from this unwinnable war.

Tony Newman is communications director for the Drug Policy Alliance.

A Working Class Hero is Still Something to Be

April 6, 2011 at 12:02:15

The Peasants Need Pitchforks

By Robert Scheer (about the author)

From Truthdig

A "working class hero," John Lennon told us in his song of that title, "is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you're so clever and classless and free/ But you're still f*cking peasants as far as I can see."

The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the super wealthy controls 40-percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: "Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1-percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income -- an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

That is the harsh reality obscured by the media's focus on celebrity gossip, sports rivalries and lotteries, situations in which the average person can pretend that he or she is plugged into the winning side. The illusion of personal power substitutes consumer sovereignty -- which smartphone to purchase -- for real power over the decisions that affect our lives. Even though most Americans accept that the political game is rigged, we have long assumed that the choices we make in the economic sphere as to career and home are matters that respond to our wisdom and will. But the banking tsunami that wiped out so many jobs and so much home-ownership has demonstrated that most Americans have no real control over any of that, and while they suffer, the corporate rich reward themselves in direct proportion to the amount of suffering they have caused.

Instead of taxing the super rich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks.

It is a reality further obscured by the academic elite, led by economists who receive enormous payoffs from Wall Street in speaking and consulting fees, and their less privileged university colleagues who are so often dependent upon wealthy sponsors for their research funding. Then there are the media, which are indistinguishable parts of the corporate-owned culture and which, with rare exception, pretend that we are all in the same lifeboat while they fawn in their coverage of those who bilk us and also dispense fat fees to top pundits. Complementing all that is the dark distraction of the faux populists, led by tea party demagogues, who blame unions and immigrants for the crimes of Wall Street hustlers.

My book on the banking meltdown, "The Great American Stickup," begins with the following words. "They did it. Yes, there is a 'they': the captains of finance, their lobbyists, and allies among leading politicians of both parties, who together destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning splendidly. ..." They got to rewrite the laws to enable their massive greed over everything from the tax codes to the sale of toxic derivatives over the past quarter century, smashing the American middle class and with it the nation's experiment in democracy.

The lobbyists are deliberately bipartisan in their bribery, and the authors of our demise are equally marked as Democrats and Republicans. Ronald Reagan first effectively sang the siren song of ending government's role in corporate crime prevention, but it was Democrat Bill Clinton who accomplished much of that goal. It is the enduring conceit of the top Democratic leaders that they are valiantly holding back the forces of evil when they actually have continuously been complicit.

The veterans of the Clinton years, so prominent in the Obama administration, still deny their role in the disaster of the last 25 years. Yet the sad tale of income inequality that Stiglitz laments is as much a result of their policies as those of their Republican rivals. In one of the best studies of this growing gap in income, economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that during Clinton's tenure in the White House the income of the top 1-percent increased by 10.1-percent per year, while that of the other 99-percent of Americans increased by only 2.4-percent a year. Thanks to President Clinton's deregulation and the save-the-rich policies of George W. Bush, the situation deteriorated further from 2002 to 2006, a period in which the top 1-percent increased its income 11-percent annually while the rest of Americans had a truly paltry gain of 1-percent per year.

And that was before the meltdown that wiped out the jobs and home values of so many tens of millions of American families. "The top 1-percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles," Stiglitz concludes, "but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99-percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1-percent eventually do learn. Too late."

http://www.truthdig.com

Robert Scheer is editor in chief of the progressive Internet site Truthdig. He has built a reputation for strong social and political writing over his 30 years as a journalist. He conducted the famous Playboy magazine interview in which Jimmy Carter (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Regressives, get the hell out of my country!

In my last piece (Trading Places: A Tale of Two Countries), I used a plethora of statistics to make a comparison between the United States and Sweden. The point was to use those little evil pests called facts to point out to the fools on the right that while they are correct about American exceptionalism, it doesn’t play out quite the way they think.

