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Getbig Main Boards => Gossip & Opinions => Topic started by: Benny B on December 07, 2011, 03:09:21 PM
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UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones has a tremendous amount of respect for Lyoto Machida ahead of UFC 140, but he still believes he'll pick up his 4th win in 2011 in dominant fashion.
Jones has watched all of Machida's fights in the UFC, and while he believes that every fighter is capable of evolving, he knows that the Brazilian has been figured out before and he can figure him out this time as well.
"How are you going to solve Lyoto Machida's puzzle? Well, it's been solved already," said Jones.
Jones also expanded on how he's been able to continue to grow as a fighter despite staying so busy this year as well as his destiny to become a fighter.
Check out this video interview with UFC 140 main event fighter and light heavyweight champion Jon 'Bones' Jones
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nice to see you posting something other than political bullpoop.
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Occupying Senator Scott Brown's Office
“Take Back the Capitol” protesters wait outside Sen. Scott Brown’s office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on December 6, 2001. Photo credit: Massuniting
This week, “Take Back the Capitol” brought hundreds of self-proclaimed 99 percenters to Washington in hopes of impacting key legislative battles that will take place between now and the end of the year. Thousands are sleeping either in pitched tents near the national mall, or in church basements, union halls and community groups throughout the city—and participating in mass action during the day.
While clearly akin to the Occupy movement—many of the people I spoke with today came from Occupy encampments across the country—there is also heavy labor involvement in this push, with several union groups, most notably SEIU, lending organizing muscle. And unlike the deliberately non-electoral Occupy movement, “Take Back the Capitol” came directly to lawmakers’ offices with specific goals: primarily extending unemployment insurance, passing a jobs bill, taxing the wealthy and not cutting too deeply into domestic spending.
Tuesday’s action involved splitting into state-by-state delegations and visiting Congressional offices to push for these specific requests. Some members, like Representative Chris van Hollen of Maryland, spoke to the protesters, while many others did not.
I spent the day with the Massachusetts delegation, one of the largest of the state groups. About half of them—more than 100 people—marched to the office of Senator Scott Brown and arrived a little before noon. They massed inside and nearby his office, and requested to speak with the senator. A staffer told the group Brown was “not available,” but offered to take two or three demonstrators to speak with Brown’s chief of staff, provided the conversation was not recorded.
The demonstrators rejected that offer and announced their intention to wait for the senator. They promptly made themselves comfortable on the couches, chairs and floor inside Brown’s office. Dozens more demonstrators lined the hallway outside—this completely prevented Brown from coming into his office unseen, since the only doors were in that hallway.
Despite being in Washington and voting on the Senate floor today, Brown somewhat mysteriously never returned to his office after the protesters arrived. We waited for six hours, until the office closed, but Brown never showed up. His press staff would not confirm his schedule for me, nor say where he was.
While we waited, I spoke with many of the participants. All of them were either unemployed or underemployed, doing part-time work or jobs that paid much less than they were accustomed to getting. They had a variety of very specific concerns: Medicaid cuts, the expiration of unemployment benefits, the failure of Congress to pass infrastructure bills or more general job bills.
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ah crap
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How Obama's Embrace Turned Teddy Roosevelt Into a Socialist
John Nichols on December 7, 2011 - 10:24am ET
What was Fox News to do when Barack Obama went to Kansas and delivered a speech that echoed the “New Nationalism” address Teddy Roosevelt used to renew and redefine his political prospects? Obama’s oratory was not quite as radical as that of the former Republican president, but it was close enough is spirit and content to create concerns on the part of Fox commentators that the current president might be tapping into the rich vein of American progressive populism that actually moves the masses.
So the network of economic royalism did the only thing it could.
Fox broke away from Tuesday’s speech right at the point where Obama was most closely following TR’s line, with references to how the former president had declared: “Our country…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” And the recognition by Obama that “today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what [Roosevelt] fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women, insurance for the unemployed and for the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.”
Obama had the quote right. And he had the history right.
What was Fox to do?
No problem. They dismissed Teddy Roosevelt as a socialist.
