Last week I wrote primarily about the bum rap that public sector employees are getting in Camden, New Jersey and elsewhere and this week the tale just continues.
Just across the river from New Jersey, New York City fell victim to a terrible tabloid tale that mushroomed into a national disgrace. While New Yorkers buried under a succession of blizzards froze and starved in their homes, apparently union leaders pounced on the opportunity to leverage the storm in their contract negotiations with the City.
In his daily harangue against anything progressive, Rupert Murdoch screamed in his newspaper, the New York Post that “The selfish Sanitation bosses who sabotaged the blizzard cleanup to fire a salvo at City Hall targeted politically connected and well-heeled neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn to get their twisted message across loud and clear” From the yellowed journalistic pages of the Post, the story exploded across the length and breadth of the media world to such outlets as Investor’s Business Daily and FOX News (No!) and even to Saturday Night Live. The Washington Times, another newspaper that has an affectation for the color yellow, ran an op-ed piece that began, “Cross us and people will die.”
Well, it never happened. The genius who first “broke” the story is Daniel Halloran, a first-year New York City Councilman and Tea Party Republican who is also an adherent of the religion Theodism which suffice to say is a North American variant of Germanic Neo-paganism which seeks to reconstruct the beliefs and practices of several Northern European tribes. Obviously, not a belief embraced by the religious right.
Anyway, back here on earth, a New York Times investigation that wrapped up after most of the snow had melted, found no evidence to support Halloran’s bleating and it turns out that he is not even sure about what he had heard anyway. But, as every victim of a lie knows, the damage had been done and Rupert Murdoch, who is not universally known for correcting his erroneous reporting, failed to run a retraction.
It strikes me as interesting and awfully convenient that stories like this are being promoted as the forces of the Republican Right are, as Charles Loveless, legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) stated “readying a massive assault” on the pensions and benefits of these same employees.”
Led by soon to be presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, the Republicans and their Tea Party allies are spreading the argument that states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy as part of an overall strategy to dishonor their pension obligations to firefighters, police officers, teachers and most assuredly, sanitation workers. Gingrich has challenged Congressional Republicans to “move a bill” designed to “create a venue for state bankruptcy.” As if that was not enough, this call for cheating public sector workers out of their pensions was immediately provided academic credibility by University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel who wrote in The Weekly Standard, a weekly conservative newspaper, an article entitled “Give States a Way to Go Bankrupt.” He later shared with a reporter that he had “never had anything I’ve written get as much attention as that piece.” He went on to say that he had been contacted by legislators from all over the country.
There are several components to this Republican strategy. Obviously it is intended to blame all of our economic suffering on public sector workers and their unions thereby gaining support from the general public for the final assault on their benefits and pensions. It also serves to intimidate the unions, forcing them to return some of the hard fought for gains in past labor negotiations that without these concessions now, the newly elected government officials and lawmakers would then have no other choice but to appeal to taxpayers with a plan to cut services, raise taxes or both—ensuring that it would be the unions and their public sector employee membership who would be the culprit in any of those options.
Possibly, even more important, it destroys the ability of the unions to attract new members. After all, if the unions cannot even protect the benefits and pensions of its current members, what is the point? With private union membership under ten percent in the United States, public unions remain just about the only viable institution that can bring organizational (numbers of voters) and financial strength to a state or local election, especially a close one. This is particularly critical in light of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision opening the money floodgates of corporate America to the electoral process in this country.
This growing assault on public sector employees is the first shot in the battle to steadily dismantle America’s progressive taxation system and the growing chasm between the haves and have nots in our country. Total income going to the wealthiest of Americans has risen from about eight percent in the 1960s to more than 20 percent today. During the George W Bush years, Congress systematically cut taxes on top earners, to say nothing of slashing capital gains and estate taxes.
And now, we have Wisconsin. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is attempting to end collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin and thousands, in an almost eerie likeness to Cairo, have converged on the state capitol in protest of what many consider a radical and blatantly political move. Walker’s plan threatens the rights of all Wisconsin workers and if it prevails in this state, could ultimately threaten the benefits, pensions and collective bargaining rights of public sector employees across the country.
Governor Walker’s so-called “Budget Repair Bill” would eliminate the labor protections gained over decades. It would also unilaterally increase the amount public employees must contribute to pensions and health insurance premiums. Walker has attempted to justify the plan as a necessary, cost-saving measure (while simultaneously reducing state revenues by slashing $5 Billion in taxes). However, “this has nothing to do with the budget deficit” says former U.S. Solicitor of Labor and current Wisconsin Law School emeritus professor Carin Clauss. “A legislative enactment can always establish mandatory employee contributions for pension and health benefits. If that is what the governor needs he can get that without repealing the collective bargaining rights for state and local government employees. This whole thing is ridiculous. It is just an excuse to undermine labor relations.”
Speaking in support of Memphis’ public employees on the day before his assassination, Dr King said, “Now what does all this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves got together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now, let us maintain unity.”
Today, more than 30,000 Wisconsin public sector employees massed on the streets right outside the state capitol building as the legislature prepared to vote on his Budget Repair Bill. Scott Walker might just want to take a moment and learn his history.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Start at the Top
The City Council for the City of Camden, New Jersey has to start all over again in an effort to balance the city budget after rejecting a plan submitted by the Mayor this past Tuesday that could have brought back approximately 60 recently laid-off police and fire fighters but would have also raised property taxes 23 percent.
Camden, just outside of Philadelphia is among America’s poorest and most crime ridden cities. It has been spiraling downward, locked in a fiscal crisis for decades, but Camden’s ever increasing financial catastrophe has continued to worsen as tax revenues have sunk to new lows while the state simultaneously has reduced its aid to the city.
Last month, in a dramatic and very public maneuver, the city slashed nearly 400 city employees, approximately one-fourth of all its workers, from its payroll. Crime rates notwithstanding, the cuts were deepest in the police department which has lost nearly half of its officers and the fire department, which lost one-third of all its firefighters. The 23 percent property tax increase that Mayor Dana Redd proposed would have been the first in the city in nearly a decade and would have cost the average homeowner around $160 per year.
More than 150 people showed up to Tuesday’s council meeting screaming their opposition to the tax hike with hand-lettered signs reading such slogans as “Mayor Stop Stepping on me.” Needless to say, the city council voted 7-0 against the proposed tax increase.
Once again, certain forces coming primarily from the political Right, have declared war on public sector workers by painting them as lazy opportunists not entitled to a middle class lifestyle. The idea that a schoolteacher or highway worker can retire with a pension of $2,000-3,000 a month is directly at odds with their view of government. They believe that the government exists to redistribute income from all of us to the rich and powerful. To these folks, the investment being made to pay the wages and pensions of low-level government workers is money that could be better “invested” by the rich.
The current economic crisis caused by the collapse of the housing bubble has created a golden opportunity. State and local tax revenues plummeted as employment and spending fell. Lower property values also meant lower property taxes which meant that governments across the United States were suddenly confronted by horrific budget shortfalls. This opened the way to directly attack the pay and pension packages of public sector employees.
Despite the ugliness of the attack upon public sector workers, it is difficult not to admire its brilliance. The American elite, with Wall Street high rollers at the vanguard, wrecked our economy through a combination of greed, incompetence and in some cases, outright criminal fraud. As tens of millions of Americans find themselves out of work, underemployed and drowning underwater in de-valued mortgages, this group of criminals now turns around and begins demanding that public sector workers take pay cuts and if that were not enough—give up part of their pensions as well. The noted American economist Dr. Dean Baker has said that “This is like a child setting fire to his parents’ house and then complaining because dinner is not ready on time.” But this is the way our country works for the most part, with the spoiled rich on Wall Street setting the agenda.
The fact that many states are gasping for air in the midst of a severe budget squeeze, is no excuse for attacking teachers, firefighters, police and other public employees. Instead, this time, we should go right to the top.
Contrary to popular opinion, most public sector workers get paid no more than private sector employees. In fact, studies show that when state and local government employees are compared to private sector workers with similar characteristics, state and local workers actually earn four percent less on average than their private sector counterparts.
There are however, a number of very well paid public employees. The Boston Globe recently reported on the 6,400 state employees in Massachusetts who earn more than $100,000 per year. Topping the list was a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who earned almost $800,000 in 2009.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, there were 11 presidents of public universities who earned more than $700,000 in the 2008-2009 academic year. The top earner on this list was the president of Ohio State University who earned more than $1.5 million. That is a lot of pension years for custodians or schoolteachers who are supposed to take big pay cuts to help balance state budgets.
I am willing to wager that there are very high wage earners in the public sector if we are ready to only look in the right places. Consequently, before we force a schoolteacher to forfeit part of the $25,000 pension she worked so hard for, maybe the President of Ohio State University should have his pay cut to less than $1 million.