America is, in fact, exceptionally bad when it comes to any of a whole host of measures, such as health, longevity, economic equality, crime, pollution, etc. Over there in Sweden, on the other hand, the application of socialist ideas has turned out slightly differently than what those nice conservatives in America would have you believe. The ‘disaster’ of European socialism has led Europeans, especially Swedes, to kick America’s ass on basically any measure of quality of life one can imagine.

Uh-oh.

That whole fact thing that we in “the reality-based community” rely upon for intelligent analysis and policy prescription is almost always a disaster for regressives. You know, sorta like, “Iraq has WMD, therefore we should invade, and it will be a great war, fast, easy, cheap, and it will bring democracy to the Middle East (even though all our other policies there are about preventing it at all costs, but pay no attention to that)”. That kinda thing. When that little riff smacked up against the ugly reality-based community known as the real world, it, uh – how shall we say it? – didn’t fare so very well. Nor did the insistence that radical tax cuts for the rich would boom the economy and simultaneously actually increase revenues to the federal treasury. Oops. Now the very same people who made that promise are screaming about how we have to slash spending on health and education to make up for the massive debt that was produced when their fantasies met reality. Then there’s global warming...

I could go on and on here. There is a very real pattern, which twenty minutes of watching Glenn Beck would immediately reveal to anyone who didn’t already know better. Regressives hide from reality. It’s that simple. Nor is it a mystery why. Facts don’t support the policies they’ve already ferociously embraced before – not after – they’ve done their ‘analysis’, policies they cling to so strongly because they either benefit them personally or assuage their rampant fears. That’s how it works, and that’s why this country is in the disastrous state that it’s in. We’ve been following so-called conservative policies for thirty years now (yes, very much including those periods in which Democrats were in the White House and ruled Congress). These policies are astonishingly destructive, which is why regressives have to pretend when it comes to reality, and which is why they almost always do, more so in this current era of Bachmann-Palin overdrive than ever.

I mention all this because a couple of folks reacted to the blizzard of comparative facts in my last piece in the usual regressive way: through obfuscation, distortion and deceit. No surprise there. One particular response caught my eye, however, and nearly knocked me off my chair. A couple of folks noted that, yes, America does poorly on all these statistics compared to other countries, but only if you count minorities. If you compare American whites only, they argue, then the US does much better.

Excuse me?!?! What’s that?!?! Did you really just say that?!?!

It’s hard to imagine all the ways in which this is nonsensical. More to the point, it’s difficult to determine whether at the end of the day it is characterized more by its unmitigated stupidity or its sheer offensiveness.

Why? Let’s start with the most benign criticism we might imagine, which is that – Hello! – other countries have minorities too. There are lots of folks who could be dropped from Sweden’s or France’s or Germany’s population if we are in the business of cherry-picking statistics. Of course, if on the other hand you’re just desperately trying to win a debate that otherwise makes you look stupid, then you would only cherry-pick on one side of the comparison.

Second, where in the world do nice, shiny white folks get off making a point like this, anyhow? Have they forgotten that there’s the small matter of how American minorities wound up in the condition they’re in to consider? You don’t suppose that, say, four centuries of white-imposed slavery and Jim Crow might have had anything to do with that, do you? I mean, I’m just thinking out loud here, and I know it might just be a really big coincidence and all, but just the same...

Third, what does race have to do with statistics that compare the health care systems, or the degree of government corruption, or the percentage of women in parliament, or the propensity to go to war, or carbon emissions, or the number of hours worked per week, or worker safety, or any number of other measures? The answer, of course, is nothing. At all. None of those factors would be changed by omitting one portion of American society from the comparison, and all of them reveal how exceptional the US is – exceptionally backward, that is.

But, finally, and most egregiously, what the hell is up with this concept of comparing only part of a country, anyhow? Are blacks and Hispanics somehow less American in the eyes of regressives? Do they somehow not count for as much? I think we all pretty much know the real answers to those questions, right-wing protestations that conservatives aren’t racist notwithstanding.

But let’s just go with their concept, shall we? Just for fun. What if there was one part of America that was dragging down the rest of us? Shouldn’t we exclude them from the country, or at the very least treat them with the contempt they so fully deserve for polluting the otherwise unblemished exceptionalism of our nation? Aren’t regressives really right about this? Shouldn’t we ditch these losers, so the rest of us can shine like we deserve to?