Once the details of Obama’s speech—one of the most effective and well-received of his presidency—were made available, Fox News political editor Chris Stirewelt explained: “What Teddy Roosevelt was calling for was a sort of a socialistic nationalism, in which the government would take things away from people who got things that he didn’t think they should have [and] give it to the working man. They talk about ‘the square deal,’ ‘fairness,’ all of these new mandates for government—something the Republican Party has walked away from in very decided fashion certainly since the Reagan era in terms of what the role and purpose of government is. This is Obama embracing a Republican icon of a bygone era.”
Fox host Megyn Kelly picked up on the theme: “Teddy Roosevelt was calling for something akin to a socialist nationalism. Why would President Obama want to do anything that would associate himself with that word ‘socialist’ which has been used against him by so many of the Republican presidential candidates, among others.”
Yes, Stirewelt responded, “I think the biggest thing [Obama] is trying to do is shame the Republicans. He’s trying to say: ‘Look, one of your own, a great hero of yours that’s on Mount Rushmore, he was a socialist. He called for this sort of socialist nationalism. Why are you people not being like him? Why are you not following in his footsteps?’ ”
“Obviously,” continued Stirewelt, “this is not an unalloyed good thing for the president to line up with this sort of progressivism, and this sort of liberalism and socialism that has become so much maligned and so much disliked in the modern American political discourse.”
On Fox Business News, the discussion turned to a claim that “we’re seeing the return of socialism combined with nationalsm.”
Wow.
So Roosevelt was socialistic, and Obama is adopting “socialist nationalism” by borrowing a page from the Republican commander-in-chief whom the most recent Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, hailed as his hero—as have Republican nominees in every election since the former president’s passing in 1920.
The notion that the Republican Roosevelt was a socialist would have come as news to the old Rough Rider—and to the socialist stalwarts of his time.
When Roosevelt ran for the presidency in 1904 (as a Republican incumbent) and again in 1912 (as the leader of the renegade Republicans who formed the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party), he faced determined opposition from Socialist Party nominees. Indeed, the 1912 campaign saw Eugene Victor Debs win the highest portion of the vote ever accorded to a Socialist candidate: 6 percent.
Roosevelt, in his “New Nationalism” speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, did outline an agenda that supported the establishment of programs like Social Security and Medicare, protections against discrimination, union rights and expanded democracy. In effect, he was arguing for what, under his fifth cousin, Franklin, would come to be known as “the New Deal.”
Some of those proposals were promoted by the Socialist Party in the early years of the twentieth century, which certainly made arguments in its platforms for safety-net programs. But so, too, did moderate Republicans and Democrats. After the “Gilded Age” of robber barons and corporate monopolies, there was mainstream support for tempering the excesses of laissez faire capitalism. They weren’t proposing socialism in any form that Karl Marx might recognize but they were arguing for fairness and responsibility.
“We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used,” Roosevelt said in 1910. However, recalling the language of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt added, “It is not even enough that it should have gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”
That’s hardly a radical notion. It simply says that the accumulation of great wealth ought not come at the expense of society. Or, as Obama explained in Osawatomie, “Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes—especially for the wealthy—our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty. It’s a simple theory—one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: it doesn’t work. It’s never worked.”
This is not some grand redistributionist scheme. It is economic realism. It is the vision of responsible wealth that was broadly accepted by Main Street Republicans until the advocates for a new Gilded Age bought themselves a Tea Party movement.
Roosevelt spoke for Main Street when he said 111 years ago: “The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.”
Barack Obama is echoing that line, speaking a bit more softly and carrying a bit less of a big stick than Teddy Roosevelt. He is coming down on the side of the same basic premise that TR reached in Osawatomie: fairness.
Of course, according to Fox News, fairness is “something the Republican Party has walked away from…”
— John Nichols is the author of The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition: Socialism (Verso).
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Mayor Tin Ear Mocks Occupy Wall Street
Allison Kilkenny on December 7, 2011 - 1:09pm ET
I’ve always suspected that Mayor Bloomberg’s handlers keep him in a giant plastic bubble cut off from world events, but last night confirmed my suspicions when the mayor delivered one of the strangest, tone-deaf performances of his political career. While Occupy chapters in nearly two dozen cities participated in direct actions to reclaim foreclosed homes on behalf of needy families, Bloomberg invited an exclusive media pool to dine at Gracie Mansion for his annual holiday press party, and in order to make light of his recent bad publicity.