Of course, we can all hear the response to such an action. “These people will go elsewhere if they don’t get paid at this level.” I seriously doubt this is true, but in those cases where it is, there is truly no serious loss. I’m betting that if you could just sit in a room filled with bright, hardworking professionals, you would be breaking your arm in an effort to respond to the question, “How many of you can accept that $200,000 a year is a good salary?” And since the spoiled children of Wall Street are screaming for government to change, what better way to facilitate that than getting rid of some of the fat at the top.
This is not of course the only place to look for budget savings. State pension funds are currently drastically underfunded because they almost uniformly over compensate the firms who manage their funds and this is not always accidental or innocent.
Steve Rattner, the major Wall Street player and former advisor to President Obama, recently agreed to pay $10 million to settle charges that he had made payoffs to public officials in order to gain control of a portion of New York State’s pension fund assets. It is not a huge leap therefore, to believe that public officials outside of New York have also been willing to sell off control of pension fund assets.
It does not take too many crooked deals like this one to add up to real money. Even if this kind of corruption added less than 1 percent to the management fees of pension funds nationally, then Wall Street is costing public pension funds almost $15billion a year.
Maybe if Camden and the State of New Jersey had placed tight restrictions on management fees, requiring that they match the lowest cost in the industry, their respective budgets would not be bleeding all over the place. Perhaps all states should require that negotiations and discussions between pension funds and bank representatives be video-taped and then posted on the Internet so that we all will know what sort of arrangements were reached. Preventing Wall Street gouging could have a huge impact on preventing pension shortfalls, while bringing a sense of quality control and efficiency to the nation’s overall financial sector.
In the interests of full disclosure, my wife is a schoolteacher. That said, the bulk of states’ budget challenges are the direct result of the economic crises we are all mired in and it was caused by Wall Street greed and unbelievably faulty economic policy. As much as we can, the effort should be to make the people at the top pay for the suffering they have created. It should be inconceivable that the answer is to continuously beat up on schoolteachers, police, firefighters and other public sector employees who have to truly work for a living.
Camden, just outside of Philadelphia is among America’s poorest and most crime ridden cities. It has been spiraling downward, locked in a fiscal crisis for decades, but Camden’s ever increasing financial catastrophe has continued to worsen as tax revenues have sunk to new lows while the state simultaneously has reduced its aid to the city.
Last month, in a dramatic and very public maneuver, the city slashed nearly 400 city employees, approximately one-fourth of all its workers, from its payroll. Crime rates notwithstanding, the cuts were deepest in the police department which has lost nearly half of its officers and the fire department, which lost one-third of all its firefighters. The 23 percent property tax increase that Mayor Dana Redd proposed would have been the first in the city in nearly a decade and would have cost the average homeowner around $160 per year.
More than 150 people showed up to Tuesday’s council meeting screaming their opposition to the tax hike with hand-lettered signs reading such slogans as “Mayor Stop Stepping on me.” Needless to say, the city council voted 7-0 against the proposed tax increase.
Once again, certain forces coming primarily from the political Right, have declared war on public sector workers by painting them as lazy opportunists not entitled to a middle class lifestyle. The idea that a schoolteacher or highway worker can retire with a pension of $2,000-3,000 a month is directly at odds with their view of government. They believe that the government exists to redistribute income from all of us to the rich and powerful. To these folks, the investment being made to pay the wages and pensions of low-level government workers is money that could be better “invested” by the rich.
The current economic crisis caused by the collapse of the housing bubble has created a golden opportunity. State and local tax revenues plummeted as employment and spending fell. Lower property values also meant lower property taxes which meant that governments across the United States were suddenly confronted by horrific budget shortfalls. This opened the way to directly attack the pay and pension packages of public sector employees.
Despite the ugliness of the attack upon public sector workers, it is difficult not to admire its brilliance. The American elite, with Wall Street high rollers at the vanguard, wrecked our economy through a combination of greed, incompetence and in some cases, outright criminal fraud. As tens of millions of Americans find themselves out of work, underemployed and drowning underwater in de-valued mortgages, this group of criminals now turns around and begins demanding that public sector workers take pay cuts and if that were not enough—give up part of their pensions as well. The noted American economist Dr. Dean Baker has said that “This is like a child setting fire to his parents’ house and then complaining because dinner is not ready on time.” But this is the way our country works for the most part, with the spoiled rich on Wall Street setting the agenda.
The fact that many states are gasping for air in the midst of a severe budget squeeze, is no excuse for attacking teachers, firefighters, police and other public employees. Instead, this time, we should go right to the top.
Contrary to popular opinion, most public sector workers get paid no more than private sector employees. In fact, studies show that when state and local government employees are compared to private sector workers with similar characteristics, state and local workers actually earn four percent less on average than their private sector counterparts.
There are however, a number of very well paid public employees. The Boston Globe recently reported on the 6,400 state employees in Massachusetts who earn more than $100,000 per year. Topping the list was a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who earned almost $800,000 in 2009.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, there were 11 presidents of public universities who earned more than $700,000 in the 2008-2009 academic year. The top earner on this list was the president of Ohio State University who earned more than $1.5 million. That is a lot of pension years for custodians or schoolteachers who are supposed to take big pay cuts to help balance state budgets.
I am willing to wager that there are very high wage earners in the public sector if we are ready to only look in the right places. Consequently, before we force a schoolteacher to forfeit part of the $25,000 pension she worked so hard for, maybe the President of Ohio State University should have his pay cut to less than $1 million.
Of course, we can all hear the response to such an action. “These people will go elsewhere if they don’t get paid at this level.” I seriously doubt this is true, but in those cases where it is, there is truly no serious loss. I’m betting that if you could just sit in a room filled with bright, hardworking professionals, you would be breaking your arm in an effort to respond to the question, “How many of you can accept that $200,000 a year is a good salary?” And since the spoiled children of Wall Street are screaming for government to change, what better way to facilitate that than getting rid of some of the fat at the top.
This is not of course the only place to look for budget savings. State pension funds are currently drastically underfunded because they almost uniformly over compensate the firms who manage their funds and this is not always accidental or innocent.
Steve Rattner, the major Wall Street player and former advisor to President Obama, recently agreed to pay $10 million to settle charges that he had made payoffs to public officials in order to gain control of a portion of New York State’s pension fund assets. It is not a huge leap therefore, to believe that public officials outside of New York have also been willing to sell off control of pension fund assets.
It does not take too many crooked deals like this one to add up to real money. Even if this kind of corruption added less than 1 percent to the management fees of pension funds nationally, then Wall Street is costing public pension funds almost $15billion a year.
Maybe if Camden and the State of New Jersey had placed tight restrictions on management fees, requiring that they match the lowest cost in the industry, their respective budgets would not be bleeding all over the place. Perhaps all states should require that negotiations and discussions between pension funds and bank representatives be video-taped and then posted on the Internet so that we all will know what sort of arrangements were reached. Preventing Wall Street gouging could have a huge impact on preventing pension shortfalls, while bringing a sense of quality control and efficiency to the nation’s overall financial sector.
In the interests of full disclosure, my wife is a schoolteacher. That said, the bulk of states’ budget challenges are the direct result of the economic crises we are all mired in and it was caused by Wall Street greed and unbelievably faulty economic policy. As much as we can, the effort should be to make the people at the top pay for the suffering they have created. It should be inconceivable that the answer is to continuously beat up on schoolteachers, police, firefighters and other public sector employees who have to truly work for a living.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
How Do You Go from Reformer to Dictator?
President Hosni Mubarak came to power in the midst of crisis thirty years ago. In the beginning, he was a reassuring manifestation of stability for most Egyptians as well as for world leaders, particularly those from the West, searching for an ally in the Middle East. Today however, crisis once again dominates Egyptian life and Mubarak is widely recognized as the cause of the problem.
Over the span of his rule, Mubarak, this former pilot and Air Force general who despite his combative and stubborn nature, had taken baby steps toward democracy. Ultimately however, he gave into the siren calls of the more familiar authoritarianism that combined with poverty and government corruption, has finally resulted in driving the Egyptian people into the streets in violent opposition to his government.
The prospect that Mubarak was grooming his son Gamal Mabarak to succeed him, created a sense among many Egyptians that they were trapped in a seemingly never-ending cycle of despotism, deprived of any opportunity for real change. His son’s quick rise through Mubarak’s ruling party didn’t help much and actually caused tremendous domestic angst. Then, Tunisia erupted into the kind of uprising that shouted to the people of Egypt, “You too can be free. You too can throw the old order out.”
Hosni Mubarak, now 82, announced this past week that he will not seek another term, but then in the very next breath, rejected demands that he leave office immediately. This half-hearted gesture towards meeting the demands of the protestors—leaving office sometime in the future but not right now—was met with howls of protest from the tens of thousands of Egyptians in the streets who want Mubarak out yesterday.
For those of you too young to remember, Hosni Mubarak came to power in Egypt in 1981 when he was sitting in a reviewing stand next to his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, where he was gunned down by Islamic militants. Mubarak was serving as Sadat’s Vice-President when this happened and it was widely felt at the time that Sadat’s death signaled an end to the world’s best hope for Arab moderation.
Immediately after the assassination the Egyptian parliament designated Mubarak as the sole presidential candidate and he was subsequently elected head of state on October 13, 1981 with almost 99 percent of the vote.
At the beginning, the new President Mubarak strongly and convincingly destroyed the Muslim insurgency whose strength had been previously underestimated and from within whose ranks had come Anwar Sadat’s killers and interestingly enough, some of the future leaders of al-Qaida.
He also promised he would introduce democratic reforms which won him considerable popularity in Egypt and he demonstrated his promise by releasing more than 1,500 politicians, journalists and clerics that had been jailed by Sadat.
During the 1990s, the second decade of his presidency, he fought hard against a resurgence of Muslim militants who were in the business of attacking both foreign tourists and Egyptian citizens. It was also during this time that Mubarak facilitated Egypt’s return to the arms of the Arab world after having been out in the cold because of its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and so gained the stature of being a major mediator in the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Throughout his presidency, Mubarak has been locked in a constant state of struggle with myriad challenges that have confounded most of the Arab world through modern times: strangling corruption, economic anemia, Israel and Palestinians vying for the status of who could kill the other faster, and the ever constant specter of the brand of Islamic militancy that spread throughout the region enticing the young and innocent into acts of suicidal abandon.
This is not to say that there has been a lack of resentment towards his regime, especially in recent years as the new technology that is helping to facilitate the current revolution in Egypt exposed vicious state police barbarism and the growing awareness of what few economic reforms there were, trickled down to only a handful of Egyptians.
He appeared to move toward democratic reform in 2005 by allowing the first contested presidential election since he had assumed power, but quickly changed his mind when it appeared that his opponents were actually going to win. So instead of allowing democracy to flourish, he imprisoned his main secular opponent, Ayman Nour as well as leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, who today are one of the driving forces behind the street rebellion.
Yet throughout his reign, he oversaw the decline of Egypt’s influence in the Middle East as the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah armed and supported by their patron Iran, gained popularity, momentum and most importantly, followers. Through all this, Mubarak remained a strong ally of the United States but hopes for broader reform dimmed, as over the years, Hosni Mubarak remained in power due to crooked and staged one-candidate (him) referendums in which he always managed to garner more than 90 percent of the “vote.”
Reporters and pundits seem to delight in making the point that Tweeter, Facebook and what’s left of the internet in Egypt is driving this revolution. That is only partly true. The real heroes of this uprising are the Egyptian people who at great risk to themselves and their families have stood up against tyranny in the only way that is left to them and that because of that, are effecting real change and reform.
I have been extremely grateful these past couple of weeks that with all of our challenges here in America, and all the angry political rhetoric of the past four years, all I had to do in November of 2008 to effect real change and reform was to go to the ballot box and all I will have to do to continue the hope ignited on November 2, 2008, will be to go to back the ballot box in November of next year. I will not have to smash any sidewalks into rocks and throw them at anybody. There is something beautiful about that.
Over the span of his rule, Mubarak, this former pilot and Air Force general who despite his combative and stubborn nature, had taken baby steps toward democracy. Ultimately however, he gave into the siren calls of the more familiar authoritarianism that combined with poverty and government corruption, has finally resulted in driving the Egyptian people into the streets in violent opposition to his government.
The prospect that Mubarak was grooming his son Gamal Mabarak to succeed him, created a sense among many Egyptians that they were trapped in a seemingly never-ending cycle of despotism, deprived of any opportunity for real change. His son’s quick rise through Mubarak’s ruling party didn’t help much and actually caused tremendous domestic angst. Then, Tunisia erupted into the kind of uprising that shouted to the people of Egypt, “You too can be free. You too can throw the old order out.”
Hosni Mubarak, now 82, announced this past week that he will not seek another term, but then in the very next breath, rejected demands that he leave office immediately. This half-hearted gesture towards meeting the demands of the protestors—leaving office sometime in the future but not right now—was met with howls of protest from the tens of thousands of Egyptians in the streets who want Mubarak out yesterday.
For those of you too young to remember, Hosni Mubarak came to power in Egypt in 1981 when he was sitting in a reviewing stand next to his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, where he was gunned down by Islamic militants. Mubarak was serving as Sadat’s Vice-President when this happened and it was widely felt at the time that Sadat’s death signaled an end to the world’s best hope for Arab moderation.
Immediately after the assassination the Egyptian parliament designated Mubarak as the sole presidential candidate and he was subsequently elected head of state on October 13, 1981 with almost 99 percent of the vote.
At the beginning, the new President Mubarak strongly and convincingly destroyed the Muslim insurgency whose strength had been previously underestimated and from within whose ranks had come Anwar Sadat’s killers and interestingly enough, some of the future leaders of al-Qaida.
He also promised he would introduce democratic reforms which won him considerable popularity in Egypt and he demonstrated his promise by releasing more than 1,500 politicians, journalists and clerics that had been jailed by Sadat.
During the 1990s, the second decade of his presidency, he fought hard against a resurgence of Muslim militants who were in the business of attacking both foreign tourists and Egyptian citizens. It was also during this time that Mubarak facilitated Egypt’s return to the arms of the Arab world after having been out in the cold because of its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and so gained the stature of being a major mediator in the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Throughout his presidency, Mubarak has been locked in a constant state of struggle with myriad challenges that have confounded most of the Arab world through modern times: strangling corruption, economic anemia, Israel and Palestinians vying for the status of who could kill the other faster, and the ever constant specter of the brand of Islamic militancy that spread throughout the region enticing the young and innocent into acts of suicidal abandon.
This is not to say that there has been a lack of resentment towards his regime, especially in recent years as the new technology that is helping to facilitate the current revolution in Egypt exposed vicious state police barbarism and the growing awareness of what few economic reforms there were, trickled down to only a handful of Egyptians.
He appeared to move toward democratic reform in 2005 by allowing the first contested presidential election since he had assumed power, but quickly changed his mind when it appeared that his opponents were actually going to win. So instead of allowing democracy to flourish, he imprisoned his main secular opponent, Ayman Nour as well as leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, who today are one of the driving forces behind the street rebellion.
Yet throughout his reign, he oversaw the decline of Egypt’s influence in the Middle East as the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah armed and supported by their patron Iran, gained popularity, momentum and most importantly, followers. Through all this, Mubarak remained a strong ally of the United States but hopes for broader reform dimmed, as over the years, Hosni Mubarak remained in power due to crooked and staged one-candidate (him) referendums in which he always managed to garner more than 90 percent of the “vote.”
Reporters and pundits seem to delight in making the point that Tweeter, Facebook and what’s left of the internet in Egypt is driving this revolution. That is only partly true. The real heroes of this uprising are the Egyptian people who at great risk to themselves and their families have stood up against tyranny in the only way that is left to them and that because of that, are effecting real change and reform.
I have been extremely grateful these past couple of weeks that with all of our challenges here in America, and all the angry political rhetoric of the past four years, all I had to do in November of 2008 to effect real change and reform was to go to the ballot box and all I will have to do to continue the hope ignited on November 2, 2008, will be to go to back the ballot box in November of next year. I will not have to smash any sidewalks into rocks and throw them at anybody. There is something beautiful about that.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Anger is only One Letter Short of Danger
While I have been unable to determine who actually said “Anger is only one letter short of danger” it certainly fits the current state of political discourse in our country today. As if to emphasize that point, it is becoming increasingly evident that U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has begun the process of making a run for the nomination of the Republican Party for President of the United States in the upcoming 2012 elections. Bachmann wasted no time attacking President Obama after his Tuesday night State of the Union (STOU) Address but unfortunately, she made herself look foolish in the process.
In her speech, Congresswoman Bachmann paid homage to our founding fathers for who in her words ended the institution of slavery in America. “…the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States…Men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”
I won’t bother you here with too much of a response to that statement because anyone who has even the most basic understanding of American history knows that slavery was not abolished by our founding fathers. In the interests of accuracy however, I will remind you that slavery was not actually abolished until January 31, 1865 when the 13th Amendment was ratified. Also, John Quincy Adams was NOT a “founding father” but the son of John Adams, who was. Despite the efforts of our new Speaker of the House John Boehner to ensure the legitimacy of legislation introduced in Congress by its compliance with constitutional principles, it is apparently not critical for those who serve in the Congress to have an accurate knowledge of American history. Consequently, ultra-conservative Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a member of the Speaker’s Party, has somewhat separated herself from the pack by not only making an independent, non-sanctioned response to President Obama’s STOU Address, but is also making news by making the pretty embarrassing and incredulous statement crediting our founding fathers with the abolition of slavery.
Back on February 1, 2010, I wrote in my blog a post entitled “Tea Anyone” that should the tea party candidates springing up all over the country, readying themselves for the 2010 mid-term elections were actually sent to Congress, that “The Tea Baggers are in for an unpleasant reality. They will discover, if elected to office, that holding on to that office will cause them to flounder in all the compromises they will be forced into and that are a requirement for retaining office and while Republican congressional leaders are going to want to appease these new hard right-wingers as they come to Washington by handing out choice committee assignments to them, mainstream Republicans who have been toiling in the trenches for some time will resent being shoved aside in favor of the newcomers.” As a testament to this observation, Representative Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah remarked after Bachmann’s response to President Obama, “It was bad form.” This expression of disappointment comes on the heels of the rejection of Michele Bachmann’s bid for a House leadership position after the GOP took the chamber’s majority away from Democrats as a result of the 2010 mid-term elections.
But Bachmann is more than just a limelight-hungry politician. She also represents an anti-establishment tension simmering just below the surface of a unified but unstable Republican caucus. If the Speaker and his fellow establishment Republicans ignore Bachmann and her base, those tensions could immolate the Republican’s congressional agenda, particularly if she makes a stink over such shaky upcoming legislation as the impending vote on increasing the debt ceiling.
Curiously, the message from House GOP leadership is that Bachmann is strictly a third-term lawmaker from Minnesota who was given her choice spot on the Intelligence Committee. They see her as a media phenomena—not a legislative or political threat.
Bachmann has already flexed her political muscle however. As an example, she failed to provide her Tuesday night response to the STOU in advance to Republican leadership. Rather, they got it when everyone else got it—and they had absolutely no idea or warning that CNN was going to broadcast it live. As a result, Bachmann’s name appeared in the New York Times on the day after the STOU as many times as Boehner’s.
Republican Representative Steve King, R-IA, while he was for some reason unable to watch Bachmann’s speech, did review the written narrative. He ferociously defended the speech, saying the only way to “move a conservative agenda” is to have voices outside the leadership. More importantly, he thinks his Party could have avoided all of this fuss. Smarting from Bachmann’s rejection in her bid for a leadership position he says, “They had the chance to listen before the leadership elections and they chose to put their support where they did and so now they have an opportunity to listen to this message, and they can take a look at it and decide how much they want to consider what she has to say. She is going to have more effect in leadership talking to the press [than] in talking to leadership. In fact, I guarantee it.”
Interesting use of the word “they” don’t you think?
As if to show support for Congresswoman Bachmann from the other side of the U.S. Capital Building, Senator Jim DeMint, R-SC said that Bachmannn’s effort was a “good compliment to what Paul Ryan said.” He went on to say that GOP House leadership “should encourage any member who wants to speak out on the issues to do it. That’s what Americans expect of us. They don’t expect us to filter everything through our leadership.”
Uh-oh.
And now, a final word on Tucson……
During his campaign against Congresswoman Gifford, Republican challenger Jesse Kelly promoted a rally with the following notice: “Get on Target for Victory in November, Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M-16 with Jesse Kelly.”
While no one can say I suppose, with absolute certainty, that Jesse Loughner was aware of this rhetoric, this suggestive language certainly did nothing to encourage any kind of rational debate over the issues. Rather, it implied violence as a means to victory.
Our political universe is more than ever fraught with highly charged political discourse. Joe Wilson, whose “You Lie” outburst during last year’s STOU Address, has had his words engraved on assault rifles. The gun manufacturer urges buyers to “get yours before they are gone.”
During the Nevada Senate campaign, Republican candidate Sharron Angle talked of “second amendment remedies,” while Glenn Beck has openly talked of killing filmmaker Michael Moore wondering whether “I could kill him myself, or if I would have to hire somebody to do it.” Not least, we have the ravings of Rush Limbaugh who as I pointed out in this blog a couple of weeks ago, claims that Loughner has the full support of the Democratic Party.
Simply think back to the town-hall meetings last summer regarding the health-care “debate.” Tempers were hot, fist fights broke out and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle were viciously attacked. Lies, such as the “death panel” rumors were unabashedly promoted, whipping people into an emotional and even physical frenzy. Guns were openly displayed at political rallies.
It is absolutely true that the left is also guilty of spouting hate, but a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report cautioned that right-wing extremism was on the rise. The report cited the “bleak economy” and the election of the “first black President” as “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment” and even described the rise of “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing right wing extremist ideology [as] the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”
This horrific shooting in Tucson raises other issues: mental health services (or the lack of them) and the ridiculous easy access to guns, but the overarching issue of hateful speech is one that we can all work to overcome.
We must stop treating those with whom we disagree as our enemy. We should value reason over emotion, challenging lies presented as fact. We must learn to be better listeners. And, we must stop giving credibility to those who deserve none.
In her speech, Congresswoman Bachmann paid homage to our founding fathers for who in her words ended the institution of slavery in America. “…the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States…Men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”
I won’t bother you here with too much of a response to that statement because anyone who has even the most basic understanding of American history knows that slavery was not abolished by our founding fathers. In the interests of accuracy however, I will remind you that slavery was not actually abolished until January 31, 1865 when the 13th Amendment was ratified. Also, John Quincy Adams was NOT a “founding father” but the son of John Adams, who was. Despite the efforts of our new Speaker of the House John Boehner to ensure the legitimacy of legislation introduced in Congress by its compliance with constitutional principles, it is apparently not critical for those who serve in the Congress to have an accurate knowledge of American history. Consequently, ultra-conservative Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a member of the Speaker’s Party, has somewhat separated herself from the pack by not only making an independent, non-sanctioned response to President Obama’s STOU Address, but is also making news by making the pretty embarrassing and incredulous statement crediting our founding fathers with the abolition of slavery.
Back on February 1, 2010, I wrote in my blog a post entitled “Tea Anyone” that should the tea party candidates springing up all over the country, readying themselves for the 2010 mid-term elections were actually sent to Congress, that “The Tea Baggers are in for an unpleasant reality. They will discover, if elected to office, that holding on to that office will cause them to flounder in all the compromises they will be forced into and that are a requirement for retaining office and while Republican congressional leaders are going to want to appease these new hard right-wingers as they come to Washington by handing out choice committee assignments to them, mainstream Republicans who have been toiling in the trenches for some time will resent being shoved aside in favor of the newcomers.” As a testament to this observation, Representative Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah remarked after Bachmann’s response to President Obama, “It was bad form.” This expression of disappointment comes on the heels of the rejection of Michele Bachmann’s bid for a House leadership position after the GOP took the chamber’s majority away from Democrats as a result of the 2010 mid-term elections.
But Bachmann is more than just a limelight-hungry politician. She also represents an anti-establishment tension simmering just below the surface of a unified but unstable Republican caucus. If the Speaker and his fellow establishment Republicans ignore Bachmann and her base, those tensions could immolate the Republican’s congressional agenda, particularly if she makes a stink over such shaky upcoming legislation as the impending vote on increasing the debt ceiling.
Curiously, the message from House GOP leadership is that Bachmann is strictly a third-term lawmaker from Minnesota who was given her choice spot on the Intelligence Committee. They see her as a media phenomena—not a legislative or political threat.
Bachmann has already flexed her political muscle however. As an example, she failed to provide her Tuesday night response to the STOU in advance to Republican leadership. Rather, they got it when everyone else got it—and they had absolutely no idea or warning that CNN was going to broadcast it live. As a result, Bachmann’s name appeared in the New York Times on the day after the STOU as many times as Boehner’s.
Republican Representative Steve King, R-IA, while he was for some reason unable to watch Bachmann’s speech, did review the written narrative. He ferociously defended the speech, saying the only way to “move a conservative agenda” is to have voices outside the leadership. More importantly, he thinks his Party could have avoided all of this fuss. Smarting from Bachmann’s rejection in her bid for a leadership position he says, “They had the chance to listen before the leadership elections and they chose to put their support where they did and so now they have an opportunity to listen to this message, and they can take a look at it and decide how much they want to consider what she has to say. She is going to have more effect in leadership talking to the press [than] in talking to leadership. In fact, I guarantee it.”
Interesting use of the word “they” don’t you think?
As if to show support for Congresswoman Bachmann from the other side of the U.S. Capital Building, Senator Jim DeMint, R-SC said that Bachmannn’s effort was a “good compliment to what Paul Ryan said.” He went on to say that GOP House leadership “should encourage any member who wants to speak out on the issues to do it. That’s what Americans expect of us. They don’t expect us to filter everything through our leadership.”
Uh-oh.
And now, a final word on Tucson……
During his campaign against Congresswoman Gifford, Republican challenger Jesse Kelly promoted a rally with the following notice: “Get on Target for Victory in November, Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M-16 with Jesse Kelly.”
While no one can say I suppose, with absolute certainty, that Jesse Loughner was aware of this rhetoric, this suggestive language certainly did nothing to encourage any kind of rational debate over the issues. Rather, it implied violence as a means to victory.
Our political universe is more than ever fraught with highly charged political discourse. Joe Wilson, whose “You Lie” outburst during last year’s STOU Address, has had his words engraved on assault rifles. The gun manufacturer urges buyers to “get yours before they are gone.”
During the Nevada Senate campaign, Republican candidate Sharron Angle talked of “second amendment remedies,” while Glenn Beck has openly talked of killing filmmaker Michael Moore wondering whether “I could kill him myself, or if I would have to hire somebody to do it.” Not least, we have the ravings of Rush Limbaugh who as I pointed out in this blog a couple of weeks ago, claims that Loughner has the full support of the Democratic Party.
Simply think back to the town-hall meetings last summer regarding the health-care “debate.” Tempers were hot, fist fights broke out and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle were viciously attacked. Lies, such as the “death panel” rumors were unabashedly promoted, whipping people into an emotional and even physical frenzy. Guns were openly displayed at political rallies.
It is absolutely true that the left is also guilty of spouting hate, but a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report cautioned that right-wing extremism was on the rise. The report cited the “bleak economy” and the election of the “first black President” as “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment” and even described the rise of “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing right wing extremist ideology [as] the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”
This horrific shooting in Tucson raises other issues: mental health services (or the lack of them) and the ridiculous easy access to guns, but the overarching issue of hateful speech is one that we can all work to overcome.
We must stop treating those with whom we disagree as our enemy. We should value reason over emotion, challenging lies presented as fact. We must learn to be better listeners. And, we must stop giving credibility to those who deserve none.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
And so it begins..........
Now that the dust has settled in the Safeway parking lot in Tucson, and we are falling all over each other to blame the horrific shooting on a deranged, lone gunman as opposed to placing the blame of such a despicable act on a political environment that is fraught with vicious, vitriolic and venomous discourse consisting of marching with signs that depict President Obama as the devil; or as a socialist Muslim; or right wing celebrities like Glenn Beck insisting that President Obama’s only problem is that he just “doesn’t like white people” which when you think about it means he didn’t like his own mother or grandparents. Now that we have done this and have all agreed to be nicer to one another, Republican lawmakers in the United States Congress, reinforced with newly minted Tea Party allies, have placed an assault on healthcare reform at the top of their agenda, planning to put a repeal of the new federal law to a vote, possibly as early as next week.
The reality is that at least for the present, repeal is unlikely to succeed, even if the repeal action passes in the House. Everyone from the most rabid Tea Partier to the most stubborn liberal understands that the effort to repeal would at the very least, have trouble clearing the Senate, and even if there was success in the Senate, President Obama would in the end, veto it.
I think the Republicans real strategy is to gain enough momentum so as to undermine support for healthcare reform in the 50 State Legislatures around the country, while in the interim, eviscerate the bill by gutting smaller provisions and ultimately clear the way for totally killing reform in a hoped for 2012 Republican administration.
That said, this new GOP offensive against healthcare reform also provides a golden opportunity for Democrats and their allies to present the benefits of healthcare reform once again to Americans, making a much stronger case now that some of the more popular provisions of the law went into effect on January 1st such as regulations that forbid co-pays on preventative care; compel insurance companies to invest a higher percentage of premiums received on real medical care and provide some Medicare beneficiaries with a 50 percent discount on prescription medicines.
What truly concerns me however is that the Democratic Party seems to be traveling on all too familiar ground by promising to pull out all the stops on defending healthcare reform, but as is usual with Democrats, they have up to now failed to do even the simple things, such as demonstrating how Republicans are totally committed to take such just won benefits as described above away from Americans. What seems to be coming out of the Democratic caucus instead is a lot of whining about how Republicans are simply “wasting their time” with their repeal efforts. There is simply no way to avoid healthcare reform debate at this point, so failing to address the real consequences of repeal only allows the Republicans, their Tea Party allies, and right wing talk media, the ability to once again dominate the discussion.
One critical concern we should all share is that if enacted, the House Republican’s repeal effort would increase the deficit by approximately $230 billion through 2021. This startling revelation comes directly from the always non-partisan Congressional Budget Office whose Director Douglas Elmendorf just this past week wrote to new House Speaker John Boehner. In his letter to Boehner, Elmendorf explained this astonishing phenomenon this way: “The March health care legislation contained a set of provisions designed to expand health insurance coverage, which CBO and [Joint Committee on Taxation] estimated would have a gross cost of about $930 billion and a net cost (after accounting for certain related changes in outlays and revenues) of about $780 billion over the 2012-2019 period. Repealing that legislation would eliminate such costs. But [the health care legislation] also included a number of provisions to reduce federal outlays (primarily for Medicare) and to increase federal revenues (mostly by increasing the Hospital Insurance payroll tax and imposing fees on certain manufacturers and insurers); in March, CBO and JCT estimated that those provisions unrelated to insurance coverage would, on balance, reduce direct spending by about $500 billion and increase revenues by about $410 billion over the 2012-2019 period. If that legislation was repealed, such reductions in spending and increases in revenues would not occur. Thus, H.R. 2 would, on net, increase federal deficits over that period."
Mr. Elmendorf also adds in his letter to the Speaker that enacting repeal “would increase federal deficits in the decade after 2019 by an amount that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. For the decade beginning after 2021, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a share of the economy would probably be somewhat larger."
Consequently, the actual long-term cost of this repeal could reach $1.2 trillion while simultaneously 32 million fewer non-elderly people would have health insurance in 2019 if the law is repealed. This would reduce the total percentage of non-elderly Americans covered from 94 percent if the legislation is allowed to stay in place to 83 percent if healthcare reform is repealed. Worse still is that premiums for employment-based coverage from large employers would be slightly higher if the law is repealed and benefits would be correspondingly reduced.
A truly scary development is the number of states that have sued in federal court to nullify the healthcare legislation as unconstitutional. What makes this truly frightening is that the proponents of this effort acknowledge that they are targeting more than healthcare reform. Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general, has led that state’s legal challenge and has already won a victory in lower court that has labeled the requirement of people to purchase healthcare insurance if they are able to or be “fined” for not doing so as unconstitutional. In a recent speech before the Heritage Foundation, Cuccinelli admitted that healthcare was “secondary to the real important aspect of the case and that is to protect the Constitution as we essentially define the outer limits of federal power.”
What is particularly dangerous about these lawsuits however is a kind of radical constitutional theorizing that is driving them. These lawsuits are if nothing else, an all-out attack on the legal thinking and jurisprudence that has existed since the 1930s. And while the lawsuits themselves may not pose any immediate threat to federal healthcare reform, they could ultimately help to turn out conservative voters in 2012, especially when support for the repeal of healthcare reform is on the ballot and thus becomes a kind of litmus test for voters.
Getting back to my original point—now is an excellent time to get out and market the benefits of healthcare reform and at the risk of working from a totally negative perspective, impress upon the American electorate the absolute nightmare that would result should this reform be repealed. Now is the time to make the case that government needs to be in the business of providing healthcare reform, environmental protection and Social Security. Do we really want to go back to the days when there was no protection for our environment or there was no Social Security? Do we really want to go back to allowing our healthcare to be dictated totally by market forces? I think not.
The reality is that at least for the present, repeal is unlikely to succeed, even if the repeal action passes in the House. Everyone from the most rabid Tea Partier to the most stubborn liberal understands that the effort to repeal would at the very least, have trouble clearing the Senate, and even if there was success in the Senate, President Obama would in the end, veto it.
I think the Republicans real strategy is to gain enough momentum so as to undermine support for healthcare reform in the 50 State Legislatures around the country, while in the interim, eviscerate the bill by gutting smaller provisions and ultimately clear the way for totally killing reform in a hoped for 2012 Republican administration.
That said, this new GOP offensive against healthcare reform also provides a golden opportunity for Democrats and their allies to present the benefits of healthcare reform once again to Americans, making a much stronger case now that some of the more popular provisions of the law went into effect on January 1st such as regulations that forbid co-pays on preventative care; compel insurance companies to invest a higher percentage of premiums received on real medical care and provide some Medicare beneficiaries with a 50 percent discount on prescription medicines.
What truly concerns me however is that the Democratic Party seems to be traveling on all too familiar ground by promising to pull out all the stops on defending healthcare reform, but as is usual with Democrats, they have up to now failed to do even the simple things, such as demonstrating how Republicans are totally committed to take such just won benefits as described above away from Americans. What seems to be coming out of the Democratic caucus instead is a lot of whining about how Republicans are simply “wasting their time” with their repeal efforts. There is simply no way to avoid healthcare reform debate at this point, so failing to address the real consequences of repeal only allows the Republicans, their Tea Party allies, and right wing talk media, the ability to once again dominate the discussion.
One critical concern we should all share is that if enacted, the House Republican’s repeal effort would increase the deficit by approximately $230 billion through 2021. This startling revelation comes directly from the always non-partisan Congressional Budget Office whose Director Douglas Elmendorf just this past week wrote to new House Speaker John Boehner. In his letter to Boehner, Elmendorf explained this astonishing phenomenon this way: “The March health care legislation contained a set of provisions designed to expand health insurance coverage, which CBO and [Joint Committee on Taxation] estimated would have a gross cost of about $930 billion and a net cost (after accounting for certain related changes in outlays and revenues) of about $780 billion over the 2012-2019 period. Repealing that legislation would eliminate such costs. But [the health care legislation] also included a number of provisions to reduce federal outlays (primarily for Medicare) and to increase federal revenues (mostly by increasing the Hospital Insurance payroll tax and imposing fees on certain manufacturers and insurers); in March, CBO and JCT estimated that those provisions unrelated to insurance coverage would, on balance, reduce direct spending by about $500 billion and increase revenues by about $410 billion over the 2012-2019 period. If that legislation was repealed, such reductions in spending and increases in revenues would not occur. Thus, H.R. 2 would, on net, increase federal deficits over that period."
Mr. Elmendorf also adds in his letter to the Speaker that enacting repeal “would increase federal deficits in the decade after 2019 by an amount that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. For the decade beginning after 2021, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a share of the economy would probably be somewhat larger."
Consequently, the actual long-term cost of this repeal could reach $1.2 trillion while simultaneously 32 million fewer non-elderly people would have health insurance in 2019 if the law is repealed. This would reduce the total percentage of non-elderly Americans covered from 94 percent if the legislation is allowed to stay in place to 83 percent if healthcare reform is repealed. Worse still is that premiums for employment-based coverage from large employers would be slightly higher if the law is repealed and benefits would be correspondingly reduced.
A truly scary development is the number of states that have sued in federal court to nullify the healthcare legislation as unconstitutional. What makes this truly frightening is that the proponents of this effort acknowledge that they are targeting more than healthcare reform. Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general, has led that state’s legal challenge and has already won a victory in lower court that has labeled the requirement of people to purchase healthcare insurance if they are able to or be “fined” for not doing so as unconstitutional. In a recent speech before the Heritage Foundation, Cuccinelli admitted that healthcare was “secondary to the real important aspect of the case and that is to protect the Constitution as we essentially define the outer limits of federal power.”
What is particularly dangerous about these lawsuits however is a kind of radical constitutional theorizing that is driving them. These lawsuits are if nothing else, an all-out attack on the legal thinking and jurisprudence that has existed since the 1930s. And while the lawsuits themselves may not pose any immediate threat to federal healthcare reform, they could ultimately help to turn out conservative voters in 2012, especially when support for the repeal of healthcare reform is on the ballot and thus becomes a kind of litmus test for voters.
Getting back to my original point—now is an excellent time to get out and market the benefits of healthcare reform and at the risk of working from a totally negative perspective, impress upon the American electorate the absolute nightmare that would result should this reform be repealed. Now is the time to make the case that government needs to be in the business of providing healthcare reform, environmental protection and Social Security. Do we really want to go back to the days when there was no protection for our environment or there was no Social Security? Do we really want to go back to allowing our healthcare to be dictated totally by market forces? I think not.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
We Reap What We Sow
On January 12, 2011, presumptive 2012 Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who had been silent since the horrific Tucson shootings that had taken the lives of six people including a nine-year old girl and wounded 13 others including Arizona U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords issued a vigorous condemnation of her critics on Wednesday in a video accusing her detractors of “blood libel” in what she referred to as their rush to blame a hostile environment of political discourse across America for the Arizona massacre.
“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” the ex-Vice Presidential nominee said in a seven and a half minute video posted to her Facebook page. “Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”
Ms. Palin’s use of a map with cross hairs hovering over a number of swing districts, including that of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, has become a symbol of the vitriolic political discourse that she and other conservative politicos, journalists and bloggers have denied exists in America today. Tim Pawlenty, a conservative rival for the 2012 Republican nomination and the former governor of Minnesota has said that he would not have produced such a map.
Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” is what has rocked the political world however. The term blood libel has been historically used to refer to the accusation that Jews throughout history have murdered Christian children and have then used their blood in religious rituals, as well as in preparing matzos (unleavened bread) for Passover and other meals. That false claim was circulated and widely believed for centuries and was responsible for the successful prosecution of anti-Semitism and the justification for violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin’s use of the phrase in her video is one reason that it went viral so rapidly. Its use has itself attracted criticism, not the least because Congresswoman Giffords who remains in critical condition, is herself Jewish.
Reaction to Sarah Palin’s video has been swift. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat lawmaker in Florida, who is also a close friend of Ms. Giffords, immediately issued a statement repudiating her use of the phrase “blood libel.”
“Palin’s comments either show a complete ignorance of history, or blatant anti-Semitism,” said Jonathan Beeton, Ms. Wasserman-Schultz’s spokesperson. “Either way, it shows an appalling lack of sensitivity given Representative Gifford’s faith and the events of the past week.”
As if to prove just how wrong Sarah Palin and her fellow conservatives-in-denial are regarding the present state of political discourse in America today, the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin rushed to the defense of Ms. Palin, accusing liberals of being “Tucson massacre opportunists” for criticizing her. “The blamestream media is already up in arms—can we still say that?—over the use of the phrase ‘blood libel’, Ms. Malkin wrote. “The more moronic of Palin-bashers will simply gnash their teeth because she said “blood.” Idiocracy: The new normal.”
Pat Buchanan, who wrote in his syndicated column during the vetting process of Elena Kagan who had been nominated by President Obama to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, “If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than two percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity” also came to the defense of Sarah Palin’s use of the term blood libel calling it “excellent.”
The problem is probably that Sarah Palin does not understand Jewish sensitivity and history because she is unable to see Israel from her back yard.
The reality, at least for me, is that Congresswoman Gifford’s shooting and the death and wounding of so many who came to meet with her, are just the latest examples of ideologically motivated violence. For at least two years, we have been told how angry millions of Americans are. The Republicans have been at the forefront of the angry rhetoric spawned by this so-called anger that initially was manifested by public officials and politicians being verbally molested at town hall meetings and other public gatherings where politicians had come to meet and speak with their constituents. During the health care debates of 2009 and 2010, these public discourses took an especially heinous and violent turn as no politician—Republican or Democrat was truly safe. It seemed that the crazies for the most part had found their passport to the surface in the unexpected election of America’s first African-American to the presidency which gave them a real live focus to vent their frustration and yes, anger at the government and it has ultimately created an environment in which a politician feels perfectly justified in placing a crosshairs over an opponent’s congressional district as part of a discussion designed to defeat that person in an election.
One image I will never forget was the photo of an African-American man showing up at a President Obama public appearance in Arizona with an automatic weapon strapped to his back. In almost any other state in the country, that man would have been whisked off the street and taken directly to jail. Not in Arizona however, where the right to own, possess and carry any gun, un-concealed or concealed, is allowable. And this past Saturday, another Arizona gun owner was able to shoot his gun, in a public shopping center, again and again and again and again……
One of the dead sprawled on that Arizona parking lot was nine-year old Christina Taylor-Green who had just been elected to her school’s student council. Because of that electoral victory, a neighbor brought Christina to Congresswoman Gifford’s constituent outreach event so that she could see how adults put democracy into action.
What happened however, was that this baby, born on 9/11, became just one more victim of political violence in America, a violence that has been fueled by an incoherent and misplaced rage against government and politicians who are unable to bring prosperity and lost jobs back fast enough, and worse, a violence that is driven by racism and hatred for others who are different, whether they are the President of the United States or a Mexican family attempting to cross the border in order to have a better life—like so many millions of Europeans did in the early twentieth century. And all of this anger, this hatred, this deciding to ‘reload instead of retreat’ driven by right wing leaders and listened to raptly by their feeble minded followers lurking in the outer reaches of the internet, are being constantly spurred on by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Jon Kyl and Rush Limbaugh. We now are witness to the deadly effect of all that hatred
I am vexed by everyone trying so hard to transfer the blame of the Arizona shootings away from the vitriolic state of American political discourse to a lone, mentally ill gunman with no real political agenda. For me, the harsh language on the right is a direct correlation to the Arizona tragedy. I realize that the root causes for Saturday’s horror are many and not very definitive: fear of what is to come or not come, anger motivated by the uncertainty and dread associated with joblessness, embarrassment at not being able to honor one’s financial commitments or the frustration at having one’s entire household budget crippled by the loss of $50 or $100 in expected income.
Maybe however, just maybe, it is the fact that too many of us have or have access to guns in this country. One in four Americans owns at least one gun. Today, the NRA and their various offshoots are spending millions to ensure that anyone who wants a gun shall have one. According to gun advocates, the right to gun ownership supersedes the right to employment, health care, a decent and viable education, even housing.
Don’t we all realize by now that too many guns are not used for sport or even legitimate protection but for dealing with feelings of inadequacy and fantasies driven by weaponry? It amazes me that someone who seemingly everyone thought was crazy could walk into a store and buy a weapon with the capacity to fire off 30 rounds at a time and then walk across the street into a Walmart of all places, to buy the ammunition that would facilitate his ability to kill six people and wound thirteen! I simply refuse to accept the fact that this is what Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and Lighthorse Harry Lee and the rest of the Continental Congress had in mind when they discussed a “well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.”
Last night, President Obama spoke to the lack of civility in our political discourse. He did it however, in non-political terms. This is no easy feat—talking about politics apolitically—but he managed to pull it off in a way that even won kudos from Republicans. "At a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do -- it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds," Obama said.
On the day before the President of the United States was to address the nation regarding the shootings in Tucson, Rush Limbaugh reacted to the instantly despised mugshot of Jared Lee Loughner, the suspected shooter in the Arizona shooting, by publicly stating that Loughner is smiling in the picture because he knows he is backed by the Democratic Party.
Speaking on his radio show, Limbaugh said that Loughner was getting the exact attention that he wanted:
“What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He's sitting there in jail. He knows what's going on, he knows that...the Democratic Party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim. He's the latest in a never-ending parade of victims brought about by the unfairness of America...this guy clearly understands he's getting all the attention and he understands he's got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder - but something lesser."
After all the bickering and accusations and finger pointing following the tragedy in Tucson this past Saturday, President Obama last night stepped up to the podium and became what news analyst Nate Silver has called the “adult in the room.” The last two weeks were meant to be the time when the Republicans returned to power as they took control of the House of Representatives. There was to be a vote to repeal healthcare and with that a simultaneous vicious dismantling of the new healthcare law because even the most ardent Tea Partier knows that the still-Democratic controlled Senate and White House will not allow such a thing. Instead, the Republicans are somewhat on the defensive, distancing themselves from the likes of Rush Limbaugh who just days ago was their hero. And then, there is the difference between the shrill Sarah Palin, who bogarded her way into the limelight with a feisty, attacking and petty video message that made the insensitive and crude claim that she had been the victim of a “blood libel.” The contrast between the 2008 VP Republican candidate and the 2008 elected President of the United States could not have been sharper. It is my hope and prayer that the good will generated by the President’s remarks last night will somehow usher in a period of political compromise and accomplishment heretofore not thought possible.
“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” the ex-Vice Presidential nominee said in a seven and a half minute video posted to her Facebook page. “Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”
Ms. Palin’s use of a map with cross hairs hovering over a number of swing districts, including that of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, has become a symbol of the vitriolic political discourse that she and other conservative politicos, journalists and bloggers have denied exists in America today. Tim Pawlenty, a conservative rival for the 2012 Republican nomination and the former governor of Minnesota has said that he would not have produced such a map.
Sarah Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” is what has rocked the political world however. The term blood libel has been historically used to refer to the accusation that Jews throughout history have murdered Christian children and have then used their blood in religious rituals, as well as in preparing matzos (unleavened bread) for Passover and other meals. That false claim was circulated and widely believed for centuries and was responsible for the successful prosecution of anti-Semitism and the justification for violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin’s use of the phrase in her video is one reason that it went viral so rapidly. Its use has itself attracted criticism, not the least because Congresswoman Giffords who remains in critical condition, is herself Jewish.
Reaction to Sarah Palin’s video has been swift. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat lawmaker in Florida, who is also a close friend of Ms. Giffords, immediately issued a statement repudiating her use of the phrase “blood libel.”
“Palin’s comments either show a complete ignorance of history, or blatant anti-Semitism,” said Jonathan Beeton, Ms. Wasserman-Schultz’s spokesperson. “Either way, it shows an appalling lack of sensitivity given Representative Gifford’s faith and the events of the past week.”
As if to prove just how wrong Sarah Palin and her fellow conservatives-in-denial are regarding the present state of political discourse in America today, the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin rushed to the defense of Ms. Palin, accusing liberals of being “Tucson massacre opportunists” for criticizing her. “The blamestream media is already up in arms—can we still say that?—over the use of the phrase ‘blood libel’, Ms. Malkin wrote. “The more moronic of Palin-bashers will simply gnash their teeth because she said “blood.” Idiocracy: The new normal.”
Pat Buchanan, who wrote in his syndicated column during the vetting process of Elena Kagan who had been nominated by President Obama to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, “If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than two percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity” also came to the defense of Sarah Palin’s use of the term blood libel calling it “excellent.”
The problem is probably that Sarah Palin does not understand Jewish sensitivity and history because she is unable to see Israel from her back yard.
The reality, at least for me, is that Congresswoman Gifford’s shooting and the death and wounding of so many who came to meet with her, are just the latest examples of ideologically motivated violence. For at least two years, we have been told how angry millions of Americans are. The Republicans have been at the forefront of the angry rhetoric spawned by this so-called anger that initially was manifested by public officials and politicians being verbally molested at town hall meetings and other public gatherings where politicians had come to meet and speak with their constituents. During the health care debates of 2009 and 2010, these public discourses took an especially heinous and violent turn as no politician—Republican or Democrat was truly safe. It seemed that the crazies for the most part had found their passport to the surface in the unexpected election of America’s first African-American to the presidency which gave them a real live focus to vent their frustration and yes, anger at the government and it has ultimately created an environment in which a politician feels perfectly justified in placing a crosshairs over an opponent’s congressional district as part of a discussion designed to defeat that person in an election.
One image I will never forget was the photo of an African-American man showing up at a President Obama public appearance in Arizona with an automatic weapon strapped to his back. In almost any other state in the country, that man would have been whisked off the street and taken directly to jail. Not in Arizona however, where the right to own, possess and carry any gun, un-concealed or concealed, is allowable. And this past Saturday, another Arizona gun owner was able to shoot his gun, in a public shopping center, again and again and again and again……
One of the dead sprawled on that Arizona parking lot was nine-year old Christina Taylor-Green who had just been elected to her school’s student council. Because of that electoral victory, a neighbor brought Christina to Congresswoman Gifford’s constituent outreach event so that she could see how adults put democracy into action.
What happened however, was that this baby, born on 9/11, became just one more victim of political violence in America, a violence that has been fueled by an incoherent and misplaced rage against government and politicians who are unable to bring prosperity and lost jobs back fast enough, and worse, a violence that is driven by racism and hatred for others who are different, whether they are the President of the United States or a Mexican family attempting to cross the border in order to have a better life—like so many millions of Europeans did in the early twentieth century. And all of this anger, this hatred, this deciding to ‘reload instead of retreat’ driven by right wing leaders and listened to raptly by their feeble minded followers lurking in the outer reaches of the internet, are being constantly spurred on by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Jon Kyl and Rush Limbaugh. We now are witness to the deadly effect of all that hatred
I am vexed by everyone trying so hard to transfer the blame of the Arizona shootings away from the vitriolic state of American political discourse to a lone, mentally ill gunman with no real political agenda. For me, the harsh language on the right is a direct correlation to the Arizona tragedy. I realize that the root causes for Saturday’s horror are many and not very definitive: fear of what is to come or not come, anger motivated by the uncertainty and dread associated with joblessness, embarrassment at not being able to honor one’s financial commitments or the frustration at having one’s entire household budget crippled by the loss of $50 or $100 in expected income.
Maybe however, just maybe, it is the fact that too many of us have or have access to guns in this country. One in four Americans owns at least one gun. Today, the NRA and their various offshoots are spending millions to ensure that anyone who wants a gun shall have one. According to gun advocates, the right to gun ownership supersedes the right to employment, health care, a decent and viable education, even housing.
Don’t we all realize by now that too many guns are not used for sport or even legitimate protection but for dealing with feelings of inadequacy and fantasies driven by weaponry? It amazes me that someone who seemingly everyone thought was crazy could walk into a store and buy a weapon with the capacity to fire off 30 rounds at a time and then walk across the street into a Walmart of all places, to buy the ammunition that would facilitate his ability to kill six people and wound thirteen! I simply refuse to accept the fact that this is what Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and Lighthorse Harry Lee and the rest of the Continental Congress had in mind when they discussed a “well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.”
Last night, President Obama spoke to the lack of civility in our political discourse. He did it however, in non-political terms. This is no easy feat—talking about politics apolitically—but he managed to pull it off in a way that even won kudos from Republicans. "At a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do -- it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds," Obama said.
On the day before the President of the United States was to address the nation regarding the shootings in Tucson, Rush Limbaugh reacted to the instantly despised mugshot of Jared Lee Loughner, the suspected shooter in the Arizona shooting, by publicly stating that Loughner is smiling in the picture because he knows he is backed by the Democratic Party.
Speaking on his radio show, Limbaugh said that Loughner was getting the exact attention that he wanted:
“What Mr. Loughner knows is that he has the full support of a major political party in this country. He's sitting there in jail. He knows what's going on, he knows that...the Democratic Party is attempting to find anybody but him to blame. He knows if he plays his cards right, he's just a victim. He's the latest in a never-ending parade of victims brought about by the unfairness of America...this guy clearly understands he's getting all the attention and he understands he's got a political party doing everything it can, plus a local sheriff doing everything that they can to make sure he's not convicted of murder - but something lesser."
After all the bickering and accusations and finger pointing following the tragedy in Tucson this past Saturday, President Obama last night stepped up to the podium and became what news analyst Nate Silver has called the “adult in the room.” The last two weeks were meant to be the time when the Republicans returned to power as they took control of the House of Representatives. There was to be a vote to repeal healthcare and with that a simultaneous vicious dismantling of the new healthcare law because even the most ardent Tea Partier knows that the still-Democratic controlled Senate and White House will not allow such a thing. Instead, the Republicans are somewhat on the defensive, distancing themselves from the likes of Rush Limbaugh who just days ago was their hero. And then, there is the difference between the shrill Sarah Palin, who bogarded her way into the limelight with a feisty, attacking and petty video message that made the insensitive and crude claim that she had been the victim of a “blood libel.” The contrast between the 2008 VP Republican candidate and the 2008 elected President of the United States could not have been sharper. It is my hope and prayer that the good will generated by the President’s remarks last night will somehow usher in a period of political compromise and accomplishment heretofore not thought possible.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
We the People
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
With the start of the 112th Congress, Tea Partiers are brimming with pride over the fact that the new House Republican leadership will begin this legislative session with a reading of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor. As the quote from the Preamble of the Constitution above shows, when you actually read this document in its entirety, it is not representative of what the Tea Party claims it stands for. The irony is that the joke is really on them—turns out the U.S. Constitution is a very progressive document.
The distortions brought on this past year and a half by Tea Party rhetoric may have caused many of us to forget the progressive nature of our Constitution’s narrative. In a July 2010 post on their website, the Constitution Accountability Center wrote.....
“We think the Constitution should frame our political debates and should be followed by our leaders, whatever their political stripe. But if the Tea Party wants to be taken seriously—and if it wants the media to continue fawning over it for its purported love for the Constitution—it should at least be required to make plausible claims about the words and meaning of our Nation’s charter. A close look at the Tea Party’s version of the Constitution shows that it bears little resemblance to our actual Constitution and could in fact threaten the constitutional values Americans cherish most.”
Powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution are substantial and broad. And, since our country’s beginnings, the American people have amended the Constitution to ensure that Congress would always have the tools it needed to address national challenges and more importantly, to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans. Eight separate amendments have expanded the original powers of the central government, granting vast powers to the government in order to protect civil and voting rights, ensure liberty, and to raise funds through taxes on income. Many Tea Partiers “refudiate” (sic) these Amendments and some even want to repeal most if not all of them. Fortunately, for the rest of us, these Amendments are just as much a part of the Constitution as if they had been written in 1787. When the new members of Congress have been sworn in, they will be bound by their oath to uphold the entire Constitution, not just the parts they agree with.
Consequently, as House members comply with the new requirement of citing constitutional authority for all proposed legislation, the rest of us should remain cognizant of how these references to the Constitution manifest the progressive history of our Constitution. I hereby humbly offer these following constitutional grants of authority to Congress that could be used to support key progressive policies:
• The “Power to lay and collect Taxes” to provide for the “general welfare of the United States” (Article I, Section 8), which gives the federal government broad authority to further national policies such as ensuring healthcare for the poor (Medicaid) and provide security for older Americans (Social Security).
• The power to establish “a uniform rule of Naturalization” (Article I, § 8), which mandates that only Congress can enact immigration reform and also that state anti-immigration laws, like the one in Arizona (Arizona SB 1070), are an unconstitutional infringement of Congress’ exclusive power to regulate immigration.
• The power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations and among the several States” (Article I, § 8) which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, for example, the national health care and banking industries.
• The crucial power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” (Article I, § 8) for carrying out all constitutional powers granted to the federal government, which means for example that Congress can, after all, require individuals who can afford it, to obtain health insurance in order to carry out its authority to regulate the interstate health insurance industry and ensure affordable, non-discriminatory health care.
Reading the U.S. Constitution in its entirety should leave the unmistakable impression that our constitutional story is, inherently progressive. Throughout the history of our country, “We the People” have taken a great but on some levels flawed document and made it even greater. We have, in effect, created an even “more perfect union” by writing into our Constitution, through the Amendment process, the abolition of slavery, expanded democracy and voting rights for women and all Americans of color as well as other notions of equality and liberty.
If those of us on the left can recognize, understand and accept the progressive nature of the Constitution, then we should feel no need to disagree with or make fun of Speaker Boehner’s requirement that all bills contain a citation to the constitutional grant of authority that allows whatever legislation is being proposed. Instead, we should welcome the new Republican-led House of Representatives embracing of the Constitution and then hold all members of Congress to their oath to be faithful to it and to support it—all of it.
With the start of the 112th Congress, Tea Partiers are brimming with pride over the fact that the new House Republican leadership will begin this legislative session with a reading of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor. As the quote from the Preamble of the Constitution above shows, when you actually read this document in its entirety, it is not representative of what the Tea Party claims it stands for. The irony is that the joke is really on them—turns out the U.S. Constitution is a very progressive document.
The distortions brought on this past year and a half by Tea Party rhetoric may have caused many of us to forget the progressive nature of our Constitution’s narrative. In a July 2010 post on their website, the Constitution Accountability Center wrote.....
“We think the Constitution should frame our political debates and should be followed by our leaders, whatever their political stripe. But if the Tea Party wants to be taken seriously—and if it wants the media to continue fawning over it for its purported love for the Constitution—it should at least be required to make plausible claims about the words and meaning of our Nation’s charter. A close look at the Tea Party’s version of the Constitution shows that it bears little resemblance to our actual Constitution and could in fact threaten the constitutional values Americans cherish most.”
Powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution are substantial and broad. And, since our country’s beginnings, the American people have amended the Constitution to ensure that Congress would always have the tools it needed to address national challenges and more importantly, to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans. Eight separate amendments have expanded the original powers of the central government, granting vast powers to the government in order to protect civil and voting rights, ensure liberty, and to raise funds through taxes on income. Many Tea Partiers “refudiate” (sic) these Amendments and some even want to repeal most if not all of them. Fortunately, for the rest of us, these Amendments are just as much a part of the Constitution as if they had been written in 1787. When the new members of Congress have been sworn in, they will be bound by their oath to uphold the entire Constitution, not just the parts they agree with.
Consequently, as House members comply with the new requirement of citing constitutional authority for all proposed legislation, the rest of us should remain cognizant of how these references to the Constitution manifest the progressive history of our Constitution. I hereby humbly offer these following constitutional grants of authority to Congress that could be used to support key progressive policies:
• The “Power to lay and collect Taxes” to provide for the “general welfare of the United States” (Article I, Section 8), which gives the federal government broad authority to further national policies such as ensuring healthcare for the poor (Medicaid) and provide security for older Americans (Social Security).
• The power to establish “a uniform rule of Naturalization” (Article I, § 8), which mandates that only Congress can enact immigration reform and also that state anti-immigration laws, like the one in Arizona (Arizona SB 1070), are an unconstitutional infringement of Congress’ exclusive power to regulate immigration.
• The power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations and among the several States” (Article I, § 8) which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, for example, the national health care and banking industries.
• The crucial power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” (Article I, § 8) for carrying out all constitutional powers granted to the federal government, which means for example that Congress can, after all, require individuals who can afford it, to obtain health insurance in order to carry out its authority to regulate the interstate health insurance industry and ensure affordable, non-discriminatory health care.
Reading the U.S. Constitution in its entirety should leave the unmistakable impression that our constitutional story is, inherently progressive. Throughout the history of our country, “We the People” have taken a great but on some levels flawed document and made it even greater. We have, in effect, created an even “more perfect union” by writing into our Constitution, through the Amendment process, the abolition of slavery, expanded democracy and voting rights for women and all Americans of color as well as other notions of equality and liberty.
If those of us on the left can recognize, understand and accept the progressive nature of the Constitution, then we should feel no need to disagree with or make fun of Speaker Boehner’s requirement that all bills contain a citation to the constitutional grant of authority that allows whatever legislation is being proposed. Instead, we should welcome the new Republican-led House of Representatives embracing of the Constitution and then hold all members of Congress to their oath to be faithful to it and to support it—all of it.
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