For example, let’s talk about health. What if I told you that a 21-factor health index statistic revealed that the following states are the ten most healthy in America, in order: Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Maine, Iowa, Utah, Hawaii, Nebraska and Connecticut? Now what if I told you that the following states are the ten least healthy on that same ranked list: Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada, New Mexico, Mississippi, and worst of all, Louisiana?

Might you notice anything interesting in that pattern? For instance, that almost all of the most healthy states are blue states – including Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Connecticut, four of the bluest states in the union? Or that Vermont and Massachusetts, the healthiest and third healthiest states in America, respectively, have the most socialized health care systems in the country? Or perhaps you’d find it remarkable that among the ten least healthy states in the country there are no blue states and just two purple ones. Indeed, with the exception of Utah, that list includes all our most conservative states, places like Texas and Mississippi and South Carolina. They’re as red as they come.

So, how about it, my regressive friends? Are you still on board for the idea of dropping the national detritus off the list in order to boost America’s statistics and restore its rightful comparative place? Think how much better we’d look compared to the Europeans if we just ditched the Terrible Ten listed above! What do you say?

Sorry, could you speak a bit louder? I’m not quite hearing your response...

Oh well, no worries. You’ll have plenty of other opportunities. We’re just getting started.

Let’s look at some other measures of heath, for example. How about obesity? Here are the ten fattest states, in order: Mississippi, West Virginia, Texas, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Missouri. Not exactly paragons of liberalism, are they? No, for that you’d have to look to the list of the least obese states, which are: Hawaii, Utah, Florida, Montana, Arizona, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, and best of all, Colorado. Most of these are, of course, blue states.

Well, maybe we should look at infant mortality rates, that key indicator in measuring the quality of health in any given polity. Those American states with the worst scores are: Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, Delaware, Missouri and Arkansas. On the other hand, those states who do best on this measure are: Utah, Alaska, California, Minnesota, Iowa, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and New York. Louisiana’s infant mortality rate is 10.3 per 1000 live births. New York’s is less than half that, at 4.0.

Is anyone beginning to see a pattern here?

How about crime? These ten states had the highest per capita incidence of violent crime in 2006: South Carolina, Tennessee, Nevada, Florida, Louisiana, Alaska, Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico and Michigan. On the other hand, the safest states were: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Rhode Island, Utah, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Vermont, North Dakota, and best of all, Maine. These lists are a bit more mixed than others we’ve seen, but there is still a clear tendency for the red states to be more violent. Should we drop them from America?

But surely the conservative parts of America do better economically, right? No doubt fiscal conservatism has raised the standard of living in red states, while the blue states are dragging down the US average, eh? Here are the ten states in America with the highest median family income: New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Alaska, Hawaii, Minnesota, Virginia and Illinois. With the exception of purple Maryland and Virginia and red Alaska, they are all blue states. And, since Alaska gets such a huge chunk of its income from federal government and oil giveaways, it shouldn’t even be on the list. On the other hand, here are the ten poorest states in America: North Carolina, Idaho, Alabama, Montana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, West Virginia, Arkansas and bottom-feeder Mississippi. See a pattern, anyone? There’s not a single liberal state on that list. Mississippi, with a median family income of $39,319, is only slightly better than half as rich as New Jersey, at $73,973.

Same is true of bankruptcies. Those states with the highest per capita number of filings include: Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Michigan, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio. Those with the lowest are: Wyoming, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, California, Maine, Alaska and best of all Hawaii. Once again, it is mainly Regressiveland that is dragging down the United States.

These figures are even clearer if we look at poverty. If you want to go somewhere in America where the poverty rate is really high, here are your choices: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina and Oklahoma. On the other hand, those states sporting the lowest poverty rates are: Delaware, Iowa, Virginia, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland, New Jersey, Minnesota, Alaska, Connecticut, and best of all, New Hampshire. It’s an extremely clear pattern. The conservative states are the poorest. In Mississippi, 21.6 percent of people are living below the poverty line (no wonder Governor Haley Barbour is running for president with that proud record), while in New Hampshire it’s about a third of that amount, at 7.6 percent.

Education is no different. Here are the ten states in America with lowest percentage of folks having a high school diploma or better: Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, California, Rhode Island, North Carolina, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and least educated of all, Texas. On the other hand, these states do best on that same measure: Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, New Hampshire, Vermont, Alaska, Iowa and Washington.

How about per capita occupational fatalities? Wyoming has the worst record, followed by Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, Kentucky, West Virginia, South Dakota, Mississippi, New Mexico and Alabama. The safest ten states for workers are: Maryland, Arizona, New York, California, Michigan, Maine, Delaware, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and on top, Rhode Island.

Or divorce rates? They are highest in Nevada, Arkansas, Alabama, Wyoming, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi. On the other hand, those states with the lowest rates are: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Illinois, Massachusetts and Georgia.

The pattern repeats itself over and over, with respect to almost any indicator of social welfare or standard of living one cares to examine. The upshot is simple: You do not want to live in red states. You will be poorer, fatter, less safe, less healthy, less married and less educated if you do.

In fact, about the only thing red states are better at is going to church. The ten states with the highest percentage of children attending religious services each week are: Mississippi, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Nebraska. On the other hand, these states have the lowest rates on that same measure: Connecticut, Montana, Colorado, Oregon, Alaska, Nevada, Washington, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and lowest of all, Vermont.

Hmmm. That’s interesting. It would almost appear that god doesn’t love conservatives very much. And imagine how badly she’d treat them if they weren’t so busy praying to her every week!

Oh well, that’s a subject for another essay.

But what we can say to our conservative friends right now is that, for once, they were correct (in addition to being right) about something. Well, sorta, anyhow. Yes, they were spot on in noting that there is a segment of America dragging the country down, and ruining its otherwise exemplary exceptionalism.

So, okay, fair enough. Credit where credit is due. Perhaps we can all agree with the folks on the right that America would be better off without these deadbeats diluting our national greatness, even though some of us used to think we’re all one country in it together and we should support each other.

Okay, okay, I concur. Let’s get rid of them. Let’s cut bait. Let’s restore America’s greatness by ditching he precise group of people dragging the rest of us down.

Regressives, get the hell out of my country!

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." Abraham Lincoln

Undividing the Left: Hard-core and Soft-core progressives

By Don Smith (about the author)

The Right is amazingly united. Despite the varied factions within the GOP coalition (corrupt capitalists, neocons, libertarians, and the Christian Right), Republicans usually work well together. In the US Senate, Republicans often vote unanimously to oppose even modest Democrat proposals. The GOP has repeatedly kicked progressive ass. They may very well succeed in their diabolical plan to bring the nation and the world to ruination (aka "freedom").

In contrast to cooperating Republicans, the Democrats and the Left in the US are perpetually divided. The Democratic Party is divided into its progressive and "centrist" (Blue Dog) factions. In Congress, Democratic party discipline is weak. The Democratic leadership (including President Obama) is centrist and naively bipartisan. Moreover, even within the progressive wing there is considerable acrimony and division between the hard-core progressives and the soft-core progressives.



The Divided Left by Don Smith


The hard-core progressives reject the Democratic Party because they say it's hopelessly corrupt and little or no better than the Repugs. The Dems use progressive talking points, but in the end they support the corporations, the rich, and the military, while betraying the progressive base who sent them to office.

Soft-core progressives acknowledge the failings of corporate Dems and of the Obama Administration, but they believe that there are plenty of good Democrats, that it's useful to push the Democrats leftward, and that supporting third-party candidates will likely just empower the GOP, who are, after all, progressives' worst nightmare. Even the corporatist Dems aren't generally as evil as the Republicans. Progressives are outnumbered, outgunned, and outspent. Splitting off into a third-party would still leave them outnumbered, outgunned, and outspent. This argument is made more fully here.

On websites like OpEdNews, there are often pitched battles between hard-core progressives and soft-core progressives, especially in the Comments sections of articles.