Bloomberg has been widely criticized for his handling of Occupy Wall Street’s eviction from Zuccotti Park last month in which reporters were denied access to the park, roughly treated by police, and in some cases, threatened by officers. Rosie Gray, a writer for the Village Voice tried to beg her way into gaining access to the plaza. “I’m press!” Gray reportedly exclaimed, to which a female officer replied, “not tonight.”
Josh Harkinson from Mother Jones had a more intimidating encounter with police. When an officer physically dragged him away from the park, Harkinson demanded to know why he couldn’t observe NYPD actions. “Because this is a frozen zone. It’s a police action going on. You could be injured,” the officer replied.
“What’s your name?” asked Harkinson, to which the officer replied:
“Watch your back.”
In a statement released from Bloomberg’s office on November 17, spokesperson Stu Loesner casually admitted that accredited journalists have been arrested by the city’s police force. Loesner clumsily tried to silence criticism of the mayor by pointing out “only five of the 26 arrested reporters actually have valid NYPD-issued press credentials.” In this statement, Loesner incorrectly assumed the twenty-six arrests all occurred in New York City, thereby accidentally admitting the city had knowingly arrested credentialed press.
The harassment of press opened up new discussion about the city’s procedures to accredit reporters. New York City is famously stingy with handing out press passes, especially to nontraditional outlets such as blogs. I personally had to fight tooth and nail to get mine, and the application process borders on insane. A reporter must present articles, commentaries, books, photographs, videos, films or audio published or broadcast within the twenty-four months preceding the press card application, sufficient to show that applicant covered in person six or more events occurring on separate days. Additionally, applicants must prove they cover events where police lines have been established by the City of New York.
Basically, a reporter must prove he/she crossed a police line before he/she had the means to do so. It’s no easy feat and I was fairly shocked when I secured my pass. As soon as my credentials cleared the laminating machine, I practically ran from the office, convinced there had been some dire error and my press revocation was imminent.
In a sane world, the ongoing harassment and intimidation of press by police and city officials should have inspired Bloomberg to perhaps remain mute when it comes to matters such as the First Amendment and OWS. Yet, he took the opportunity of having a select group of media at Gracie Mansion to mock his authoritarian behavior. Nida Kahn, an independent journalist who attended the event, tweeted that the mayor at one point remarked, “I know only 5 of you in here actually have valid press creds,” an obvious reference to the media storm that erupted after Loesner’s embarrassing statement.
A pack of gross sycophants NY Daily News photographer Todd Maisel generously describes as “nine reporters” then bestowed the mayor with a rain poncho as a gag gift, perhaps a reference to the familiar uniform of occupiers who oftentimes persevered through harsh weather. Another party attendee bestowed the mayor with a book titled Class Warfare. Bloomberg is frequently called “Mayor One Percent” by occupiers who use the language of class warfare when describing the widening wealth divide in America, and a government system they perceive as being ruled by the financial elite, such as the billionaire Bloomberg.
It’s not surprising that Bloomberg privately expresses open contempt and mockery when talking about OWS. After all, the movement is comprised of his ideological opponents, but it’s sickening that press—any press—would so willingly play the role of obedient lapdogs, and even laugh along while the mayor makes light of his own authoritarian behavior that landed some of their colleagues in jail.
The party in Gracie Mansion serves as a microcosm of the larger problem of co-opted media, in which so-called journalists become the servants of the one percent. Rather than adopting adversarial roles in which reporters constantly approach every government claim with the highest degree of skepticism, reporters allow themselves to be sucked into the world of the ruling elite, including being wined and dined at exclusive clubs. Eventually, it’s hard to play the role of fact-checker on one’s golfing buddies.
Clearly, not all journalists who attended the event thought Bloomberg’s humor was appropriate, but those who stayed, applauded, and went as far as giving the mayor gag gifts should be ashamed of themselves. Laughing in the presence of a creeping city police state should be grounds for immediately revoking a reporter’s press card.
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In Osawatomie, Obama Embraces New Populist Moment
Ari Berman on December 6, 2011 - 3:54pm ET
President Barack Obama speaks about the economy, Tuesday, December 6, 2011, at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kansas. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
It’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed our country’s political conversation. But if you want to know exactly how the Occupy movement has impacted the debate in Washington, read Barack Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, today.
For much of 2011, Obama’s speeches were all about the deficit. Today the central theme of his speech was income inequality—and how this mounting problem weakens our economy and our democracy. At long last, the president sounded like he was channeling his inner Elizabeth Warren.
Obama’s pivot away from austerity orthodoxy and toward public investment began with his jobs speech in September, but he’s subsequently sharpened his language and focus in recent months in response to pressure from Occupy Wall Street. He’s now tackling issues of basic fairness and attacking the GOP’s brand of “your-on-your-own economics” in a much more direct way. His nod to Teddy Roosevelt, who delivered his “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie in 1910, could not have come at a more appropriate time. Here’s the relevant section:
Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes—especially for the wealthy—our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.
It’s a simple theory—one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: it doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.
Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class—things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security.
Remember that in those years, thanks to some of the same folks who are running Congress now, we had weak regulation and little oversight, and what did that get us? Insurance companies that jacked up people’s premiums with impunity, and denied care to the patients who were sick. Mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn’t afford. A financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy.
We simply cannot return to this brand of your-on-your-own economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. We know that it doesn’t result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and its future. It doesn’t result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that’s enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens.
Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250 percent, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about thirty times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent.
This kind of inequality—a level we haven’t seen since the Great Depression—hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity—that’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.
Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them—that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.
More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That’s why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores.
And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance fell to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class.
It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for.
You’re likely to hear elements of this speech over and over as the campaign heats up, as the Obama campaign attempts to stand with the 99 percent and paint Gingrich or Romney as core defenders of the 1 percent. None other than Chuck Schumer, one of the senators who represents Wall Street, told Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent that Democrats would focus on income inequality “like a laser” in 2012.
That will entail, however, a shift not only in rhetoric, but also in policy for a party and president that has too often been seen as prioritizing Wall Street over Main Street. Nor is it realistic to think that the Obama campaign will suddenly win over disaffected former supporters with a series of speeches. Indeed, Occupy Wall Street is aimed as much at the president and the rigged political system in Washington as it is at the nation’s largest banks. As one OWS leader told New York magazine: “These [protesters] aren’t out here because they’re offended that they haven’t been spoken to nicely. They’re out here because they owe shitloads of money in student-loan debt and can’t find a job. Or they can’t afford their mortgage. And if Obama thinks that they’re gonna be able to divert this energy by talking about doing something, he’s got another think coming.”
To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, Obama now needs to prove to the movement that he has more to offer them, and the country, than just words. Still, the populist moment captured by Occupy Wall Street provides an opening for the president as well. It’s still an open question whether he’ll end up on the right or the wrong side of this movement. But today Obama took an important step in Occupy’s direction.
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Bones is so fucking awesome incredibly smart, longest reach in MMA at 84, awesome shape and incredibly skilled. I see no one defeating him any time soon.
8) 8) 8)
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Conservatives for Jon Huntsman?
Ben Adler on December 6, 2011 - 1:25am ET
In the last week or so a lot of conservative pundits have surveyed the Republican race and asked themselves, “Has it really come to this?” With most conservative alternatives to Mitt Romney having been successively eliminated, the current anti-Romney standard-bearer is Newt Gingrich. The only problem is Gingrich’s record, which is neither clean nor reliably conservative.
As Conn Carroll of the conservative Washington Examiner puts it, “The reality of Newt as the embodiment of everything the Tea Party hates about Washington will ultimately be his undoing. So who will be next? If the conservative media, both establishment and insurgent, is to believed, it could just be Jon Huntsman.”
With so few options left, conservative writers have begun to look at someone they initially dismissed: former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr. Huntsman is fighting a losing battle with the margin of error in most national and state polls, but in New Hampshire, where he has staked all his campaign’s hopes, he is currently polling in third place behind Gingrich and Romney.
A series of pieces from both movement and establishment conservatives have recently made the case for Huntsman. These writers run the gamut from slightly idiosyncratic intellectuals, (George Will of the Washington Post, Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Jim Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Brendan Dougherty in Business Insider) to doctrinaire activist partisans (Red State’s Erick Erickson).
The pro-Huntsman pieces generally make the same points: he governed Utah as a fiscal conservative, earning high ratings from the libertarian Cato Institute, his presidential campaign platform is fiscally conservative and he was never for abortion rights, gun control or an individual mandate to buy health insurance. (They may be unaware that, as Sarah Kliff reported in Politico, Huntsman was willing to consider an individual mandate in Utah.) An added wrinkle is that Huntsman’s realist foreign policy calls for reducing our entanglements abroad to save money. That’s a distinct contrast from the extreme hawks, except for Ron Paul, who fill out the rest of the GOP field, and it is appealing to paleoconservatives who opposed the Iraq War, such as Will.
But the conservative base is unlikely to reconsider Huntsman the way conservative intellectuals have. The reason can actually be found within some of the endorsements of him. Consider the tease on Dougherty’s profile of Huntsman in The American Conservative: “The former Utah governor speaks like a diplomat, but he’s no moderate.” Speaking like a diplomat, and sounding more moderate than you are, is an asset in a general election and during a presidency. In a Republican primary, on the other hand, it is deadly. The conservative base does not want diplomacy, it wants vituperation.
Look at Will’s argument for Huntsman, and you see a crucial fallacious assumption: that Republican primary voters care about policy. Will writes:
[Huntsman] endorses Paul Ryan’s budget and entitlement reforms. (Gingrich denounced Ryan’s Medicare reform as “right-wing social engineering.”) Huntsman would privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Gingrich’s benefactor). Huntsman would end double taxation on investment by eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends. (Romney would eliminate them only for people earning less than $200,000, who currently pay just 9.3 percent of them.) Huntsman’s thorough opposition to corporate welfare includes farm subsidies. (Romney has justified them as national security measures—food security, somehow threatened. Gingrich says opponents of ethanol subsidies are “big-city” people hostile to farmers.)… Between Ron Paul’s isolationism and the faintly variant bellicosities of the other six candidates stands Huntsman’s conservative foreign policy, skeptically nuanced about America’s need or ability to control many distant developments.
Does a Republican primary voter in Iowa favor eliminating subsidies for corn? Does a typical middle-class, home-owning Republican support privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Support for the free market is a rhetorical position for rank-and-file conservatives, not a principle strong enough to withstand any conflict with their own self-interest. (For an example, read Joe Klein’s description in Time of Romney contending on the campaign trail with Iowa Republicans who don’t want their ethanol subsidies to expire.)
For many Republicans, nominal fiscal conservatism is really about the culture war rather than economic policy. When I interviewed attendees at Newt Gingrich’s Staten Island Tea Party town hall meeting on Saturday, the grievances articulated were not inefficient programs like farm subsidies. It was an inchoate anger that some vaguely defined band of derelicts refuses to work and demands handouts. Sometimes the malefactors are hippies occupying Wall Street. Sometimes they are illegal immigrants. But they are never farmers.
What about Huntsman’s opposition to unnecessary military spending or foreign interventions? The people I interviewed would have no use for that. “Don’t you think we need a strong military?” demanded one woman. “After September 11 we had to do what we had to do,” she said, by way of justifying the Iraq invasion. (One man told me, in language unsuitable for a family magazine, that he admired Bush’s handling of the Middle East. Suffice it to say that he equates belligerence with manhood.) When it comes to foreign policy, the Republican base isn’t philosophically conservative. It’s nationalist. Nationalism is also what essentially defines their economic views. It’s not about getting out of the way of the Invisible Hand, it’s about Us versus Them.
When viewed through that prism, farm subsidies are a good policy not a bad one. Of course they are wasteful and market distorting and no actual economic conservative would support them. But is your average Iowa Republican an actual economic conservative, or just an angry old white person who hates “big-city” people? Funding for mass transit? That’s a boondoggle for the lazy others, the “big-city” people. But farm subsidies? Well, that’s a program that benefits good, hard-working Americans. It’s actually rather amazing that Will has spent the last four decades as an intellectual leader of the conservative movement without coming to terms with this contradiction. I wonder, then, how he explains it to himself when conservative activists shout at a town hall meeting to “Get your government hands off my Medicare.”
As for the more engaged fiscally conservative activists in the primary states, they say Huntsman doesn’t even have a prayer. Some commentators, such as Douthat, say this is the fault of the Huntsman campaign for allowing mainstream magazines to write glowing profiles of him and for picking “high-profile fights on two hot-button issues—evolution and global warming—that were completely irrelevant to his candidacy’s rationale.” Huntsman did not propose an ambitious agenda to deal with climate change, he merely acknowledged its occurrence. Presumably if Huntsman pointed out that the earth is round and revolves around the sun, Douthat would blame Huntsman for picking a needless fight with conservatives, instead of blaming for conservatives for deciding that accepting modern science is a disqualification for the Oval Office. (Note that it is Douthat, not me, who asserts that Huntsman’s belief in Enlightenment reasoning is why he is languishing in the polls. I went to Huntsman’s announcement speech, before he made those comments, and I didn’t think he had much of a shot even back then.)
“Huntsman has a very strong economic program and a very good record as governor,” says Phil Kerpen, vice-president for policy at Americans for Prosperity. “There are two concerns for conservatives: his [past] support for cap and trade and the Western Climate Initiative and his willingness to work for Obama [as ambassador.]”
Those are, indeed, the objections to Huntsman echoed by state-level Tea Party leaders. “I don’t think Huntsman has had a chance since he got in,” says Ryan Rhodes, a state coordinator with the Iowa Tea Party. “I’ve never known a single person who’s a Huntsman supporter or would be willing to consider that. He worked for the Obama administration and that’s an absolute taboo. It doesn’t matter what [the job] is, the grassroots sees [the Obama administration] as what they want to beat.” This is an understandable sentiment. Can you imagine Democrats nominating a veteran of the Bush administration in 2004?
Earlier in the campaign season Erickson wrote that he would never support Huntsman because of his tenure as ambassador. Interestingly, Erickson’s argument was not that Huntsman is not anti-Obama enough because he took the job. Rather he argues, somewhat persuasively, that once Huntsman signed on to represent the United States in China—our most important contender for global power—he had a patriotic duty not to undermine the president by laying the groundwork for a campaign to challenge him.
Erickson recently reiterated that point, but went on to say, “[Huntsman has] never flip-flopped on abortion, the need for tax cuts, etc. I still find it shocking that the guy running as the liberal in the race, or at least the media accepted moderate, came up withe [sic] boldest, most conservative economic plan.” But, Erickson is quite open about the fact that his feelings about Huntsman are driven by tone rather than substance. “To even get me to half-way take him seriously though, I think he’d have to get rid of [campaign manager] Jon Weaver and show conservatives he actually is a conservative. Thus far, from his jokes at debates to his tweets, he’s come across as condescending.” If putting out a conservative economic plan doesn’t show you are a conservative, what does? Making sure your tweets don’t show too much book learning and treating right-wing activists with appropriate deference, apparently.
Conservatives identify inadequate nationalism as a source of unease with Huntsman. Gingrich cleverly capitalized on this when he spoke in Staten Island by offering Huntsman this backhanded compliment: “I’m not fluent in Mandarin, so Governor Huntsman will have an advantage” in their upcoming one-on-one debate.
“He's too much of a globalist,” says Jane Aitken, New Hampshire coordinator for Tea Party groups. “I had not seen anyone come out for Huntsman in the beginning so I would be surprised if anyone would be for him now. We want someone who is pro-America, and will slash departments and budgets severely.” The problem, of course, is not that conservatives don’t know what they want, or that they haven’t been clear about it, it’s that they can’t find a candidate who they trust will deliver it for them.
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nice to see you posting something other than political bullpoop.
I post non-politically related posts all the time, dummy. ;)
Its just that my great political posts seem to get you and all of your boyfriend's panties here in a bunch, providing me with endless entertainment. :D
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Johnny just pwnd Benny.
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Dear Jenny: I Fired Your Mom and Put You to Work to Help You "Rise." Love, Newt'
John Nichols on November 25, 2011 - 10:14am ET
The picture is of elementary-school age girl mopping the hall in front of a row of lockers.
“Dear Jenny,” reads the accompanying text, “I fired your Mom and put you to work to help you ‘rise.’ Love, Newt.”
A postscript adds: “Hope you don’t miss your house, food and health care too much. You’ll thank me in 30 years, if you survive. Promise!”
The new ad campaign from the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees goes to the heart of the matter. Former House Speaker and—at least for this week—Republican presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich really does want to fire school janitors and hire kids to mop the halls, clean the restrooms and fix the boilers. Gingrich claims this switch-up will help elementary and high-school age children “begin the process of rising.”
The real point of the proposal is to destroy public-sector unions. And he is willing to end collective bargaining rights obtained during the New Deal era and in the years since, as well as child labor laws passed during the Progressive Era of a century ago, in order to achieve a political end.
Gingrich and other Republicans, such as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, want to eliminate public-sector unions because they remain the most effective defenders of the common good—fighting to protect public services and public education from the privatization schemes favored by Gingrich, Walker and their corporate sponsors. With the Supreme Court’s determination that corporations can spend whatever they choose to buy election results, one of the last remaining barriers to conservative hegemony in many states is the labor movement, which this year has proven to be remarkably adept at countering assaults on middle-class families and the communities where they live.
So Gingrich has gone after the janitors, displaying a classic “elite” view that those who scrub floors and clean toilets are easily replaced by child labor. He’s wrong, of course. Janitors handle hazardous materials, move heavy items and perform major repairs inside the nation’s schools. They also help and protect children. And the incomes they earn—as well as the health benefits—provide working moms and dads with a measure of economic stability. That’s what will allow their children to “rise” up the educational and economic ladders Gingrich is so focused on—not, as AFSCME notes, “doing hard manual labor cleaning up after their more fortunate classmates.”
Gingrich’s proposal is not just outrageous. It is cruel in the extreme. Collective-bargaining protections help to maintain the American middle class. Child-labor laws help to prevent the exploitation of low-income kids. Attacking the two of them in combination, as Gingrich has, should disqualify him for serious consideration as a presidential candidate in 2012.
In fact, his stance would have disqualified him from serious consideration as a presidential candidate in 1912. After all, in 1912, all the major contenders for the presidency—Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Republican William Howard Taft, “Bull Moose” Progressive Theodore Roosevelt and Socialist Eugene Victor Debs—expressed varying measures of respect for unions and concern about child-labor abuses.
Gingrich imagines himself as a “big thinker” of the twenty-first century. In fact, he is regurgitating the small ideas of the nineteenth century.
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Rick Perry's War on Women
Jordan Smith
November 30, 2011 | This article appeared in the December 19, 2011 edition of The Nation.
Reflecting on his years of collaboration with the group, Perry said, “We have promoted in this state a culture of life. We have strengthened families. We have protected our children’s future.” And, he added, “although our shared efforts have made Texas a safer place for the unborn, our work is far from over.”
Perry’s presidential campaign may be doomed—it’s too early to count him out entirely—but the far-reaching effects of his disastrous decade as Texas governor are just beginning to emerge. For women, things look particularly grim. Perry has presided over a wave of anti-choice legislation that has shredded healthcare services for the state’s most vulnerable. It reached its apex during the 2011 biennial legislative session, which saw a dismantling of Texas’s budget to provide women—especially the poor and uninsured—with access to basic healthcare, including reproductive health and family planning.
“I use the phrase ‘war on women.’ That’s how it feels,” says Regina Rogoff, CEO of People’s Community Clinic in central Texas, which serves thousands of low-income patients. “I’m sure that’s not how the people involved intended it,” she adds magnanimously. “But the consequences [of the budget cuts] are disconnected from any legitimate purpose.”
It’s hard to read the results as unintended consequences. In April the Texas House voted to slash nearly two-thirds of the roughly $100 million biennial budget dedicated to funding basic health and family planning for needy Texans—a budget that since 2005 had served an average of 244,000 women each year who would otherwise lack access to preventive health services (just a fraction of the more than 1 million Texas women who need it). Texas Right to Life Removes $61M Tax Funds From Abortion Industry! was the headline on the anti-choice group’s website celebrating the defunding, which, it boasted, had been “supported and called for by our Pro-Life governor, Rick Perry.”
Lawmakers and healthcare providers point out that none of the funds diverted from basic healthcare—which includes annual gynecological exams and screenings for STDs, diabetes, hypertension, cervical and breast cancers, and more—are spent on abortions. Since they are “pass-through federal funds” (federal tax dollars distributed through the state), Texas and its healthcare contractors are forbidden from using them for abortions. The gutting of this budget means that thousands of women have been shut out from receiving life-saving preventive care and birth control. This will particularly affect Texans in low-income jobs who don’t have health benefits—the very constituents Perry routinely boasts about when touting his job-creating “miracle.”
Texas already leads the nation in the number of uninsured residents. