Before making up your mind about what to do about Syria, I urge everyone to read Lawrence In Arabia:War, Deceit, Imperial Folly And The Making Of The Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson, a veteran war correspondent who has reported from Lebanon, Israel Egypt, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Bosnia, El Salvador, and "many other strife-torn countries." He has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, and Outside and is the author or co-author of The Man Who Tried to Save the World, The Four O'Clock Murders, War Zone, and Inside the League. The title says it all. Notice that this is a book about Lawrence IN Arabia, not OF Arabia, a recognition of his paradoxical--and ultimately untenable--role as champion of Arab nationalism and agent of Great Power imperialism. The subtitle is a capsule summary of the Great Power"s relationship with Syria and the entire Middle East over the past century. Perhaps a fitting epitaph to that relationship might be a quote from that great architect of "imperial folly," Rudyard Kipling: "A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."
Now Lawrence Of Arabia is a spectacular and thought-provoking movie, and Peter O/Toole a masterful interpreter of the angst-ridden, and probably schizophrenic, Lawrence, but neither even begins to scratch the surface of what happened in that region during the Great War, let alone the disastrous consequences that still bedevil us today. As Anderson convincingly asserts in the Introduction: "The modern Middle East was largely created by the British. It was they who carried the Allied war effort in the region during World War I and who, at its close, principally fashioned it peace. It was a peace presaged by the nickname given the region by covetous Allied leaders in wartime: "the Great Loot." As one of Britain's most important and influential agents in that arena, Lawrence was intimately connected to all, good and bad, that was to come." As for Lawrence himself, "this was an experience that left him utterly changed, unrecognizable in certain respects even to himself. Victory carries a moral burden the vanquished never know, and as an architect of momentous events, Lawrence would be uniquely haunted by what he saw and did during the Great Loot."
Missing from the picture are William Yale, "a fallen American aristocrat in his twenties who as the only American field intelligence in the Middle East during World War I, would strongly influence his nation's postwar policy in the region, even as he remained on the payroll of Standard Oil of New York," Curt Prufer, "a young German scholar who, donning the camouflage of Arab robes, would seek to to foment an Islamic jihad against the western colonial powers, and who would carry his "war by revolution" ideas into the Nazi era," and Aaron Aaronsohn, "a Jewish scientist who, under the cover of working for the Ottoman government, would establish a elaborate an elaborate anti-Ottoman spy ring and play a critical role in creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine."
Along with Lawrence, they tended to be young, wholly untrained for the missions they were given, and largely unsupervised. who capitalized on their "extraordinary freedom of action," and "drew upon a very particular set of personality traits--cleverness, bravery, a talent for treachery--to both forge their own destiny and alter the course of history." While the senior generals and elder statesmen charted the battlefield campaigns and drew lines on the map it was they "who created the conditions on the ground that brought these campaigns to fruition, who made those postwar policies and boundaries possible." In a conflict that "literally involved millions of players," it was "the subterranean and complex game that these four men played, their hidden loyalties and personal duels, helped create the modern Middle East and, by inevitable extension, the world we live in today."
Anderson presents a graphic narration of the war in the Middle East, with Lawrence, Yale, Aaronsohn, Prufer, the Arabs, the terrible Turks, the different Arab factions, the Brits and the French routinely lying, cheating, double-crossing, and betraying one another with wild abandon. The carnage there was on a somewhat smaller scale than it was in Europe, but it was just as brutal and senseless, and the outcome equally insane. On pp.481 to 483, he presents a cogent summary of what happened in November, 1918, when "the dam had burst." The climax for Lawrence came when British General Allenby matter-of-factly informed him that all of his sacrifices on behalf of Arab nationalism had been for naught, because the Brits and the French (whom Lawrence mistrusted and despised) were going to divide up the entire region--and the spoils of The Great Loot, an especially the region's oil deposits--between themselves. Oil might not make the desert bloom, exactly, but it was certainly about to enrich the Great Powers, including the U.S., for their machinations. Lawrence, "had waged a quiet war against his own government and he had lost." Lawrence announced that he wanted no part of this betrayal, resigned his commission, and returned to England "to prepare for the next round in the struggle for Arab independence." He never returned to Syria again. Of course,his counsel was totally ignored at the Paris Peace Conference, which Anderson characterizes as "a yearlong shadow play." William Yale, who was present at the conference, called it "the prologue of the 20th century tragedy." Aaronsohn lobbied hard for a Jewish state in Palestine, but was outmaneuvered by the Great Powers and by English Zionist Chaim Weismann, who lived to become the first the first president of the state of Israel. {In an incredibly bizarre twist, Prufer recruited Weismann's sister Minna into his pro-German spy ring.} Prufer returned to the chaos in the Fatherland, joined the Nazi Party, and became an SS officer and member of the German foreign ministry during World War II.
In his epilogue, Anderson presents a cogent summary of the poisoned fruits of the Peace Conference and the chaotic world they produced. Lawrence published several accounts of his time in Arabia in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and the shorter mass-market Revolt in the Desert.
And what of the United States in all of this? They were latecomers to the conflict itself, but a mighty presence in Paris. William Yale "placed much of the blame on his own government." He charged that the Peace Conference "seemed a rather perfect reflection of Woodrow Wilson's peculiar blend of idealism and arrogance" judging it "the hint of a simplistic mind-set." His grand vision of the new world "rested upon a bedrock of profound ignorance." His principle of "self determination" for all subject nations clashed fundamentally with the reality of Great Power imperialism and opened up "a Pandora's Box" of "wars of national liberation" that have been plaguing the world ever since. Anderson rests much of his agreement with Yale on Wilson's appointment of a Middle Eastern research section that completely ignored Lawrence, Yale, and anyone else with scintilla of knowledge of the region. It was chaired by a classics professor at the University of Wisconsin, and included "a specialist in Latin American studies, an American Indian historian, a scholar on the Crusades, and two Persian linguistics professors."
Nor was Yale himself without blame. His top secret report to U.S. military intelligence in London, outlining the supposed collapse of morale among the Arab rebels fighting with the British was delivered on the eve of Lawrence's first strike against the enemy. "With that dispatch," Anderson proclaims, "he was establishing a tradition of fundamentally misreading the situation in the Middle East that his successors in the American intelligence community would rigorously maintain for the next ninety-five years."
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Friday, July 5, 2013
It Is a Scandal, Just Not That One
It's not political activity," insisted the president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition (an offshoot of the Tea Party), which was being scrutinized by the IRS for possible violations of its 501 (c) (4) tax exempt status. He acknowledged that his "social-welfare organization" emailed members inviting them to Romney campaign events, distributed pro-Romney literature, canvassed potential voters, and blanketed neighborhoods with partisan "door hangers," but his attorneys had assured him the IRS was only concerned about money given to buy radio and TV time. The Wetumka (Alabama) Tea Party admitted that it had sponsored training programs for a get-out-the-vote initiative dedicated to "the defeat of President Barack Obama," but insisted that this particular training session was just one of a variety that it sponsored for "educational purposes."
Welcome to the "down the rabbit hole," "through the looking glass," "never, never land" of income tax exemptions!!!!!
As you are doubtless aware, one of the "scandals" that Republicans are revving up in their concerted efforts to bring down the Obama presidency is the charge that the IRS--at the clear direction of the White House-- is systematically and deliberately conspiring to deprive conservative "social-welfare organizations" of their tax-exempt status under Section 501 (c) (4) of the Internal Revenue Code. Senator Susan Collins of Maine calls it "absolutely chilling." Darrell Issa of California,, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charges that "the indication is that they were directly being ordered from Washington," while Dave Camp of Michigan, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, insists that "we know it didn't originate in Cincinnati." Harold Rogers of Kentucky, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, fulminates that "the enemies list <Nixon anyone?> out of the White House proves that the IRS was engaged in shutting down, or trying to shut down,the conservative political viewpoint across the country." Erstwhile Reagan mouthpiece Peggy Noonan calls it "the worst Washington scandal since Watergate." Jenny Beth Martin. national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, charges that "the IRS has demonstrated the most disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of government power." Pompous pundit George Will has even threatened resort to the dreaded "I word."
The real story is much more convoluted--and much less sinister--according to the "audit" by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, and probably by the transcripts of the interviews of IRS staff conducted by agents of the House Committee on Oversight and Government. The problem with the latter is that the chair of that committee is none other than Darrell Issa, who refuses to make them part of the public record, despite repeated requests from its ranking Democratic member--Elijah Cummings of Maryland. <Why do I think that if those transcripts upheld Issa's conspiracy theory in any way, shape, or form, he would have broadcast them on every media known to our mass communications-obsessed universe? >
The overall objective of the TIGTA audit was to "determine whether allegations were founded that the IRS: 1). targeted specific groups applying for tax-exempt status, 2) delayed processing of targeted groups' applications, and, 3) requested unnecessary information from targeted groups." The TIGTA concluded that "the IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions, instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention" In addition, it accused the agency of "ineffective management," because it allowed those criteria to be developed and continue in force for more than 18 months, resulting in substantial delays and allowing "unnecessary" information requests to be ignored. Although the IRS began processing some applications with "potential significant political campaign intervention," there was no work completed on the majority of them for 13 months," primarily due to delays in receiving assistance from the Exempt Organizations function Headquarters Office. Specifically, the TIGTA audit found that of the total 269 total campaign intervention applications reviewed as of 17 December 2012, 108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days ("some of them for more than three years and crossing three election cycles.") During that period, many of those organizations received requests for additional information that included "unnecessary burdensome questions," such as lists of past and future donors. Oddly enough, the IRS later informed some organizations that they did not need to provide the information previously requested. Agency officials also stated that any donor information received in requests from its Determinations Division were subsequently destroyed.
Based upon those findings, TIGTA recommended that the IRS finalize the interim actions taken, better document the reasons why applications potentially involving political campaign intervention are chosen for review, develop a process for tracking requests for assistance, develop and publish guidance, develop and provide training to employees before each election cycle, and expeditiously resolve remaining political campaign interventions (some of which have been in process for three years), and request that social welfare activity guidance be developed by the Department of the Treasury. In response, IRS officials agreed with 7 of 9 of the above recommendations and proposed "alternative corrective actions" for the other 2. The TIGTA , however, does not agree that these "alternative corrective actions will accomplish the intent of its recommendations and insists that the IRS should better document the reasons why applications involving political campaign intervention are chosen for review and develop and publish guidance.
Probably the most important finding of the TIGTA is that whatever malfeasance occurred was strictly "in-house"--specifically within the Tax Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS. The offending individuals were lower-level and middle-range bureaucrats and managers who were trying to find a "short-cut" way of dealing with an avalanche of 501 (c) (4) applications with a severely depleted staff. The number of applications had jumped from 1741 in 2011 to 2774 in 2012, while the IRS budget had been cut 17 percent per capita since 2002. Congress had also piled on new duties, such as hunting for off-shore accounts and dealing with the complexities of the Affordable Care Act. The task was so overwhelming, according to TIGTA, that TEOD workers were forced to engage in a form of "triage," in which they developed "lookout lists" or BOLOs <Be on the Lookout> of some 300 new applications for closer examination. It found that 75 had in their name or explanatory papers words like Tea Party, Patriot, Constitutional Education, or the like. Moreover, the agency did not reject a single application prior to the 2012 election. It only asked for additional information, only some of which the TIGTA auditors regarded as "inappropriate." That it dragged on for 13 months was due mostly to "ineffective management" and to "delays in receiving assistance from the Exempt Organizations function Headquarters office." (Heads did roll, including that of the IRS Commissioner). The TIGTA audit found no evidence that those at fault were acting under mandates issued by the leadership of the IRS or the Treasury Department, let alone by the Obama administration. The criteria under which they operated were strictly sui generis; the result of a desperate,"ham-handed" attempt to put some form of order on the chaos.
In what could well be the death blow to the right-wing conspiracy theory, new acting IRS Commissioner, Daniel Werfel, just released the instructions that had been issued to officials vetting the 501 (c) (4) applications. They reveal that BOLOs issued to examiners not only included such obviously conservative words as "Tea Party' and "Patriot," but also such clearly liberal words as "Progressive" and "Occupy." Far from being a plot to reject applications from conservative organizations, the instructions contained "key word short cuts" to help identify overtly political groups--of any and all ideological bents--that were seeking tax favors by claiming to be "social welfare organizations. The BOLO lists also included medical marijuana advocates, organizations promoting the new health care law, and even applications that dealt with "disputed territories in the Middle East." One such list warned that the "common thread is the word "progressive," and in which "activities appear to lean toward a new political party" and are "partisan" and appear as anti-Republican." The lists also targeted "open source software organizations" because they "are usually for-profit business or for-profit support for technicians," groups for carrying out provisions of the Affordable Care Act, and regional health information organizations. For whatever reason, "occupied territory advocacy" groups "seemed subject to the most scrutiny of all." IRS officials cautioned
all employees that "applications may be inflammatory, advocate a one-sided point of view, and promotional materials may signify propaganda." The essence of the "scandal" thus morphed from a putative liberal conspiracy to stifle nascent conservative political movements into an investigation of questionable sorting tactics used by IRS screeners.
At the same time, Werfel formally ordered an end to all existing BOLOs, and promulgated an "expedited process" for groups to attain tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the IR code. To qualify, groups must agree that no more than 40 percent of their expenditures and time can be spent on campaigns for candidates seeking political office. Conversely, at least 60 percent of a group's time and expenses must be dedicated to "social welfare activities." But this new "expedited process" ignores the fundamental question of whether "social welfare organizations" should be allowed to participate in partisan politics at all. The crux of that issue dates back to the enactment of the Revenue Act of 1913, which established the federal income tax system that we still "enjoy" today. <For a detailed discussion of the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and the subsequent passage of the Revenue Act of 1913, see my The Income Tax and the Progressive Era (Garland Publishing, 1985).> The nation's first permanent income tax was one of moderate rates and generous exemptions and deductions, the last of which evolved exponentially over the next century to include 28 types of "nonprofit" organizations subsumed under Section 501 (c). The fourth category of these favored groups--(501 (c) (4)--specified "civic leagues, social welfare organizations, and local associations of employees." operated "EXCLUSIVELY for the promotion of social welfare," with membership "limited to a designated company or people in a particular municipality or neighborhood and with net earnings devoted EXCLUSIVELY to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes." An organization is "operated EXCLUSIVELY for the promotion of social welfare if it is PRIMARILY engaged in promoting the common good and general welfare of the people of the community," Thanks largely to the efforts of legions of lobbyists and generations of Congressional horse-trading, EXCLUSIVELY was superseded by PRIMARILY, while "promoting the common good and welfare of the people on the community" was distended to incorporate virtually every organized human activity under the sun, no matter how contrived or far-fetched. By the same token, the calculation of PRIMARILY kept being revised downward to something like single digits or less. In that sense, Werfel's dictum of a 40-60 split would at least require a major reordering and upgrading of activities for most "social welfare organizations."
Indeed the major bone of contention for progressives is that the IRS concentrated on "small-fries," while such behemoths, with little or no discernible "social welfare" functions, as Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA have generally escaped serious scrutiny. And, as my introductory vignette graphically illustrates, the IRS has never established any reasonably clear dividing line between "social welfare' and "political activity, let alone any rational definition of either. 501 (c) (4)s "may inform the public on controversial subjects and attempt to influence legislation relative to its program." They may also "participate in political campaigns and elections, so long as its primary activity is the promotion of social welfare." Their tax exemption applies to most of their operations, but contributions may be subject to a gift tax, while "income spent on political activities--generally the advocacy of a particular candidate in an election--IS TAXABLE." It may directly or indirectly support or oppose a candidate for public office as long as such activities are not a substantial amount of its activities. Contributions to 501 (c) (4) organizations are not deductible as charitable contributions on Form 1040, but dues and some contributions may be deductible as business expenses. Amounts paid for intervention or participation in any political campaign, direct lobbying, grass roots lobbying, or contact with certain federal officials are not deductible. If an organization engages in any of these activities, only the amount of dues or contributions that can be attributed to other activities may be deductible as a business expense. It should provide a notice to its members containing a reasonable estimate of the amount related to lobbying and political campaign expenses, or be subject to a proxy tax on said spending. It should also provide an express statement that contributions to the organization are not deductible as charitable deductions. 501 (c) (4) organizations are not required to disclose their donors publicly. This lack of disclosure has led to extensive use of the 501 (c) (4) provisions by organizations that are actively involved in lobbying." SPENDING FROM THESE ORGANIZATIONS ON POLITICAL TV ADS HAS EXCEEDED SPENDING FROM "SUPER PACS."
Actually, both phony "social welfare organizations" and Super PACs are fruit from the same poisoned tree, the spawn of two of the most anti-democratic decisions in the history of the Supreme Court: SpeechNow.org v Federal Election Commission.and Citizens United v. FEC. The first ruled that restrictions on individual contributions to independent organizations that seek to influence elections are unconstitutional; the second that limits on corporate and union spending to influence elections are also unconstitutional. Combined, these rulings allowed individuals, unions, corporations, and other organizations to contribute freely to political action committees that are independent of political candidates. They also constitute the most lethal anti-democratic one-two punch in the nation's history. You generally don't need a "3" after a one-two punch, but the Supreme Court threw one in for good measure last week by invalidating Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
A Super PAC is allowed to raise and spend unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, individuals, and associations (Read the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its constituent trade associations) without disclosing where their money came from. They are technically known in the federal election code as "independent expenditure-only committees," and are laughably easy to create <all you need is access to obscene sums of money.> They advocate for the election or defeat of candidates for federal office by purchasing television, radio, and print advertisements and other media. They differ from garden-variety PACs in who can contribute and how much. They differ from 501 (c) (4)s in that they must reveal the names of their donors.Their only limitation is that they cannot spend money "in concert or cooperation with, or at the request or suggestion of a candidate, the candidate's campaign, or a political party." Although there are both conservative and liberal PACs, the former far outweigh the latter in both number and money. Even John McCain admits that "there is too much money washing around politics, and it's making the campaigns irrelevant." In his dissent to SpeechhNow v. FEC, Justice John Paul Stevens charged that the majority constitutes "a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt." The truth is that Super PACs and phony social welfare organizations"--whether conservative, liberal, progressive, reactionary, or whatever--are, to quote Robert Weisman of PCN, carefully contrived "dirty money laundering operations." They force Americans "who are willing to put their mouths where their money goes," to subsidize candidates and ideas that they find abhorrent.
It is glaringly obvious that Werfel's "expedited process" with its 40-60 split will do absolutely nothing to stanch the flow of "dark money" that is threatening to make a mockery of our democratic political system. Nor would the complete elimination of the 501 (c) (4) deduction of the Internal Revenue Code, which would also destroy thousands of legitimate "civic leagues, social welfare organizations, and local associations of employees." Nor is there any real possibility of reaching consensus on the definition of "political activity" itself, let alone how much and what kinds of "it" to permit. Above all, that determination should NOT be the province of the IRS, which has no constitutional or rational authority--nor expertise--to pass judgment on issues so fundamental to our very essence as a political democracy.
Even more essential is the necessity to remove the corrupting advantage of money itself in politics. Of course, any attempt to do that would meet the implacable opposition of the country's most powerful special interest groups, but that, ipso facto, is the biggest single reason for taking drastic measures. We must enshrine it in law that corporations are NOT people, and that the right to free speech is not graduated according to wealth. The first step is to overturn Citizens United, most likely by constitutional amendment, which would require proposal by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states. As daunting a task as that certainly is, sixteen state legislatures have already called for such a move: California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado, Montana, and Oregon. Properly understood, such action should receive bipartisan support, as it has in most of those states, because it is an issue that affects every American, regardless of political affiliation or ideology. This will almost certainly be a grueling, bitterly fought process, but my own decades of research into America's political history has revealed that the Sixteenth (federal income tax), Seventeenth (direct election of U.S. Senators), and Nineteenth (women's suffrage) only succeeded after decades of frustration and short-term defeats. It also shows that amendments to abolish child labor and to guarantee equal rights for women have not yet prevailed, despite generations of persistent advocacy. The other absolute necessity is the enactment by Congress of public financing for federal elections and a national uniform voting rights and standards act that will guarantee that every American is playing on the same field and under the same rules. That fight will be, if anything, more grueling and bitter, but the Supreme Court's decimation of the enforcement machinery set in place by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, is already spawning a rats' nest of voting restriction laws that will effectively disenfranchise millions of the most vulnerable citizens. Don't forget that is was only injunctions and stays issued by federal judges in several states that prevented such restrictive measures from being implemented in 2012. With the cover provided by Citizens United and the evisceration of the Voter Rights Act, many of those protections will doubtless be obliterated.
What is clearly at stake here, as Justice Louis Brandeis so brilliantly articulated: We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we can't have both. Elaborating on that theme on the eve of the Great Depression, Nobel Prize winning economist Irving Fisher warned that Either the plutocracy will buy up the democracy or the democracy will vote away the plutocracy. From the 1930s through the 1960s, the democracy seemed destined to prevail, but over the past four decades, the plutocracy has overwhelmingly succeeded in its scheme to "buy up the democracy." The time to reverse that abomination is clearly long overdue.
Monday, May 20, 2013
The Right-Wing Juggernaut
For the past four decades, the very foundations of our hard-won progressive democracy have been under ferocious assault by a bewildering variety of extremely reactionary organizations, foundations, "think tanks," and political action committees. Whether or not this onslaught constitutes a "conspiracy" or "movement" in the strict definition of those terms, The American Prospect has made a convincing case that their origins can be traced back to a 1971 memorandum sent by corporate attorney and soon-to-be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Lewis Powell to Eugene Sydnor, Jr.,chair of the education committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In their view, the free-enterprise system--and conservatism in general--was losing the battle of ideas and policies to the dominant ideology of "liberalism." <It was not until the onset of the 21st century that the "liberalism" of the past 70 years gradually morphed into "progressivism," a philosophy that traced its roots to the early 1900s> "No thoughtful person," according to Powell, "can question that the American economic system is under broad attack." "Conservatism," he argued, had been marginalized for decades by the New Deal and its lineal descendants. Pro-business candidates and policies were being overwhelmed by a "massive assault upon its philosophy, upon its right to manage its own affairs," and had "responded--if at all--by appeasement, ineptitude, and ignoring the problem." <Reality Check: those three decades were also characterized by the most sustained and equitably distributed prosperity in the nation's history.> To "remedy" that "awful" state of affairs, Powell proposed an number of specific steps that the Chamber, and business in general, could undertake.
Corporate America, Powell insisted, had to learn that political power is necessary, that "it must be assiduously cultivated, and that, when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination." Among other things, he recommended that the Chamber establish "a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system," and "help conservative academics publish their ideas both in journals and in books." Business should insist on getting its viewpoint represented on television news shows, and publicize the "crucial role of stockholders--the real entrepreneurs, the real capitalists--and try to mobilize them on behalf of corporate interests and priorities." According to the editors of TAP, the Powell memo "must be reckoned as one of the most successful political directives in history," because corporations increased their involvement in both lobbying and elections, "proclaimed the shareholder (instead of the worker) to be the most important figure in the American economy, and established and funded a host of new institutions (or reinvigorated old ones, like the American Enterprise Institute) to advance their viewpoints and interests." The Powell Memo "spawned an assertive business and intellectual infrastructure that formulated the ideas and policies of the revitalized conservative movement." <At the risk of sounding naive or self-righteous, I feel compelled to point out that the essence of social science research is to study the way things really are and how they actually operate in the real world before hazarding any interpretations or judgments. Social Science is supposed to proceed by the inductive method, not the deductive. That some social scientists don't always live up to those protocols,does not relieve anyone of the imperative to at least try to proceed according to the canons of empiricism. Powell and his cronies don't even bother "to pay lip service" to the fundamental premise of social science.>
As the TAP editors contend, "the right is reaping the rewards of having built for the long term." They also have learned to coordinate the efforts of various organization so that they reinforce one another.The list of their advocacy groups is staggering, and not a little bit scary. Not even Orwell or Kafka could make up some of them:
1. American Legislative Exchange Council (widely known as ALEC). Founded by Paul Weyrich with money from the Scaife Foundation, it drafts model pro-business, anti-regulatory, tax-destroying bills that have been introduced almost verbatim in state legislatures with widely varying histories and demographics..
2. Century Strategies/Faith and Freedom Coalition: founded by "professional Christian" Ralph Reed who refers to it as "the Christian Coalition on steroids." Successor to the Moral Majority of Jerry Falwell.
3. Americans for Tax Reform: Headed by anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, who has orchestrated the notorious no- tax pledge by Republican office holders
4. The Federalist Society: An organization of 30,000 ultraconservative lawyers who put pressure on judges and legislators. Its most prominent members are Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Anton Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas.<Scalia's son Eugene is the chief lobbyist and litigator for the finance industry in its fight against any form of regulation, especially the Dodd-Frank law.>
For a detailed account,see Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin, The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, (Vanderbilt U. Press, 2013) and Steven M. Teles, Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, (Princeton U. Press, 2008).
5. The James Madison Center for Free Speech: Founded by Mitch McConnell and headed by James Bopp, right-wing lawyer par excellence, long time attorney for anti-abortion forces, and vigorous opponent of any efforts to regulate campaign financing. Played a key role in the case that resulted in Citizens United.
6. American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS: Co-founded by Karl Rove and bankrolled by Texas oil and real estate barons Harold Simmons and Bob Perry, who also financed the "Swift Boat" smear against Kerry in 2004. Has spent tens of millions of dollars on right-wing candidates for Congress
7. Freedom Works/Americans for Prosperity: Funded largely by the Koch brothers and headed by sleazy Congressman Dick Armey. It provides guidance and resources to the Tea Party and right-wing Republican candidates.
8. The Tea Party: Phony "grass-roots" movement financed largely by Americans for Prosperity and promoted by Glenn Beck and fellow Talk Radio screamers.
9. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The Chamber took the Powell Memo to undreamed of heights. Major opponent of the regulation of the health care and finance industries regulation and of a more equitable tax structure. It has become so blatantly right-wing that even Apple and Yahoo have resigned from membership.
10. The Business Roundtable: Made up of the heads of the nation's most wealthy and powerful banks and corporations, it is adamantly opposed to any measures of consumer or labor protection and to the taxation of corporations. It is the major forces behind "free trade" agreements.
11. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation/Fox News: Owns the Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard. Chief purveyor of right-wing propaganda as "news."
12. Talk Radio: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck and a menagerie of hate-mongers
13. Conservative College Newspapers: Funded by the Olin Foundation to counter the effect of legitimate chroniclers of campus news and opinion. The National Journalism Center, headed by M. Stanton Evans, provides comfortable internships in D.C. for right-wing journalism students, Ann Coulter is one of their most famous alumnae.
Who provides the funding for these "think tanks," foundations, and institutes? We all do because most of them--probably all of them-- fiendishly masquerade as "social welfare organizations.," making them eligible to claim tax-exempt status under the provisions of section 501 (c) (4) of the Internal Revenue Service code. <More about that in a later post.>
1. Charles and David Koch: The sons of John Birch Society founder Fred Koch. They are oil, gas, and chemical billionaires (One of the worst polluters and contributors to global warming, whose existence they vociferously deny. They co-founded the ultra-libertarian Cato Institute and are the chief funding source of Freedom Works, which runs the Tea Party and Americans for Freedom.
2. The Bradley Foundation: Since 1985, it has contributed about $30 million dollars annually to the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and Americans for Tax Reform.
3. The Scaife Foundations: Bankrolled by the banking fortune of Andrew Mellon and Richard Mellon Scaife, they have established four foundations and several right-wing newspapers. They are a major source of funding for numerous "think-tanks" It also funded the Arkansas Project, a quasi-investigative journalistic adventure that tried unsuccessfully to find evidence linking President Clinton to drug-running and murder.
4. The Olin Foundation: Established in 1953 by John M. Olin, a leading ammunition and chemical manufacturer, it funded the Heritage Foundation and several right-wing college newspapers,until it used up all of its endowment in 2005.
5. William E. Simon Foundation: Former Treasury Secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford. President of the Olin Foundation for 23 years. These two pseudo- foundations have funded numerous right-wing causes and think-tanks.
6. Joseph Coors: The grandson of brewer Adolph Coors, he bankrolled the rise of Ronald Reagan and the Heritage Foundation. He established an internship and a dormitory for students who worked half-time for conservative Congressmen and half-time for the Heritage Foundation. He also paid for a cargo plane that was a key element in the Iran-Contra Affair of Oliver North and Reagan. <I am particularly incensed by Budwiser, Coors, and Miller breweries because they market their product primarily to working class people, while lobbying against collective bargaining,, minimum wage laws, and pro-labor legislation, in general. They also deliberately conceal the fact that they are all owned by foreign conglomerates.
Crucial to the right-wing cause are the so-called think tanks that masquerade as non-partisan, pseudo-academic seekers after "truth," which they have already defined in advance:
1. The Cato Institute: So libertarian that they are to the right of the Tea Party and ultraconservative Republicans, they have led the crusade to privatize Social Security and Medicare, and to abolish the minimum wage. As libertarian ideologues, its members clash with their less doctrinaire Republican colleagues over the War on Drugs and intervention into the affairs of other nations.
2. American Enterprise Institute: Founded in 1938 as an anti-New Deal clearing house, it bankrolled Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan throughout his career. It laid the groundwork for Reagan's "welfare reform" and for the "Iraqi Surge" of 2009.
3. The Heritage Foundation:Founded in 1973 with Coors and Koch money,it provided much of the propaganda behind the Reagan tax cuts, and Newt Gingrich's Contract With <On?> America, as well as the idea of a health insurance mandate, which they no bitterly oppose because it has become one of the keystones of the Affordable Care Act.
4. The Manhattan Institute: Founded in 1978 by future CIA director William Casey, it has always tried to prevent unionization and multiculturalism. It led the fight against the Clinton Healthcare Act.
5. The Hudson Institute: Founded in 1961 by Herman Kahn, who insisted that a nuclear war was "winnable." It is adamantly "hawkish" on foreign and military matters, and helped devise Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson's insidious "work-to-welfare" scheme. Its senior vice-president is Lewis "Scooter" Libby of the Valerie Plame fiasco.
6. The Claremont Institute: Founded in 1979 (and not affiliated with Claremont Colleges), it focuses on national and foreign policy issues, as well as those dealing directly with California. Former "fellows" include Christine O'Donnell, the failed Delaware Senatorial candidate, who was so far out thar she was even repudiated by the leaders of her own party..
There can be little doubt that the ultimate goal of this reactionary juggernaut is "trying to repeal the twentieth century,l" to quote Timothy Egan in the New York Times Not all of it, just the hard-won achievements of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, the Civil Rights Movement for women and minorities; in short anything that has moved this country forward out of the great abyss of the Gilded Age. Nor can there be any serious doubt that they have amassed the financial, organizational, and ideological resources to do exactly that,unless we are somehow able to reverse the trajectory of the last three decades. As much as it pains me to say so, I have to grudgingly acknowledge their success in responding to the Powell Memo. What is even more alarming is that they have managed to persuade millions of Americans to work against their own obvious self-interest and security--and that of their children and grandchildren.
Corporate America, Powell insisted, had to learn that political power is necessary, that "it must be assiduously cultivated, and that, when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination." Among other things, he recommended that the Chamber establish "a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system," and "help conservative academics publish their ideas both in journals and in books." Business should insist on getting its viewpoint represented on television news shows, and publicize the "crucial role of stockholders--the real entrepreneurs, the real capitalists--and try to mobilize them on behalf of corporate interests and priorities." According to the editors of TAP, the Powell memo "must be reckoned as one of the most successful political directives in history," because corporations increased their involvement in both lobbying and elections, "proclaimed the shareholder (instead of the worker) to be the most important figure in the American economy, and established and funded a host of new institutions (or reinvigorated old ones, like the American Enterprise Institute) to advance their viewpoints and interests." The Powell Memo "spawned an assertive business and intellectual infrastructure that formulated the ideas and policies of the revitalized conservative movement." <At the risk of sounding naive or self-righteous, I feel compelled to point out that the essence of social science research is to study the way things really are and how they actually operate in the real world before hazarding any interpretations or judgments. Social Science is supposed to proceed by the inductive method, not the deductive. That some social scientists don't always live up to those protocols,does not relieve anyone of the imperative to at least try to proceed according to the canons of empiricism. Powell and his cronies don't even bother "to pay lip service" to the fundamental premise of social science.>
As the TAP editors contend, "the right is reaping the rewards of having built for the long term." They also have learned to coordinate the efforts of various organization so that they reinforce one another.The list of their advocacy groups is staggering, and not a little bit scary. Not even Orwell or Kafka could make up some of them:
1. American Legislative Exchange Council (widely known as ALEC). Founded by Paul Weyrich with money from the Scaife Foundation, it drafts model pro-business, anti-regulatory, tax-destroying bills that have been introduced almost verbatim in state legislatures with widely varying histories and demographics..
2. Century Strategies/Faith and Freedom Coalition: founded by "professional Christian" Ralph Reed who refers to it as "the Christian Coalition on steroids." Successor to the Moral Majority of Jerry Falwell.
3. Americans for Tax Reform: Headed by anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, who has orchestrated the notorious no- tax pledge by Republican office holders
4. The Federalist Society: An organization of 30,000 ultraconservative lawyers who put pressure on judges and legislators. Its most prominent members are Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Anton Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas.<Scalia's son Eugene is the chief lobbyist and litigator for the finance industry in its fight against any form of regulation, especially the Dodd-Frank law.>
For a detailed account,see Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin, The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, (Vanderbilt U. Press, 2013) and Steven M. Teles, Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, (Princeton U. Press, 2008).
5. The James Madison Center for Free Speech: Founded by Mitch McConnell and headed by James Bopp, right-wing lawyer par excellence, long time attorney for anti-abortion forces, and vigorous opponent of any efforts to regulate campaign financing. Played a key role in the case that resulted in Citizens United.
6. American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS: Co-founded by Karl Rove and bankrolled by Texas oil and real estate barons Harold Simmons and Bob Perry, who also financed the "Swift Boat" smear against Kerry in 2004. Has spent tens of millions of dollars on right-wing candidates for Congress
7. Freedom Works/Americans for Prosperity: Funded largely by the Koch brothers and headed by sleazy Congressman Dick Armey. It provides guidance and resources to the Tea Party and right-wing Republican candidates.
8. The Tea Party: Phony "grass-roots" movement financed largely by Americans for Prosperity and promoted by Glenn Beck and fellow Talk Radio screamers.
9. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The Chamber took the Powell Memo to undreamed of heights. Major opponent of the regulation of the health care and finance industries regulation and of a more equitable tax structure. It has become so blatantly right-wing that even Apple and Yahoo have resigned from membership.
10. The Business Roundtable: Made up of the heads of the nation's most wealthy and powerful banks and corporations, it is adamantly opposed to any measures of consumer or labor protection and to the taxation of corporations. It is the major forces behind "free trade" agreements.
11. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation/Fox News: Owns the Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard. Chief purveyor of right-wing propaganda as "news."
12. Talk Radio: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck and a menagerie of hate-mongers
13. Conservative College Newspapers: Funded by the Olin Foundation to counter the effect of legitimate chroniclers of campus news and opinion. The National Journalism Center, headed by M. Stanton Evans, provides comfortable internships in D.C. for right-wing journalism students, Ann Coulter is one of their most famous alumnae.
Who provides the funding for these "think tanks," foundations, and institutes? We all do because most of them--probably all of them-- fiendishly masquerade as "social welfare organizations.," making them eligible to claim tax-exempt status under the provisions of section 501 (c) (4) of the Internal Revenue Service code. <More about that in a later post.>
1. Charles and David Koch: The sons of John Birch Society founder Fred Koch. They are oil, gas, and chemical billionaires (One of the worst polluters and contributors to global warming, whose existence they vociferously deny. They co-founded the ultra-libertarian Cato Institute and are the chief funding source of Freedom Works, which runs the Tea Party and Americans for Freedom.
2. The Bradley Foundation: Since 1985, it has contributed about $30 million dollars annually to the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and Americans for Tax Reform.
3. The Scaife Foundations: Bankrolled by the banking fortune of Andrew Mellon and Richard Mellon Scaife, they have established four foundations and several right-wing newspapers. They are a major source of funding for numerous "think-tanks" It also funded the Arkansas Project, a quasi-investigative journalistic adventure that tried unsuccessfully to find evidence linking President Clinton to drug-running and murder.
4. The Olin Foundation: Established in 1953 by John M. Olin, a leading ammunition and chemical manufacturer, it funded the Heritage Foundation and several right-wing college newspapers,until it used up all of its endowment in 2005.
5. William E. Simon Foundation: Former Treasury Secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford. President of the Olin Foundation for 23 years. These two pseudo- foundations have funded numerous right-wing causes and think-tanks.
6. Joseph Coors: The grandson of brewer Adolph Coors, he bankrolled the rise of Ronald Reagan and the Heritage Foundation. He established an internship and a dormitory for students who worked half-time for conservative Congressmen and half-time for the Heritage Foundation. He also paid for a cargo plane that was a key element in the Iran-Contra Affair of Oliver North and Reagan. <I am particularly incensed by Budwiser, Coors, and Miller breweries because they market their product primarily to working class people, while lobbying against collective bargaining,, minimum wage laws, and pro-labor legislation, in general. They also deliberately conceal the fact that they are all owned by foreign conglomerates.
Crucial to the right-wing cause are the so-called think tanks that masquerade as non-partisan, pseudo-academic seekers after "truth," which they have already defined in advance:
1. The Cato Institute: So libertarian that they are to the right of the Tea Party and ultraconservative Republicans, they have led the crusade to privatize Social Security and Medicare, and to abolish the minimum wage. As libertarian ideologues, its members clash with their less doctrinaire Republican colleagues over the War on Drugs and intervention into the affairs of other nations.
2. American Enterprise Institute: Founded in 1938 as an anti-New Deal clearing house, it bankrolled Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan throughout his career. It laid the groundwork for Reagan's "welfare reform" and for the "Iraqi Surge" of 2009.
3. The Heritage Foundation:Founded in 1973 with Coors and Koch money,it provided much of the propaganda behind the Reagan tax cuts, and Newt Gingrich's Contract With <On?> America, as well as the idea of a health insurance mandate, which they no bitterly oppose because it has become one of the keystones of the Affordable Care Act.
4. The Manhattan Institute: Founded in 1978 by future CIA director William Casey, it has always tried to prevent unionization and multiculturalism. It led the fight against the Clinton Healthcare Act.
5. The Hudson Institute: Founded in 1961 by Herman Kahn, who insisted that a nuclear war was "winnable." It is adamantly "hawkish" on foreign and military matters, and helped devise Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson's insidious "work-to-welfare" scheme. Its senior vice-president is Lewis "Scooter" Libby of the Valerie Plame fiasco.
6. The Claremont Institute: Founded in 1979 (and not affiliated with Claremont Colleges), it focuses on national and foreign policy issues, as well as those dealing directly with California. Former "fellows" include Christine O'Donnell, the failed Delaware Senatorial candidate, who was so far out thar she was even repudiated by the leaders of her own party..
There can be little doubt that the ultimate goal of this reactionary juggernaut is "trying to repeal the twentieth century,l" to quote Timothy Egan in the New York Times Not all of it, just the hard-won achievements of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, the Civil Rights Movement for women and minorities; in short anything that has moved this country forward out of the great abyss of the Gilded Age. Nor can there be any serious doubt that they have amassed the financial, organizational, and ideological resources to do exactly that,unless we are somehow able to reverse the trajectory of the last three decades. As much as it pains me to say so, I have to grudgingly acknowledge their success in responding to the Powell Memo. What is even more alarming is that they have managed to persuade millions of Americans to work against their own obvious self-interest and security--and that of their children and grandchildren.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Republicans Still Don't Get It; They Don't Even Know What "It" Is
It ia right there on their website--<growthopp.gop.com/>--all 100 pages of it. Its official name in Growth and Opportunity Project of the Republican National Committee, but it is becoming much more commonly known as "the Republican Autopsy Report." It is the brainchild of R.N.C.Chairman Reince Priebus, who first gained notoriety by wresting that position away from its previous occupant, Michael Shields, who was the first African American ever to reach that exalted rank. Priebus and I are both privileged to reside in the First Congressional District of Wisconsin, which is represented by none other than rejected vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. [How did I get so lucky as to live in such an enlightened district?] Priebus is an attorney who lives in "Pleasant Prairie," a suburb of Kenosha, which is one of the most Democratic cities in the state. I first became aware of him when he made his only try for public office against Democrat Bob Wirch, who has been a member of the Wisconsin Legislature since 1993. Priebus ran one of the most vicious campaigns in recent memory, in which some of his handlers went door-to-door impersonating Wirch people, and espousing blatantly false distortions of his opponent's record and platform. [Fortunately, a solid majority of voters in the 22nd Senatorial District saw through Priebus's curtain of deceit and slime and elected Wirch by a sizable margin.] Disturbed by the fact Democratic candidates has won four of the last six presidential election [five, if you go by popular votes] by an average yield of 327 to 211 electoral votes, and that "public perception of the Party is at record low, Chairman Priebus appointed a commission of "distinguished" Republicans to investigate the causes of that disastrous situation and "recommend a plan to further ensure Republicans are victorious in 2013, 2014, 2016 and beyond," and that will be "critical as we move forward as a party and take our message to every American."
The five person commission consisted of Henry Barbour, the nephew of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and leader of the campaign to oust Shields as R.N.C.chairman and replace him with Priebus; Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush's erstwhile press secretary; Sally Bradshaw, who was a "top ally" of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a senior adviser to both Mitt Romney [remember him?] and the Florida Republican Party, and adviser to Hayley Barbour's political action committee; Zoraida Fonalledas, long-time national committeewoman for Puerto Rico, and Glenn McCall, a national committeeman from South Carolina and an African American. They
boast that their recommendations were based upon more than 52,00 Contacts Made, including 36,000 online surveys, 800 conference calls, 3,000 group listening sessions, 500 one-on-one phone calls, and 250 one-on-one meetings, all with various Project chairs. They also held more than 50 focus groups in Des Moines and Columbus, and conducted 2,640 surveys with "women,"[???] 2,000 with Hispanics, 100 with pollsters, 225 with consultants, 6,390 with volunteers and 600 with field staff. Their final report makes seven categories of recommendations: Messaging, Demographic Partners, Campaign Mechanics, Third Party Groups, Fundraising, Campaign Finance, and Primary Process.
In a halfhearted mea culpa, the commissioners assert that "public perception of the Party is at an all time low", that "young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents," and that "many minorities wrongfully think that the Republicans do not like them or want them in the country." Even though the party core has remained "the Party of Reagan, "it sounds "increasingly out of touch," and "needs to stop talking to itself," is "driving around in circles on an ideological cul-de-sac," and that some people say that "Republicans don't care," are "scary," and "narrow-minded." The commissioners go so far as to quote Tea Party sage Dick Armey: "You can't
call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you." [Throughout, the report demonstrates an almost schizophrenic attitude toward the extreme right-wing of the party, trying to maintain their support while tacitly recognizing that most of the negative attitudes to which they refer are in reaction to the widely perceived "Tea Partyization" of the G.O.P. How can you move the party toward a more moderate middle without alienating your core constituency? How can you "reach out" to minorities, youth, the elderly, and "women" when those are the very people your most rabid supporters despise?] Their attitude reminds me of satirical song by comedian Stan Freberg called "Take An Indian to Lunch." I don't recall all the lyrics, but the gist is "let's pretend that he is part of our regular bunch," and "let him believe that he is almost as good as we."
The commissioners attribute part of the problem to the fact that "Democrats tend to talk about people, Republicans tend to talk about policy", and that "we need to do a better job connecting people to our policies." Coming painfully close to reality, they acknowledge that "the middle class has struggled mightily and that far too many of our citizens live in poverty." While they continue to believe that the answer to most questions lie in "private sector economic growth," they also claim to understand that "people who are flat on their back, unemployed or disabled or in need of help...do not care if the help comes from the private sector or the government." But their job as Republicans is to champion private economic growth so people will not turn to government in the first place," to "make sure that "government works for those truly in need." and that "the government's safety net is a trampolene, not a trap." They want the G.O.P. to be the "champion of those who seek to climb the economic ladder," and to give everyone a "chance to make it in life." They profess that Republicans "need to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare," and to "speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file are left unemployed." They need "to do a better job talking in normal people-oriented terms and "go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and and make our case," and to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and "demonstrate that we care about them, too. We have to engage them and show our sincerity." In doing so, however, "it is not just the tone that counts. Policy always matters." !!!!!!!!!! While acknowledging that they "are not a policy committee," they do assert that "we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform, "because it is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all. The "Party must "in fact and deed" be inclusive and welcoming, because if it isn't "we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues." The ultimate message, the report concludes, is that "The Grand Old Party should be synonymous with the Growth and Opportunity Party.
The commissioner's overarching recommendation in their "Demographic Partners" section is the formation of a Growth And Opportunity Inclusion Council, which should meet a minimum of four times a year for training, exchange of ideas, and effectiveness assessment. It should conduct "grass roots educational programs," identify, prepare and promote a diversified and talented pool of future candidates and leaders, and convene "focus groups with non-Republican ethnic groups in an effort to gain insight into the real and perceived issues affecting their communities." It should design a "surrogate program to train and prepare ethnic conservatives for media presentations," to educate Republican candidates "on the particular culture, aspirations, positions, positions on issues, contributions to the country, etc. of the demographic group they are trying to reach." They also recommend that the R.N.C. hire a "faith-based outreach director to focus on engaging faith-based organizations and communities with the Republican Party." They stress the urgency of "reaching out" to Hispanics, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, African Americans, Youth [?], and Women [?], all of whom apparently are terra incognito to most Republicans. [Women, too?] Most of the specific recommendations seem to be variations on a template of how to deal with "exotic" peoples. They recommend hiring communications and political directors,carefully craft a tone that takes into consideration the unique perspective of the targeted group, make "real Republicans" aware of the way to treat them" with tolerance and respect, hire field staff within each group, build a nationwide data base of leaders, promote staff and candidates within the Party, engage their faith-based communities, encourage individual Republicans to participate in cultural organizations "so that these organization's leadership is no longer dominated by Democrat-leaning individuals," and develop an extensive network of each group's political operatives.
If the commissioners seem to regard "non-Republicans" as a different species, they also appear to view social media, and communications technology in general, as some kind of incomprehensible alien language. [I must confess to feeling a certain sense of empathy with them about that, but I am fortunate to have many people in my life who can translate for me.] It is clear from the report that the authors attribute Obama's victory primarily to the Democrat's far greater savvy about communications technology and "grass roots" organizing. They passionately believe that it was the "media," and not the "message," that prevailed. For example, they make much of the fact that the Obama campaign asked voters what information they needed to make their decision and provided that knowledge to their volunteers, that Obama's media research and buying staff was 5 to 15 times larger than Romney's, and that campaign workers should be sure to include their contact's cell phone numbers and email addresses in their data bases. They also recommend that the R.N.C. "design, fund, and implement an aggressive early and absentee voting program, and that they should recruit and hire a chief technology and digital officer, as well as "train campaign managers and candidates in basic media terminology and media budgeting/management."
Throughout, the report is a bewildering hodgepodge of superficial technical jargon and business new speak.
Although the "nuts and bolts" of the Autopsy's are too detailed to rehearse here, [You should read it for yourself.] it suffers from at least two major internal contradictions. One is its ambivalent attitude toward the relationship between the R.N. C. and state Republican parties, especially in the allocation of responsibility for implementing the recommendations of the report. It even admits that "the GOP today is a tale of two parties": a "gubernatorial wing" that is growing and successful, and the "federal wing," that is "increasingly marginalizing itself." It exults that Republicans holds almost as many governorships than it had during the glorious 1920s. [And just how did that turn out?] It praises Republican governors as "reformers in chief," who "continue to deliver on conservative promises of reducing the size of government while making people's lives better," regularly "win a larger share of the minority vote than GOP presidential candidates," and "demonstrate an appeal that goes beyond the base of the Party." In all fairness, they make a sincere effort to beef up the role of state parties and to assign them specific tasks in "campaign mechanics," including candidate recruitment, voter contact and registration, vendor selection, polling, media buying and placement, fundraising, and finance. But, understandably, it also gives the R.N.C. ultimate oversight power in all of those areas, all but guaranteeing that considerable conflict will emerge in day to day operations. Exacerbating that tension is the fact that the members of the commission are, almost by definition, mainstream Republicans nervous about the Tea Party orientation of several state parties. They are obviously well aware that the seemingly endless debates and primaries of 2012 pushed Romney farther to the right than they wanted him to go, and drastically shortened his campaign time once he finally received the official nomination. Consequently, they strongly advocate reducing the number of debates and compressing the primary season to a few months early in the election year. By May, at the latest, they want an official Republican presidential candidate who can then try to heal the deep divisions and ruptures that the debates and primaries inevitably exacerbate. Republican Representatives and Senators are also concerned about being "primaried" by extremist candidates who accuse them of being too moderate and who are likely to lose in a general election.
Even more problematic are the report's recommendations for trying to maximize the party's appeal to racial and ethnic minorities, young people, and women. This seems to totally contradict the party's strategy in 2012, which was to disenfranchise as many of those same people as possible through requiring photo IDs, complicating the procedures for registration and voting, shortening the hours and moving the location of polling stations, gerrymandering districts, curtailing early and absentee voting, and various other devises, both legal and surreptitious. [See my post of September 27, 2012 and " The Truth About Voter Fraud" by the Brennan Center for Justice of the New York University School of Law.] Many of those laws are still on the books in various states;
and are only temporarily stayed by injunctions and other legal maneuvers. The most sweeping one of all is the case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court [Shelby County, Alabama v.Holder] which would strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thereby removing the requirement that several states infamous for their suppression of African American voters have to clear any changes in their electoral laws with the Department of Justice. Voter suppression is all part of their wider program to repeal all of the progressive gains of the past century, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Voting Rights Act itself. The ultra right wingers are also trying to get rid of all the regulatory and environment protection laws and leave most Americans to the tender mercies of "the Market," one that is almost completely manipulated by multinational corporations beyond the control of any national government.
So despite all the "mea culpas" and pledges to be more inclusive and more technologically savvy, it is obvious that even the most moderate of Republicans still don't "Get It." And what is the "It" that they do not "Get"? We"ll give them a hint: It is not the "Media."
The five person commission consisted of Henry Barbour, the nephew of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and leader of the campaign to oust Shields as R.N.C.chairman and replace him with Priebus; Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush's erstwhile press secretary; Sally Bradshaw, who was a "top ally" of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a senior adviser to both Mitt Romney [remember him?] and the Florida Republican Party, and adviser to Hayley Barbour's political action committee; Zoraida Fonalledas, long-time national committeewoman for Puerto Rico, and Glenn McCall, a national committeeman from South Carolina and an African American. They
boast that their recommendations were based upon more than 52,00 Contacts Made, including 36,000 online surveys, 800 conference calls, 3,000 group listening sessions, 500 one-on-one phone calls, and 250 one-on-one meetings, all with various Project chairs. They also held more than 50 focus groups in Des Moines and Columbus, and conducted 2,640 surveys with "women,"[???] 2,000 with Hispanics, 100 with pollsters, 225 with consultants, 6,390 with volunteers and 600 with field staff. Their final report makes seven categories of recommendations: Messaging, Demographic Partners, Campaign Mechanics, Third Party Groups, Fundraising, Campaign Finance, and Primary Process.
In a halfhearted mea culpa, the commissioners assert that "public perception of the Party is at an all time low", that "young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents," and that "many minorities wrongfully think that the Republicans do not like them or want them in the country." Even though the party core has remained "the Party of Reagan, "it sounds "increasingly out of touch," and "needs to stop talking to itself," is "driving around in circles on an ideological cul-de-sac," and that some people say that "Republicans don't care," are "scary," and "narrow-minded." The commissioners go so far as to quote Tea Party sage Dick Armey: "You can't
call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you." [Throughout, the report demonstrates an almost schizophrenic attitude toward the extreme right-wing of the party, trying to maintain their support while tacitly recognizing that most of the negative attitudes to which they refer are in reaction to the widely perceived "Tea Partyization" of the G.O.P. How can you move the party toward a more moderate middle without alienating your core constituency? How can you "reach out" to minorities, youth, the elderly, and "women" when those are the very people your most rabid supporters despise?] Their attitude reminds me of satirical song by comedian Stan Freberg called "Take An Indian to Lunch." I don't recall all the lyrics, but the gist is "let's pretend that he is part of our regular bunch," and "let him believe that he is almost as good as we."
The commissioners attribute part of the problem to the fact that "Democrats tend to talk about people, Republicans tend to talk about policy", and that "we need to do a better job connecting people to our policies." Coming painfully close to reality, they acknowledge that "the middle class has struggled mightily and that far too many of our citizens live in poverty." While they continue to believe that the answer to most questions lie in "private sector economic growth," they also claim to understand that "people who are flat on their back, unemployed or disabled or in need of help...do not care if the help comes from the private sector or the government." But their job as Republicans is to champion private economic growth so people will not turn to government in the first place," to "make sure that "government works for those truly in need." and that "the government's safety net is a trampolene, not a trap." They want the G.O.P. to be the "champion of those who seek to climb the economic ladder," and to give everyone a "chance to make it in life." They profess that Republicans "need to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare," and to "speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file are left unemployed." They need "to do a better job talking in normal people-oriented terms and "go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and and make our case," and to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and "demonstrate that we care about them, too. We have to engage them and show our sincerity." In doing so, however, "it is not just the tone that counts. Policy always matters." !!!!!!!!!! While acknowledging that they "are not a policy committee," they do assert that "we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform, "because it is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all. The "Party must "in fact and deed" be inclusive and welcoming, because if it isn't "we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues." The ultimate message, the report concludes, is that "The Grand Old Party should be synonymous with the Growth and Opportunity Party.
The commissioner's overarching recommendation in their "Demographic Partners" section is the formation of a Growth And Opportunity Inclusion Council, which should meet a minimum of four times a year for training, exchange of ideas, and effectiveness assessment. It should conduct "grass roots educational programs," identify, prepare and promote a diversified and talented pool of future candidates and leaders, and convene "focus groups with non-Republican ethnic groups in an effort to gain insight into the real and perceived issues affecting their communities." It should design a "surrogate program to train and prepare ethnic conservatives for media presentations," to educate Republican candidates "on the particular culture, aspirations, positions, positions on issues, contributions to the country, etc. of the demographic group they are trying to reach." They also recommend that the R.N.C. hire a "faith-based outreach director to focus on engaging faith-based organizations and communities with the Republican Party." They stress the urgency of "reaching out" to Hispanics, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, African Americans, Youth [?], and Women [?], all of whom apparently are terra incognito to most Republicans. [Women, too?] Most of the specific recommendations seem to be variations on a template of how to deal with "exotic" peoples. They recommend hiring communications and political directors,carefully craft a tone that takes into consideration the unique perspective of the targeted group, make "real Republicans" aware of the way to treat them" with tolerance and respect, hire field staff within each group, build a nationwide data base of leaders, promote staff and candidates within the Party, engage their faith-based communities, encourage individual Republicans to participate in cultural organizations "so that these organization's leadership is no longer dominated by Democrat-leaning individuals," and develop an extensive network of each group's political operatives.
If the commissioners seem to regard "non-Republicans" as a different species, they also appear to view social media, and communications technology in general, as some kind of incomprehensible alien language. [I must confess to feeling a certain sense of empathy with them about that, but I am fortunate to have many people in my life who can translate for me.] It is clear from the report that the authors attribute Obama's victory primarily to the Democrat's far greater savvy about communications technology and "grass roots" organizing. They passionately believe that it was the "media," and not the "message," that prevailed. For example, they make much of the fact that the Obama campaign asked voters what information they needed to make their decision and provided that knowledge to their volunteers, that Obama's media research and buying staff was 5 to 15 times larger than Romney's, and that campaign workers should be sure to include their contact's cell phone numbers and email addresses in their data bases. They also recommend that the R.N.C. "design, fund, and implement an aggressive early and absentee voting program, and that they should recruit and hire a chief technology and digital officer, as well as "train campaign managers and candidates in basic media terminology and media budgeting/management."
Throughout, the report is a bewildering hodgepodge of superficial technical jargon and business new speak.
Although the "nuts and bolts" of the Autopsy's are too detailed to rehearse here, [You should read it for yourself.] it suffers from at least two major internal contradictions. One is its ambivalent attitude toward the relationship between the R.N. C. and state Republican parties, especially in the allocation of responsibility for implementing the recommendations of the report. It even admits that "the GOP today is a tale of two parties": a "gubernatorial wing" that is growing and successful, and the "federal wing," that is "increasingly marginalizing itself." It exults that Republicans holds almost as many governorships than it had during the glorious 1920s. [And just how did that turn out?] It praises Republican governors as "reformers in chief," who "continue to deliver on conservative promises of reducing the size of government while making people's lives better," regularly "win a larger share of the minority vote than GOP presidential candidates," and "demonstrate an appeal that goes beyond the base of the Party." In all fairness, they make a sincere effort to beef up the role of state parties and to assign them specific tasks in "campaign mechanics," including candidate recruitment, voter contact and registration, vendor selection, polling, media buying and placement, fundraising, and finance. But, understandably, it also gives the R.N.C. ultimate oversight power in all of those areas, all but guaranteeing that considerable conflict will emerge in day to day operations. Exacerbating that tension is the fact that the members of the commission are, almost by definition, mainstream Republicans nervous about the Tea Party orientation of several state parties. They are obviously well aware that the seemingly endless debates and primaries of 2012 pushed Romney farther to the right than they wanted him to go, and drastically shortened his campaign time once he finally received the official nomination. Consequently, they strongly advocate reducing the number of debates and compressing the primary season to a few months early in the election year. By May, at the latest, they want an official Republican presidential candidate who can then try to heal the deep divisions and ruptures that the debates and primaries inevitably exacerbate. Republican Representatives and Senators are also concerned about being "primaried" by extremist candidates who accuse them of being too moderate and who are likely to lose in a general election.
Even more problematic are the report's recommendations for trying to maximize the party's appeal to racial and ethnic minorities, young people, and women. This seems to totally contradict the party's strategy in 2012, which was to disenfranchise as many of those same people as possible through requiring photo IDs, complicating the procedures for registration and voting, shortening the hours and moving the location of polling stations, gerrymandering districts, curtailing early and absentee voting, and various other devises, both legal and surreptitious. [See my post of September 27, 2012 and " The Truth About Voter Fraud" by the Brennan Center for Justice of the New York University School of Law.] Many of those laws are still on the books in various states;
and are only temporarily stayed by injunctions and other legal maneuvers. The most sweeping one of all is the case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court [Shelby County, Alabama v.Holder] which would strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thereby removing the requirement that several states infamous for their suppression of African American voters have to clear any changes in their electoral laws with the Department of Justice. Voter suppression is all part of their wider program to repeal all of the progressive gains of the past century, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Voting Rights Act itself. The ultra right wingers are also trying to get rid of all the regulatory and environment protection laws and leave most Americans to the tender mercies of "the Market," one that is almost completely manipulated by multinational corporations beyond the control of any national government.
So despite all the "mea culpas" and pledges to be more inclusive and more technologically savvy, it is obvious that even the most moderate of Republicans still don't "Get It." And what is the "It" that they do not "Get"? We"ll give them a hint: It is not the "Media."
Thursday, March 28, 2013
The People's Budget
To those who get most of their news and analysis via the mainstream media, it seems as if the nation has only two budget choices--the one clearly absurd and catastrophic, the other not quite that bad, but still pretty awful. The first one, of course, is "the fantasy budget" of Paul Ryan, which is even worse than the 2012 version that the electorate decisively repudiated last November. [Remember? There was an election and Ryan and his running mate lost.] The 2013 version would reduce federal spending by $4.6 trillion over the next decade, repeal the Affordable Care Act [which the voters and even the Supreme Court accepted], reprise his effort to turn Medicare into a voucher program, cut $757 billion from Medicaid over the next decade, cut most safety net programs for the working poor, while keeping January's tax "increases," and proposing an overhaul of the tax structure that would generously benefit the Super Rich and gigantic corporations. Specifically, it would reduce the number of income tax brackets from six to two, lower the maximum rate from 39% to 25%, and transform the corporate tax code to an "international" system. The Center for American Progress has estimated these Tax Cuts for the Super Rich would cost the nation $7 billion in revenue, which Ryan promises will be magically covered by closing mysterious, as yet unspecified "loopholes." As Charles Pierce has charged, in a recent article in Esquire, Ryan's latest budget is "constructed in the same magical thinking, the same conjuring words, the same elusive asterisks, and the same obvious obfuscations of its actual intent." Even Ryan himself admitted to Chris Wallace on Fox News that his projections, assumed the repeal of "Obamacare." When Wallace objected that repeal "was not going to happen," Ryan insisted that "we believe that it should." Incredibly, he also factors in the much-maligned cuts in payment to Medicare providers that would only occur if the ACA stays in effect. Ryan and his cronies also insist on raising the eligibility age for Medicare and cutting federal costs for Medicaid. [I can't help but thinking of the tale ascribed to Abraham Lincoln about the man who planned to build a new cabin out of the materials from the existing one, but was going to live in the existing one until the new one was completed.] Just to show that there are degrees of delusion and craziness even among the Tea Party Republicans, the New York Times of March 19th published an Op-Ed rant by Georgia Republican Congressman Paul C. Brown, proclaiming that "Paul Ryan's Ax Isn't Sharp Enough" because his plan would take ten years to balance the budget, which Brown insisted could be done in a single year.
The supposed alternative to the Ryan budget is the administration-backed Budget Control Act of 2011, reinforced by the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson commission and the budget that just barely passed the Senate on March 22. Although it is slightly less drastic in spending cuts and slightly more aggressive in raising taxes, especially on the Super Rich, it still suffers from two major problems: First of all, it smacks too much of the president's "negotiating strategy," which often seems to be conceding "quids," without demanding some corresponding "quos." It is difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate with people who have shown--over and over again--that they are not willing to compromise. [Case in point: The House passing the Ryan Budget and repeal of the Affordable Care Act even though the voters resoundingly repudiated the one and endorsed the other. How can we claim to have representative government and democracy when election results have no effect on public policy?] Secondly, the administration budget seems to concur that reducing the national debt is more important than easing unemployment and jump-starting the economy. President Obama has stated that "the deals I have put forward, the balanced approach of spending cuts and entitlement reform and tax reform...are still on the table. I've offered sensible reforms to Medicare and other entitlements, and my health care proposals achieve the same amoungt of savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms that have been proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission. [emphasis mine]. Under what Cole Stangler of In These Times refers to as "the technocratic neoliberal budgets of the Obama administration,", domestic spending will be cut by $740 billion in 2013, with more certain to come later. Nor does the other side of the deal--taxes on the richest one percent--come anywhere near offsetting the cuts in domestic services. Specifically, as Robert Kuttner convincingly demonstrates in an article in The American Prospect (24 [Mar/Apr 2013] pp. 58-62), it accepts the absurd notion that economic recovery "requires us to achieve a particular ratio of public debt to to gross domestic product. It steadily rachets down government outlay over a decade. Domestic discretionary spending will be cut from about 7% of GDP to less than 4% this year, to 2.3% by 2023, the lowest since the 1950s. "The economic assumptions behind this logic are backward," according to Kuttner and such progressive economists as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stieglitz, James Galbraith, and Dean Baker. The future debt ratio, Kuttner argues, "reflects not just the consequence of budget deficits but also the rate of economic growth. In a weak economy, too much deficit cutting raises the the ratio of debt to GDP--because it reduces GDP." Cutting the debt ratio is the wrong target, Kuttner insists, "the right one is getting growth back on track." After calling for budget cuts of $4 trillion over the course of a decade, Obama projects that we now only need another $1.5 trillion. That, according to Kuttner, amounts to budget cutting of some 50% larger than that mandated by the infamous "sequester." What is even more scary is the fact that, whatever happens in 2013 the Republicans will press for more in 2014 and beyond. "What we face," he warns, is not a single decisive showdown but ongoing retrench warfare." Their real purpose, after all, has little or nothing to do with national debt, but with gutting the regulatory powers of the federal government over the economy and the environment, while obliterating what is left of the safety net.
If either the House Budget or the administration's counter proposal become the law of the land, the results will be nothing short of disastrous. The best chance of preventing that melt-down lies in The People's Budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with the technical assistance of Economic Policy Institute. Founded in the early 1990s by Bernie Sanders and like-minded Democratic members, it is the largest single caucus of minority members in the House, currently 72. [Although Sanders is officially listed as an Independent, he still caucuses with the Democrats.] According to co-chair Keith Ellison, the CPC "might not be the center of the Congress, but it is the center of America." It spearheads Democratic opposition to cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, a more rapid end to the war in Afghanistan, advocates a transactions tax on Wall Street traders, and is committed to achieve full employment, and a Constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people. It also adamantly opposed to "balancing the budget on the backs of those most in need." It is best known for its espousal of the People's Budget of FY 2012 and the Budget for All for FY 2013. Their general outlines have been endorsed by former President Bill Clinton, Paul Krugman. Dean Baker, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Sachs, Rachel Maddow, The Economist, The New Republic, the Washington Post,The Guardian, The Nation, the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, Rolling Stone, and even Forbes. Although its specifics are too long and complex to rehearse here, the crux of the matter is that it "makes no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits, and asks those who have benefited most from our economy to pay a sensible share." It attacks unemployment with more $2.9 trillion in job creating investments and "utilizes every tool at the government's disposal to get our economy moving again". That includes, among others, a School Improvement Corps, a Park Improvement Corps, and a Student Job Corps, tax incentives to spur clean energy, manufacturing, and cutting-edge technological investments in the private sector, and widespread domestic investments, including an infrastructure bank,a $556 billion surface transportation bill, and more than $2 trillion in widespread domestic investment. It achieves $6.8 trillion in deficit reduction, hits the same debt to GNP ratio as the Republican budget, and has lower deficits in the last five years. It does so by focusing on "the drivers of our debt--unsustainable tax policies, the wars overseas, and policies that helped cause the recent recession--rather than putting the middle class's social safety net on the chopping block." To create a "fairer America," it ends tax cuts for the top 2%, extends tax relief for middle class households and the vast majority of Americans, ends the code's preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends, creates new tax brackets for for millionaires and billionaires, abolishes corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies, eliminates loopholes that allow businesses to dodge their true tax liability,calls for the adoption of the "Buffet Rule," and creates a publicly funded election system that gets corporate money out of politics for good. It "responsibly and expeditiously ends our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and modernizes our military to address 21st century threats and stop contributing to our deficit problems." Finally, it seeks to protect American families by providing a "Making Work Pay tax credit" for families struggling with high gas and food prices, extending the Earned Income Tax Credit, and creating a "Child and Dependent Care Credit," and investing in programs to stave off further foreclosures to keep families in their homes, and to increase investments in education.training and social services. In short, the CPC's budgets would not only restore "the Promise of American Life," for tens of millions of our fellow countrymen, but would make the U.S. comparable and competitive with most other nations in the modernized world. Every progressive ought to familiarize herself or himself with its tenets, and urge every one we know to do the same.
As an historian, I can't help thinking about the original People's Budget, which led to one of the greatest triumphs of progressivism in the history of the United Kingdom. In 1909, the Liberal government of Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, prodded by Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George and President of the Board of Trade Winston Churchill, introduced a budget including several unprecedented taxes on the nation's wealthy, as well as a number of "radical" social welfare programs. Lloyd George and Churchill were derisively called the "Terrible Twins" by their opponents, while the latter's biographer,William Manchester, dubs their program a "revolutionary concept," because it was the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the public through graduated income and inheritance taxes. It also called for a complete land valuation and a 20% tax on increases in value when land changed hands, based in part on the theory of the "general tax" espoused by American reformer Henry George.. As such, it was bitterly opposed by the House of Lords and most members of the Conservative Party. The resultant controversy sparked two general elections in 1910 and the eventual enactment of the Parliament Act of 1911. In introducing the budget on 29 April 1909, Lloyd George proclaimed that it would eliminate poverty:
This is a war budget. It is for raising implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot
help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a
great step towards that good time, when povery, and the wretchedness and human degradation that always
follows in its camp , will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves that once infested its
forests
Its opponents derided it as the "thin end of a socialist wedge," and proposed instead a tariff increase that would have raised the cost of most foodstuffs and and benefit agricultural landowners. In a July speech at Limehouse, Lloyd George, who also favored strengthening the navy, argued that "a fully equipped duke cost as much to keep up as two dreadnaughts," but was "much less easy to scrap." Despite King George IV's private entreaties to pass the budget to avoid a crisis, the Lord's vetoed the budget bill. They did, however, agree to accept it as soon as the Liberals could obtain an electoral mandate. The Liberals responded by making the right to reduce the power of the upper house the focus of the general election held in January, 1910. Both that election and another in December, 1910 resulted in hung parliaments,but the Lords finally accepted the budget, after a tenuous coalition of Liberals, Labour, Unionists and Irish party members agreed to drop the land tax proposal. The Lords finally passed the Parliament Act of 1911, after the new king, George V, reluctantly threatened to flood the House of Lords with hundreds of new Liberal peers nominated by Asquith, Lloyd George, and Churchill. Shades of FDR and the "Court Packing Proposal" of 1937, which failed of adoption but persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the measures of the Second New Deal. Where are Lloyd George and Churchill when we really need them.
JDB
The supposed alternative to the Ryan budget is the administration-backed Budget Control Act of 2011, reinforced by the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson commission and the budget that just barely passed the Senate on March 22. Although it is slightly less drastic in spending cuts and slightly more aggressive in raising taxes, especially on the Super Rich, it still suffers from two major problems: First of all, it smacks too much of the president's "negotiating strategy," which often seems to be conceding "quids," without demanding some corresponding "quos." It is difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate with people who have shown--over and over again--that they are not willing to compromise. [Case in point: The House passing the Ryan Budget and repeal of the Affordable Care Act even though the voters resoundingly repudiated the one and endorsed the other. How can we claim to have representative government and democracy when election results have no effect on public policy?] Secondly, the administration budget seems to concur that reducing the national debt is more important than easing unemployment and jump-starting the economy. President Obama has stated that "the deals I have put forward, the balanced approach of spending cuts and entitlement reform and tax reform...are still on the table. I've offered sensible reforms to Medicare and other entitlements, and my health care proposals achieve the same amoungt of savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms that have been proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission. [emphasis mine]. Under what Cole Stangler of In These Times refers to as "the technocratic neoliberal budgets of the Obama administration,", domestic spending will be cut by $740 billion in 2013, with more certain to come later. Nor does the other side of the deal--taxes on the richest one percent--come anywhere near offsetting the cuts in domestic services. Specifically, as Robert Kuttner convincingly demonstrates in an article in The American Prospect (24 [Mar/Apr 2013] pp. 58-62), it accepts the absurd notion that economic recovery "requires us to achieve a particular ratio of public debt to to gross domestic product. It steadily rachets down government outlay over a decade. Domestic discretionary spending will be cut from about 7% of GDP to less than 4% this year, to 2.3% by 2023, the lowest since the 1950s. "The economic assumptions behind this logic are backward," according to Kuttner and such progressive economists as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stieglitz, James Galbraith, and Dean Baker. The future debt ratio, Kuttner argues, "reflects not just the consequence of budget deficits but also the rate of economic growth. In a weak economy, too much deficit cutting raises the the ratio of debt to GDP--because it reduces GDP." Cutting the debt ratio is the wrong target, Kuttner insists, "the right one is getting growth back on track." After calling for budget cuts of $4 trillion over the course of a decade, Obama projects that we now only need another $1.5 trillion. That, according to Kuttner, amounts to budget cutting of some 50% larger than that mandated by the infamous "sequester." What is even more scary is the fact that, whatever happens in 2013 the Republicans will press for more in 2014 and beyond. "What we face," he warns, is not a single decisive showdown but ongoing retrench warfare." Their real purpose, after all, has little or nothing to do with national debt, but with gutting the regulatory powers of the federal government over the economy and the environment, while obliterating what is left of the safety net.
If either the House Budget or the administration's counter proposal become the law of the land, the results will be nothing short of disastrous. The best chance of preventing that melt-down lies in The People's Budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, with the technical assistance of Economic Policy Institute. Founded in the early 1990s by Bernie Sanders and like-minded Democratic members, it is the largest single caucus of minority members in the House, currently 72. [Although Sanders is officially listed as an Independent, he still caucuses with the Democrats.] According to co-chair Keith Ellison, the CPC "might not be the center of the Congress, but it is the center of America." It spearheads Democratic opposition to cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, a more rapid end to the war in Afghanistan, advocates a transactions tax on Wall Street traders, and is committed to achieve full employment, and a Constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people. It also adamantly opposed to "balancing the budget on the backs of those most in need." It is best known for its espousal of the People's Budget of FY 2012 and the Budget for All for FY 2013. Their general outlines have been endorsed by former President Bill Clinton, Paul Krugman. Dean Baker, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Sachs, Rachel Maddow, The Economist, The New Republic, the Washington Post,The Guardian, The Nation, the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, Rolling Stone, and even Forbes. Although its specifics are too long and complex to rehearse here, the crux of the matter is that it "makes no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits, and asks those who have benefited most from our economy to pay a sensible share." It attacks unemployment with more $2.9 trillion in job creating investments and "utilizes every tool at the government's disposal to get our economy moving again". That includes, among others, a School Improvement Corps, a Park Improvement Corps, and a Student Job Corps, tax incentives to spur clean energy, manufacturing, and cutting-edge technological investments in the private sector, and widespread domestic investments, including an infrastructure bank,a $556 billion surface transportation bill, and more than $2 trillion in widespread domestic investment. It achieves $6.8 trillion in deficit reduction, hits the same debt to GNP ratio as the Republican budget, and has lower deficits in the last five years. It does so by focusing on "the drivers of our debt--unsustainable tax policies, the wars overseas, and policies that helped cause the recent recession--rather than putting the middle class's social safety net on the chopping block." To create a "fairer America," it ends tax cuts for the top 2%, extends tax relief for middle class households and the vast majority of Americans, ends the code's preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends, creates new tax brackets for for millionaires and billionaires, abolishes corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies, eliminates loopholes that allow businesses to dodge their true tax liability,calls for the adoption of the "Buffet Rule," and creates a publicly funded election system that gets corporate money out of politics for good. It "responsibly and expeditiously ends our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and modernizes our military to address 21st century threats and stop contributing to our deficit problems." Finally, it seeks to protect American families by providing a "Making Work Pay tax credit" for families struggling with high gas and food prices, extending the Earned Income Tax Credit, and creating a "Child and Dependent Care Credit," and investing in programs to stave off further foreclosures to keep families in their homes, and to increase investments in education.training and social services. In short, the CPC's budgets would not only restore "the Promise of American Life," for tens of millions of our fellow countrymen, but would make the U.S. comparable and competitive with most other nations in the modernized world. Every progressive ought to familiarize herself or himself with its tenets, and urge every one we know to do the same.
As an historian, I can't help thinking about the original People's Budget, which led to one of the greatest triumphs of progressivism in the history of the United Kingdom. In 1909, the Liberal government of Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, prodded by Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George and President of the Board of Trade Winston Churchill, introduced a budget including several unprecedented taxes on the nation's wealthy, as well as a number of "radical" social welfare programs. Lloyd George and Churchill were derisively called the "Terrible Twins" by their opponents, while the latter's biographer,William Manchester, dubs their program a "revolutionary concept," because it was the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the public through graduated income and inheritance taxes. It also called for a complete land valuation and a 20% tax on increases in value when land changed hands, based in part on the theory of the "general tax" espoused by American reformer Henry George.. As such, it was bitterly opposed by the House of Lords and most members of the Conservative Party. The resultant controversy sparked two general elections in 1910 and the eventual enactment of the Parliament Act of 1911. In introducing the budget on 29 April 1909, Lloyd George proclaimed that it would eliminate poverty:
This is a war budget. It is for raising implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot
help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a
great step towards that good time, when povery, and the wretchedness and human degradation that always
follows in its camp , will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves that once infested its
forests
Its opponents derided it as the "thin end of a socialist wedge," and proposed instead a tariff increase that would have raised the cost of most foodstuffs and and benefit agricultural landowners. In a July speech at Limehouse, Lloyd George, who also favored strengthening the navy, argued that "a fully equipped duke cost as much to keep up as two dreadnaughts," but was "much less easy to scrap." Despite King George IV's private entreaties to pass the budget to avoid a crisis, the Lord's vetoed the budget bill. They did, however, agree to accept it as soon as the Liberals could obtain an electoral mandate. The Liberals responded by making the right to reduce the power of the upper house the focus of the general election held in January, 1910. Both that election and another in December, 1910 resulted in hung parliaments,but the Lords finally accepted the budget, after a tenuous coalition of Liberals, Labour, Unionists and Irish party members agreed to drop the land tax proposal. The Lords finally passed the Parliament Act of 1911, after the new king, George V, reluctantly threatened to flood the House of Lords with hundreds of new Liberal peers nominated by Asquith, Lloyd George, and Churchill. Shades of FDR and the "Court Packing Proposal" of 1937, which failed of adoption but persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the measures of the Second New Deal. Where are Lloyd George and Churchill when we really need them.
JDB
Thursday, February 28, 2013
The War of Words
There is definitely a "war of words" between reactionaries and progressives, and our side is losing. That is pretty sad, considering that most of us are "words people." Not only do most of us earn our daily bread by the written or spoken word, but we are generally better educated, well read, and articulate than our opponents. And yet, we keep letting our adversaries impose their nomenclature on the most crucial debates of the day. No matter how much we protest, the mainstream media always seem to adopt the right's shorthand frame of reference rather than ours.
[Mayhap that says something important about the quality of today's journalism, but that is a topic for another post.]
The popular terms are almost always loaded with value judgments that allow opponents to put us on the defensive. Take, for instance, the general acceptance by the communications media, and even "progressive" politicians, of the term "entitlement" to characterize the terms of the debate over Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other items of our shredded and inadequate safety net. To my way of thinking, an entitlement is something that you possess without having done anything to earn it, such as "picking the right parents," marrying the boss's daughter, or gaining legacy admission to a university otherwise beyond your capability. Put in baseball lingo, it is like waking up on third base and assuming that you got there by hitting a triple. [The most extreme cases wait confidently for the umpire to call a balk on the pitcher, so they can stroll home unimpeded.] The term "entitlement"is actually the polar opposite of programs that people have earned by a lifetime of labor, and that they and their employers have contributed toward financially for that same length of time.
Equally egregious is the alacrity with which progressives and the mainstream media have accepted "Obamacare" as a shorthand term for discussing the Affordable Care Act. Like entitlement, it began as a term of derision and a weapon with which to bludgeon the president and other progressive candidates during the recent election campaign. It is still a term of opprobrium designed to coerce state officials into refusing to participate in the insurance exchanges that are the "building blocks"--inadequate as they most certainly are-- of the nascent health care system. [Here in Wisconsin, our esteemed governor Scott Walker has just announced his decision to refuse to participate, turning down the federal money attached. He will soon announce his own plan for Wisconsin, which promises to be a bonanza for everyone but patients]. It is also clearly designed to mobilize resistance to the individual and employer mandates that are equally as crucial to the success of the ACA.
Then there is the "fiscal cliff," the "sequester," the "Grand Bargain," "Fix the Debt,"and all the other terms thrown around with reckless abandon by those whom Paul Krugman calls "fiscal scolds" and "austerians". The simplistic analogy between the family household budget and that of the federal government ranges between pathetic and absurd. It holds water only "if those households can print dollar bills in the basement," as John Buell so succinctly puts in in The Progressive Populist. "A sovereign government the debts of which are denominated in its own currency," he adds "can never default unless it chooses to do so." And if my household had the kind of taxing power conferred on the federal government by Article I, Section 8 and the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, I would have exercised it more times than I can count. Whether those who constantly invoke that analogy really believe it themselves is highly unlikely, but it is difficult to underestimate the knowledge base and reasoning ability of either Congress or Wall Street. Either way, the analogy serves as a tried and true smokescreen for right wingers, an excuse to diminish or eliminate government programs. "The real north star of Ryan's policy record," as Ezra Klein of the Washington Post has cogently observed, "isn't deficits or spending, though he often uses those concerns in service of his real agenda. It's radically reforming the way the federal government provides public services, usually by privatizing or devolving those public services away from the federal government."
This deliberate falsification in the right-wing labeling of crucial public issues is long and growing. Here are some that I find especially widespread and pernicious:
Pro-Life or Right to Life
Although some "pro-lifers" admit of exceptions [e.g.rape, incest, serious defects in the fetus], or broaden their concerns to include opposition to capital punishment, torture, or abuse of women and children, the core belief remains opposition to abortion in any form. Moreover, the rebuttal most commonly used to describe the other side, namely "pro-choice," has inadvertently handed the anti-abortion forces an additional weapon by claiming that most women who resort to abortion do so frivolously or callously.
Death Tax
Inheritance or estate taxes do not fall on the deceased, but rather upon the unearned income of their beneficiaries. In any case, the tax threshold is set so high that it reaches only the super-rich. Those beneficiaries whose inheritance falls below that threshold are not effected at all. Even Andrew Carnegie, who vehemently opposed the federal income tax, argued that those who were unable or unwilling to dispose of their wealth through charitable contributions, deserved to have it confiscated and applied to the general welfare.
Right to Work
Unable to bring back indentured servitude, employers used every possible device or method to ensure that workers had to bargain for wages, hours of labor, working conditions, or benefits as individuals, not as members of a labor union or other type of employee organization. Against overwhelming odds, and with help from progressive politicians, many unions succeeded in gaining the right to bargain collectively by the post-World War II era. Since that high point in the early 1960s, however, employer organizations and "free-market" ideologues have succeeded in rolling back the calendar to the Gilded Age,destroying the majority of private sector unions and are utilizing
every means possible to eliminate public sector bargaining units as well. To buttress their case against public sector unions, they have worked at labeling teachers, policemen, fire fighters, social workers, emergency relief personnel, and other civil servants as public employees--a diabolically clever attempt at constructing a double-double entendre.
Voter Fraud
Despite the fact that every serious, non-partisan study conducted by such unimpeachable institutions as the Brennan Center of the New York University Law School, the League of Women Voters, and the Public Policy Institute have found that claims of illegal voting to be virtually non-existent, the Republican Party launched a massive campaign during the 2012 elections to require photo IDs, limit provisional and absentee balloting, complicate registration and voting procedures and various other measures to discourage or prevent voting by those most likely to vote Democratic. [See, for example, my earlier posts on Voter Suppression and the need for a national voting law.] Although most of these were temporarily blocked by the courts and the Justice Department, it is obvious that right-wing Republicans are preparing to mount an even more momentous campaign in 2013 and beyond. In the most basic sense of the term, they are clearly out to destroy our democratic system, which has taken more than two centuries of struggle to establish.
Right to Bear Arms
It is painfully obvious that we will never come to anything like a consensus over the meaning of the Second Amendment.That is not surprising since even the people who wrote it and ratified it did not agree on its definition. Is the right to bear arms an individual one or a collective one? The best way to begin the dialogue is to start with matters on which there is majority agreement and work out from there. According to a January NTTimes/ CBS News Poll, 53% would agree to a nationwide ban on semiautomatic weapons, 74% favor prohibiting the sale of high-capacity magazines, 92% would support background checks on all potential gun buyers, and 78% feel that there should be a nationwide data base of all gun sales. Not surprisingly, households without guns favor these measures a good deal more than those who keep guns in their homes, while women are more supportive than men. The NRA has succeeded in making this seem an "all or nothing" issue, which it clearly isn't.
Demographic. Inner City. Urban
The latest in a long line of code words used to describe racial and ethnic minorities and poor people in general. They are designed to mask the real meaning and motive of right-wing Republican efforts to disenfranchise millions of voters by Voter ID laws, gerrymandering of Congressional districts, eliminating same day registration and voting, as well as organized registration and voting drives, curtailment of early voting and provisional ballots, reducing the hours for voting. and the number and locations of polling places As I have already shown in my earlier posts, many of these are simply rehashes of the voter suppression laws of the Jim Crow Era.
Corporations as "Persons"
This is essentially a perversion of the Fourteenth Amendment which made former slaves citizens of the U.S. and of the states in which they reside, prohibiting the states from denying them either due process or equal protection. The concept of "corporate personhood" dates from the Supreme Court's 1886 decision in Santa Clara County v.The Southern Pacific Railroad Company. But it was not part of the Court's official decision, but rather a , "headnote" written by the court reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis, former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company. [Headnotes are "not the work of the Court, but are simply the work of the Reporter, giving his understanding of the decision, prepared for the convenience of the profession."] The claim that "corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States" comes from the brief filed by counsel for the Southern Pacific and was never discussed by the members of the Court. In fact, Chief Justice Morrison Waite expressly stated at the outset that the Court did not wish to consider or discuss the issue because "we are all of the opinion that it does." At best then, the supposedly sacrosanct doctrine that corporations were protected from state regulation by the 14th Amendment was only the court reporter's rendition of the personal opinion of the Chief Justice who claimed to speak for the entire Court on an issue which they never even discussed. It was not part of the Court's official decision and appears only in Davis's headnote in the United States Reports, which the other justices may--or may not--have even read and which has no legal status. In Connecticut General Life Insurance Company v. Johnson (1938) Justice Hugo Black held that "the history of the amendment proves that the people were told that its purpose was to protect weak and helpless human beings and were not told that it was intended to to remove corporations in any fashion from the control of state governments...The language of the amendment itself does not support the theory that it was passed for the benefit of corporations." Writing in 1949, Justice William O. Douglas said that "the Santa Clara case becomes one of the most momentous of all our decisions...Corporations were now armed with constitutional prerogatives."
Money as "Free Speech"
This pipe dream was made real in the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission on 21 January 2010. The justices divided 5-4 on the question of whether corporations could use money out of their treasury to support or oppose specific candidates during an election. The conservative majority consisted of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, while the dissenting minority was composed of Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. (To show that it was not favoring corporations, the majority also included labor union as if their ability to raise money was the equal and opposite of corporations. In what universe is that real?) The ruling ignored numerous precedents in which earlier Courts had barred corporations from electioneering, while overturning most of the provisions of the existing McCain-Feingold Act. The majority opinion went so far as deny that corporate electioneering would even give the appearance of impropriety. In his 90 page dissent, part of which he actually read from the bench, John Paul Stevens asserted that the decision "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution....A democracy cannot function efficiently when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold." Because several of the candidates backed by corporate money failed of election in 2012, some critics have expressed relief and argue that grass roots mobilizing can effectively counter corporate money every time.. But 2012 was only the first round. They will get better at it, believe me. If it takes a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, then lets get busy enacting one.
What can progressives do to counter this manipulation and distortion of language in the service of reactionary politics? Obviously, there is no quick or easy answer, but I think that following excerpt from "Language Versus Lies" by Scott Russell Sanders in the latest issue of The Progressive is a good place to begin:
[Mayhap that says something important about the quality of today's journalism, but that is a topic for another post.]
The popular terms are almost always loaded with value judgments that allow opponents to put us on the defensive. Take, for instance, the general acceptance by the communications media, and even "progressive" politicians, of the term "entitlement" to characterize the terms of the debate over Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other items of our shredded and inadequate safety net. To my way of thinking, an entitlement is something that you possess without having done anything to earn it, such as "picking the right parents," marrying the boss's daughter, or gaining legacy admission to a university otherwise beyond your capability. Put in baseball lingo, it is like waking up on third base and assuming that you got there by hitting a triple. [The most extreme cases wait confidently for the umpire to call a balk on the pitcher, so they can stroll home unimpeded.] The term "entitlement"is actually the polar opposite of programs that people have earned by a lifetime of labor, and that they and their employers have contributed toward financially for that same length of time.
Equally egregious is the alacrity with which progressives and the mainstream media have accepted "Obamacare" as a shorthand term for discussing the Affordable Care Act. Like entitlement, it began as a term of derision and a weapon with which to bludgeon the president and other progressive candidates during the recent election campaign. It is still a term of opprobrium designed to coerce state officials into refusing to participate in the insurance exchanges that are the "building blocks"--inadequate as they most certainly are-- of the nascent health care system. [Here in Wisconsin, our esteemed governor Scott Walker has just announced his decision to refuse to participate, turning down the federal money attached. He will soon announce his own plan for Wisconsin, which promises to be a bonanza for everyone but patients]. It is also clearly designed to mobilize resistance to the individual and employer mandates that are equally as crucial to the success of the ACA.
Then there is the "fiscal cliff," the "sequester," the "Grand Bargain," "Fix the Debt,"and all the other terms thrown around with reckless abandon by those whom Paul Krugman calls "fiscal scolds" and "austerians". The simplistic analogy between the family household budget and that of the federal government ranges between pathetic and absurd. It holds water only "if those households can print dollar bills in the basement," as John Buell so succinctly puts in in The Progressive Populist. "A sovereign government the debts of which are denominated in its own currency," he adds "can never default unless it chooses to do so." And if my household had the kind of taxing power conferred on the federal government by Article I, Section 8 and the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, I would have exercised it more times than I can count. Whether those who constantly invoke that analogy really believe it themselves is highly unlikely, but it is difficult to underestimate the knowledge base and reasoning ability of either Congress or Wall Street. Either way, the analogy serves as a tried and true smokescreen for right wingers, an excuse to diminish or eliminate government programs. "The real north star of Ryan's policy record," as Ezra Klein of the Washington Post has cogently observed, "isn't deficits or spending, though he often uses those concerns in service of his real agenda. It's radically reforming the way the federal government provides public services, usually by privatizing or devolving those public services away from the federal government."
This deliberate falsification in the right-wing labeling of crucial public issues is long and growing. Here are some that I find especially widespread and pernicious:
Pro-Life or Right to Life
Although some "pro-lifers" admit of exceptions [e.g.rape, incest, serious defects in the fetus], or broaden their concerns to include opposition to capital punishment, torture, or abuse of women and children, the core belief remains opposition to abortion in any form. Moreover, the rebuttal most commonly used to describe the other side, namely "pro-choice," has inadvertently handed the anti-abortion forces an additional weapon by claiming that most women who resort to abortion do so frivolously or callously.
Death Tax
Inheritance or estate taxes do not fall on the deceased, but rather upon the unearned income of their beneficiaries. In any case, the tax threshold is set so high that it reaches only the super-rich. Those beneficiaries whose inheritance falls below that threshold are not effected at all. Even Andrew Carnegie, who vehemently opposed the federal income tax, argued that those who were unable or unwilling to dispose of their wealth through charitable contributions, deserved to have it confiscated and applied to the general welfare.
Right to Work
Unable to bring back indentured servitude, employers used every possible device or method to ensure that workers had to bargain for wages, hours of labor, working conditions, or benefits as individuals, not as members of a labor union or other type of employee organization. Against overwhelming odds, and with help from progressive politicians, many unions succeeded in gaining the right to bargain collectively by the post-World War II era. Since that high point in the early 1960s, however, employer organizations and "free-market" ideologues have succeeded in rolling back the calendar to the Gilded Age,destroying the majority of private sector unions and are utilizing
every means possible to eliminate public sector bargaining units as well. To buttress their case against public sector unions, they have worked at labeling teachers, policemen, fire fighters, social workers, emergency relief personnel, and other civil servants as public employees--a diabolically clever attempt at constructing a double-double entendre.
Voter Fraud
Despite the fact that every serious, non-partisan study conducted by such unimpeachable institutions as the Brennan Center of the New York University Law School, the League of Women Voters, and the Public Policy Institute have found that claims of illegal voting to be virtually non-existent, the Republican Party launched a massive campaign during the 2012 elections to require photo IDs, limit provisional and absentee balloting, complicate registration and voting procedures and various other measures to discourage or prevent voting by those most likely to vote Democratic. [See, for example, my earlier posts on Voter Suppression and the need for a national voting law.] Although most of these were temporarily blocked by the courts and the Justice Department, it is obvious that right-wing Republicans are preparing to mount an even more momentous campaign in 2013 and beyond. In the most basic sense of the term, they are clearly out to destroy our democratic system, which has taken more than two centuries of struggle to establish.
Right to Bear Arms
It is painfully obvious that we will never come to anything like a consensus over the meaning of the Second Amendment.That is not surprising since even the people who wrote it and ratified it did not agree on its definition. Is the right to bear arms an individual one or a collective one? The best way to begin the dialogue is to start with matters on which there is majority agreement and work out from there. According to a January NTTimes/ CBS News Poll, 53% would agree to a nationwide ban on semiautomatic weapons, 74% favor prohibiting the sale of high-capacity magazines, 92% would support background checks on all potential gun buyers, and 78% feel that there should be a nationwide data base of all gun sales. Not surprisingly, households without guns favor these measures a good deal more than those who keep guns in their homes, while women are more supportive than men. The NRA has succeeded in making this seem an "all or nothing" issue, which it clearly isn't.
Demographic. Inner City. Urban
The latest in a long line of code words used to describe racial and ethnic minorities and poor people in general. They are designed to mask the real meaning and motive of right-wing Republican efforts to disenfranchise millions of voters by Voter ID laws, gerrymandering of Congressional districts, eliminating same day registration and voting, as well as organized registration and voting drives, curtailment of early voting and provisional ballots, reducing the hours for voting. and the number and locations of polling places As I have already shown in my earlier posts, many of these are simply rehashes of the voter suppression laws of the Jim Crow Era.
Corporations as "Persons"
This is essentially a perversion of the Fourteenth Amendment which made former slaves citizens of the U.S. and of the states in which they reside, prohibiting the states from denying them either due process or equal protection. The concept of "corporate personhood" dates from the Supreme Court's 1886 decision in Santa Clara County v.The Southern Pacific Railroad Company. But it was not part of the Court's official decision, but rather a , "headnote" written by the court reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis, former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company. [Headnotes are "not the work of the Court, but are simply the work of the Reporter, giving his understanding of the decision, prepared for the convenience of the profession."] The claim that "corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States" comes from the brief filed by counsel for the Southern Pacific and was never discussed by the members of the Court. In fact, Chief Justice Morrison Waite expressly stated at the outset that the Court did not wish to consider or discuss the issue because "we are all of the opinion that it does." At best then, the supposedly sacrosanct doctrine that corporations were protected from state regulation by the 14th Amendment was only the court reporter's rendition of the personal opinion of the Chief Justice who claimed to speak for the entire Court on an issue which they never even discussed. It was not part of the Court's official decision and appears only in Davis's headnote in the United States Reports, which the other justices may--or may not--have even read and which has no legal status. In Connecticut General Life Insurance Company v. Johnson (1938) Justice Hugo Black held that "the history of the amendment proves that the people were told that its purpose was to protect weak and helpless human beings and were not told that it was intended to to remove corporations in any fashion from the control of state governments...The language of the amendment itself does not support the theory that it was passed for the benefit of corporations." Writing in 1949, Justice William O. Douglas said that "the Santa Clara case becomes one of the most momentous of all our decisions...Corporations were now armed with constitutional prerogatives."
Money as "Free Speech"
This pipe dream was made real in the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission on 21 January 2010. The justices divided 5-4 on the question of whether corporations could use money out of their treasury to support or oppose specific candidates during an election. The conservative majority consisted of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, while the dissenting minority was composed of Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. (To show that it was not favoring corporations, the majority also included labor union as if their ability to raise money was the equal and opposite of corporations. In what universe is that real?) The ruling ignored numerous precedents in which earlier Courts had barred corporations from electioneering, while overturning most of the provisions of the existing McCain-Feingold Act. The majority opinion went so far as deny that corporate electioneering would even give the appearance of impropriety. In his 90 page dissent, part of which he actually read from the bench, John Paul Stevens asserted that the decision "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution....A democracy cannot function efficiently when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold." Because several of the candidates backed by corporate money failed of election in 2012, some critics have expressed relief and argue that grass roots mobilizing can effectively counter corporate money every time.. But 2012 was only the first round. They will get better at it, believe me. If it takes a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, then lets get busy enacting one.
What can progressives do to counter this manipulation and distortion of language in the service of reactionary politics? Obviously, there is no quick or easy answer, but I think that following excerpt from "Language Versus Lies" by Scott Russell Sanders in the latest issue of The Progressive is a good place to begin:
We can examine every slogan and label critically, those we use ourselves as well as those
encounter in the public arena. We can challenge euphemisms. we can insist that torture
is torture, murder is murder, poison is poison. We can expose verbal tricks. We can defend
the names of things we value from those who would corrupt them. We can maintain, for example,
that corporations are legal constructs, not persons, and therefore not entitled to the rights of human
beings, regardless of what a slender majority on the Supreme Court might argue.We can explain that
"outsourcing" means the elimination of jobs in one place by moving them to another place, usually
abroad, where labor is cheaper and safeguards for workers and nature are weaker. We can show what
the coal industry calls "mountaintop removal mining" is is really "mountaintop devastation
mining," because the forests, animals, topsoil, and stone blasted from the peaks and dumped into
waterways are not simply "removed," as a hat or lid of a pot might be, but are permanently shattered,
fouling streams, destroying habitats and erasing beauty. We can explain that "death taxes" are not
levied on the dead, who have passed beyond reach of the IRS, but on the heirs who did nothing to earn
the money; and they are levied, moreover,on only a tiny fraction of estates, the gargantuan ones, which
typically accumulate tax-free in shelters available only to the super rich. We can observe that abortion
opponents who advocate the "right to life" of fetuses rarely show equal concern for the needs of the
resulting children, let alone for the fate of the millions of species that are being driven to extinction by
the relentless growth of human population. But we need not give in to lies. We need not surrender
language, the greatest of all our common creations, to charlatans. We can defend the things we love,
and language itself, by striving to speak and write clearly, accurately, and honestly.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Casting Abraham Lincoln as a Ghostly Shill
How far will corporations and their advertising stooges go in their pursuit of a buck? To quote Buzz Lightyear: "to infinity and beyond." I frequently revise my list of the most self-serving, tasteless, and arrogant commercials. I must tell you that the current advertising campaign for "The Lincoln Motor Company" has catapulted to the top of my list, and I sincerely hope that there will be nothing in the near future to challenge its hegemony.
History and common sense both tell us that Lincoln, the man, and Lincoln, the automobile, never crossed paths. We know that the "Great Emancipator" was assassinated in 1865, while the first automobile of that name did not appear until 1908. We are also are aware that Lincoln, the automobile, has been the luxury division of the Ford Motor Company for most of the past century. Thus the full page ad that "The Lincoln Motor Company" took out in the December 10, 2012 New York Times is "something of a puzzlement," to quote the King of Siam. It is introduced with the headline "Hello, Again," in boldface type. The text begins with the obsequious and putative self-deprecating declaration that 'It takes a special type of ego to presume that the world needs another luxury car." In fact, "it's a bit like the kind [of ego] that interrupts your otherwise meaningful pursuit of current events with a full page ode to our intentions." How does the reader really know that he or she has that "special type of ego": To really see, look inward." [Obsequious is not a strong enough word, but I can't think of any other that doesn't involve affection for unspeakable body parts. Even Narcissus would hesitate.]
Besides, it continues, "sometimes ego isn't as self-serving as it sounds," because "true trail blazers follow their inner light." You have to be "pretty confident to create what has never been done. It is true in history, invention, art, you name it. Even automotive design...The Lincoln Motor Company is undoubtedly traveling down a different road, and only those who have what it takes to be a "true trailblazer" deserve to take that same route."[ As the old saw says, "it takes one to know one."' The ad mildly chastises Henry Ford for trying "to create the most popular car in the world," while praising his son Edsel for taking "a fundamentally different approach at Lincoln." In a self-conscious attempt at candor, the ad concedes that "the cars Edsel created were different" and that 'truth be told, not everyone liked them." Nevertheless, the ad continues, Edsel dedicated himself to an uncompromising belief in design...because he knew the best way to serve the driver was to design the best possible car." Those who liked them "found four-wheeled kindred spiits that spoke to therm." Sometimes, it pontificates, "it is worth sacrificing the lukewarm affection of some, if it means forging a remarkable bond between man and machine." "Edsels's ego was the self-sacrificing kind (???) that served only one thing--the needs of the individuals who drove his cars." This is how Lincoln started. This is how we will become great again.
Despite its strong beginnings, the ad confesses,"our once great company eventually lost its way. Which is why we're introducing a full-blown reimagining of the one you once knew--or in many cases, never knew." [After all, Edsel died in 1943.] During that brief hiatus, however, "we've picked up a few things about making cars. To think smaller. Smarter. More nimbly." We have refocused "on the things that made us great--starting with a new design studio." Over the next four years, the company pledges to release "four disarmingly new models," reinvigorate dealerships, and elevate our owner services to be on a par with the world's most exclusive concierges." In short, We have reinvented the wheel by placing you at the center. Ultimately, they proclaim, "this is an investment hell-bent on rewarding not us, but the individual," so that "you'll find a refreshing respect for your time, whether you are shopping for a Lincoln or driving one." You will be treated "as a client, not as a customer," and you will "get the distinctive sense that there are people at Lincoln who actually care." Their goal, the ad frankly asserts, "is not a car in every driveway [take that, Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford], our name in every household, nor to be all things to all people. Simply, our goal is to be everything for a certain few.
Translated into realspeak by analyst Bill Vlasic, in the Times "AUTOMOBILES" section, however,this imperious argumentum ad nauseam reads "Ford Redoubles Effort to Reawaken Its Sleepy Lincoln Brand." In the highly competitive world of luxury cars, Vlasic flatly states, "the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln brand has long been stuck in the slow lane, with stodgy models, older buyers, and a distinct lack of pizazz." Left in the dust by BMW, Lexus, Cadillac, and Mercedes-Benz, Lincoln ranks eighth, and falling, among luxury cars sold in the U.S. It accounts for just 3 percent of Ford's total sales, down from 8 percent in the early 1990s."There is nothing more frustrating for us," according to James D. Farley, the newly named chief of the Lincoln Revival Team,"than to have someone who loves their Ford car and S.U.V., but goes out to buy a luxury model from another brand because we don't have one." [I am fairly certain that those Americans not looking to buy a third car--and a luxury one at that--can think of a million things more frustrating.] The big question is, according to the marketing firm Trout and Partners, "how can Lincoln convince people it is more than a gassed-up Ford.?" The answer, as Vlasic interprets the gist of the Lincoln advertising campaign, is "upgraded customer service initiatives, a new brand name that plays down the Ford connection and an unusual advertising campaign that features Abraham Lincoln, the president for whom the brand is named." Its 300 leaders "are learning the new tenets of luxury service at training sessions nicknamed the Lincoln Academy. A 108-page manual of 'luxury truths' details the new approach to pampering potential buyers, ranging from how to welcome them at a dealership to celebrating the anniversary of their purchase."
This "rechristening," involves television spots that begin "with an image of Lincoln, stovepipe hat and all." It also presumably involves improving the automobiles themselves, as well as "a revamped Web site that links consumers to a Lincoln "concierge," who can arrange test drives or set up appointments at dealerships." The latter will also feature "a consultant available 24 hours a day for live discussions about the products and to streamline the buying process. Prospective buyers will be given "an opportunity for a 'date-night with Lincoln' [surely the car and not the president, although who can doubt the marvels that adverting technology has in store for the future?] which includes a two-day test drive and a free meal at a restaurant." A newly formed team of 200 people "is intent on establishing the Lincoln Motor Company as a boutique luxury line known for personalized service." Every customer who reserves the pioneering MKZ model, "will be presented with an elegant gift upon receiving the car"--a choice of fine wines and Champagne, custom-made jewelry or sunglasses, or a one-night stay at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.
But all of this would be simply an modernized version of the obscene excesses of the decaying Roman Empire or Gilded Age America, if it weren't for its use of Abraham Lincoln as a metaphor for its cars. "The name Lincoln has a very strong meaning for this country," says Farley, chief of the Lincoln Revival Team. "What he stood for as president was independence [I don't think that Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee would agree] fortitude and elegant thinking." Needless to say, "any connection with the new Stephen Spielberg film about the widely admired president, is both fortunate and coincidental...We didn't plan it that way, but sometimes it's better to be lucky." Lets see. What is Lincoln's most popular nickname? HONEST ABE?
THE OFFICIAL 2013 LINCOLN MKZ COMMERCIAL begins with the image of a tall man in a frock coat, complete with stovepipe hat, floating toward us out of the mists of time. The reverential voice-over assures us that "this is about moving forward by looking back" Amid the collage of seemingly disconnected images that follow are brief glimpses of Lincoln with frock coattails flowing and looking thoughtfully out to sea. As the narrator breathlessly intones some gobbledegook about "setting precedents for presidents," there are flashes of FDR, Dean Martin, and [I think] Clark Gable. Go Figure! The narrator concludes by saying "This is about going places where others aren't. Introducing The Lincoln Motor Company." My favorite Lincoln commercial, however, shows a young couple driving a 1940s model over an idyllic country road, while an evanescent image of "the man" floats tantalizingly over the surrounding countryside.
Curiously enough, there was no image of Lincoln in the company's horrendous Super Bowl commercial that one critic pronounced "an immediate contender for the titles of the worst Super Bowl commercial of all time and worst car commercial of all time, an unlikely and breathtaking confluence of failures." Maybe they should have invoked the blessing of the president who saved the Union and freed the slaves.
JDB
History and common sense both tell us that Lincoln, the man, and Lincoln, the automobile, never crossed paths. We know that the "Great Emancipator" was assassinated in 1865, while the first automobile of that name did not appear until 1908. We are also are aware that Lincoln, the automobile, has been the luxury division of the Ford Motor Company for most of the past century. Thus the full page ad that "The Lincoln Motor Company" took out in the December 10, 2012 New York Times is "something of a puzzlement," to quote the King of Siam. It is introduced with the headline "Hello, Again," in boldface type. The text begins with the obsequious and putative self-deprecating declaration that 'It takes a special type of ego to presume that the world needs another luxury car." In fact, "it's a bit like the kind [of ego] that interrupts your otherwise meaningful pursuit of current events with a full page ode to our intentions." How does the reader really know that he or she has that "special type of ego": To really see, look inward." [Obsequious is not a strong enough word, but I can't think of any other that doesn't involve affection for unspeakable body parts. Even Narcissus would hesitate.]
Besides, it continues, "sometimes ego isn't as self-serving as it sounds," because "true trail blazers follow their inner light." You have to be "pretty confident to create what has never been done. It is true in history, invention, art, you name it. Even automotive design...The Lincoln Motor Company is undoubtedly traveling down a different road, and only those who have what it takes to be a "true trailblazer" deserve to take that same route."[ As the old saw says, "it takes one to know one."' The ad mildly chastises Henry Ford for trying "to create the most popular car in the world," while praising his son Edsel for taking "a fundamentally different approach at Lincoln." In a self-conscious attempt at candor, the ad concedes that "the cars Edsel created were different" and that 'truth be told, not everyone liked them." Nevertheless, the ad continues, Edsel dedicated himself to an uncompromising belief in design...because he knew the best way to serve the driver was to design the best possible car." Those who liked them "found four-wheeled kindred spiits that spoke to therm." Sometimes, it pontificates, "it is worth sacrificing the lukewarm affection of some, if it means forging a remarkable bond between man and machine." "Edsels's ego was the self-sacrificing kind (???) that served only one thing--the needs of the individuals who drove his cars." This is how Lincoln started. This is how we will become great again.
Despite its strong beginnings, the ad confesses,"our once great company eventually lost its way. Which is why we're introducing a full-blown reimagining of the one you once knew--or in many cases, never knew." [After all, Edsel died in 1943.] During that brief hiatus, however, "we've picked up a few things about making cars. To think smaller. Smarter. More nimbly." We have refocused "on the things that made us great--starting with a new design studio." Over the next four years, the company pledges to release "four disarmingly new models," reinvigorate dealerships, and elevate our owner services to be on a par with the world's most exclusive concierges." In short, We have reinvented the wheel by placing you at the center. Ultimately, they proclaim, "this is an investment hell-bent on rewarding not us, but the individual," so that "you'll find a refreshing respect for your time, whether you are shopping for a Lincoln or driving one." You will be treated "as a client, not as a customer," and you will "get the distinctive sense that there are people at Lincoln who actually care." Their goal, the ad frankly asserts, "is not a car in every driveway [take that, Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford], our name in every household, nor to be all things to all people. Simply, our goal is to be everything for a certain few.
Translated into realspeak by analyst Bill Vlasic, in the Times "AUTOMOBILES" section, however,this imperious argumentum ad nauseam reads "Ford Redoubles Effort to Reawaken Its Sleepy Lincoln Brand." In the highly competitive world of luxury cars, Vlasic flatly states, "the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln brand has long been stuck in the slow lane, with stodgy models, older buyers, and a distinct lack of pizazz." Left in the dust by BMW, Lexus, Cadillac, and Mercedes-Benz, Lincoln ranks eighth, and falling, among luxury cars sold in the U.S. It accounts for just 3 percent of Ford's total sales, down from 8 percent in the early 1990s."There is nothing more frustrating for us," according to James D. Farley, the newly named chief of the Lincoln Revival Team,"than to have someone who loves their Ford car and S.U.V., but goes out to buy a luxury model from another brand because we don't have one." [I am fairly certain that those Americans not looking to buy a third car--and a luxury one at that--can think of a million things more frustrating.] The big question is, according to the marketing firm Trout and Partners, "how can Lincoln convince people it is more than a gassed-up Ford.?" The answer, as Vlasic interprets the gist of the Lincoln advertising campaign, is "upgraded customer service initiatives, a new brand name that plays down the Ford connection and an unusual advertising campaign that features Abraham Lincoln, the president for whom the brand is named." Its 300 leaders "are learning the new tenets of luxury service at training sessions nicknamed the Lincoln Academy. A 108-page manual of 'luxury truths' details the new approach to pampering potential buyers, ranging from how to welcome them at a dealership to celebrating the anniversary of their purchase."
This "rechristening," involves television spots that begin "with an image of Lincoln, stovepipe hat and all." It also presumably involves improving the automobiles themselves, as well as "a revamped Web site that links consumers to a Lincoln "concierge," who can arrange test drives or set up appointments at dealerships." The latter will also feature "a consultant available 24 hours a day for live discussions about the products and to streamline the buying process. Prospective buyers will be given "an opportunity for a 'date-night with Lincoln' [surely the car and not the president, although who can doubt the marvels that adverting technology has in store for the future?] which includes a two-day test drive and a free meal at a restaurant." A newly formed team of 200 people "is intent on establishing the Lincoln Motor Company as a boutique luxury line known for personalized service." Every customer who reserves the pioneering MKZ model, "will be presented with an elegant gift upon receiving the car"--a choice of fine wines and Champagne, custom-made jewelry or sunglasses, or a one-night stay at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.
But all of this would be simply an modernized version of the obscene excesses of the decaying Roman Empire or Gilded Age America, if it weren't for its use of Abraham Lincoln as a metaphor for its cars. "The name Lincoln has a very strong meaning for this country," says Farley, chief of the Lincoln Revival Team. "What he stood for as president was independence [I don't think that Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee would agree] fortitude and elegant thinking." Needless to say, "any connection with the new Stephen Spielberg film about the widely admired president, is both fortunate and coincidental...We didn't plan it that way, but sometimes it's better to be lucky." Lets see. What is Lincoln's most popular nickname? HONEST ABE?
THE OFFICIAL 2013 LINCOLN MKZ COMMERCIAL begins with the image of a tall man in a frock coat, complete with stovepipe hat, floating toward us out of the mists of time. The reverential voice-over assures us that "this is about moving forward by looking back" Amid the collage of seemingly disconnected images that follow are brief glimpses of Lincoln with frock coattails flowing and looking thoughtfully out to sea. As the narrator breathlessly intones some gobbledegook about "setting precedents for presidents," there are flashes of FDR, Dean Martin, and [I think] Clark Gable. Go Figure! The narrator concludes by saying "This is about going places where others aren't. Introducing The Lincoln Motor Company." My favorite Lincoln commercial, however, shows a young couple driving a 1940s model over an idyllic country road, while an evanescent image of "the man" floats tantalizingly over the surrounding countryside.
Curiously enough, there was no image of Lincoln in the company's horrendous Super Bowl commercial that one critic pronounced "an immediate contender for the titles of the worst Super Bowl commercial of all time and worst car commercial of all time, an unlikely and breathtaking confluence of failures." Maybe they should have invoked the blessing of the president who saved the Union and freed the slaves.
JDB
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