The highest levels of acrimony, accusation, and defensiveness between soft-core and hard-core progressives concern the 2000 elections. Supporters of Nader deny they are responsible for handing the election to Bush. Such supporters often say, "I'm never going to settle for the lesser of two evils" or "Blame the Republicans, Gore, and Clinton." Soft-core progressives ask the Naderites to face the facts and to own up to their huge tactical blunder.

This is a tough issue: when to submit a principled/protest vote. I think it depends on the details. For me, if there's a viable non-progressive candidate or if my vote won't help throw the election to a much worse Republican, I'll vote for the third-party person or the progressive primary challenger. Usually, though, there's no viable alternative and the Republican opponent is much worse than the (possibly corporate) Dem. The Republican Noise Machine of Fox News and AM talk radio has convinced tens of millions of middle class Americans that the Dems and Big Government are the problem.

Some critics of Obama and the Dems are, I suspect, Republican moles, aiming to incite division on the Left.

Some hard-core progressives are, no doubt, socialists or communists, and their opposition to the Democratic Party runs deep. They will never work within the Democratic Party. Let's call such hard-core progressives the "super-hard core." Given the realities of American politics, the hopes of the super-hard core for a socialist America seem quixotic. Besides, I do not support socialism or communism. I want a European style mixed economy, with a balance between private and public control.

But I know many hard-core progressives who are not socialists and who like and vote for many Democratic candidates. They're the "medium hard-core." Their unwillingness to work within the Democratic Party is a shame, because there seems to be little ideological difference between such medium hard-core progressives and the soft-core progressives. Both factions do not want to eliminate private property or to nationalize most industry. But the medium-hard core progressives reject the Democratic Party and hold out hope for a viable third party, even though it may be decades before a viable third party arises that can challenge the Dems and the GOP.

I see this effect particularly in local politics: I know of several progressive, affluent anti-war friends who refuse to participate in the local Democratic Party. Much of the reason is, no doubt, ideological. But part, I bet, is the unpleasantness of attending meetings and of having to defer to the people who often run such meetings. Local politics is boring and tedious and often puerile.

Much if not all politics is local, and the party activists who tend to be involved are generally elderly or lacking in passion. The most passionate progressives tend to be the angry, hard-core ones. In any case, if these medium hard-core progressives were to attend my local district meeting, I could work to defeat the corporate Dem who is running for a state office. I could pass resolutions in support of progressive views.

I think some of the hard-core progressives are simply inveterate iconoclasts, independents, and dissidents. There's freedom and a sense of superiority when you're in opposition, but it's not always a productive place to be. The internal politics of third parties is pretty damn ugly too. You gotta work with what you got. What we got is a mixed Democratic Party that produces some good candidates and some decent bills.

The point of this article is this: the animosity between soft-core and medium hard-core progressives is kinda silly. Both factions share the same goals and values (economic justice, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, environmentalism, unionism, an end to militarism, and justice & accountability). They just disagree on techniques.

I still hold hope for the Democratic Party, but I respect those who choose not to. Yet the status quo, with the Left divided, is enervating. Either all (soft and medium hard-core) progressives should bolt and form a new party, or all should work within the Democratic Party to reform it. I prefer the latter path, because I think that it's easier to influence the Democratic Party as its progressive wing than it is to influence the entire nation as an out-of-power, outgunned, outnumbered, and outspent third party. If America had a parliamentary political system, then third-parties could wield tremendous influence. But in our political system, third parties can usually end up aiding the enemy.

Groups like the PDA straddle the progressive divide by being willing to work both within and outside of the Democratic Party. That is, they're willing to support individual third-party candidates and work with advocacy groups unconnected to the Democratic Party, but they give preference to progressive Democratic candidates. This the position I'm most comfortable with.

Unfortunately, things may have to get a lot worse before the political landscape changes in America. If things do get worse, who's to say that we won't end up with a right wing populist government?

DFA organizer, Democratic Precinct Committee Officer, writer, and programmer. My op-ed pieces have appeared in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and elsewhere. See http://TruthSite.org for my writing, my musical creations, and my (more...)

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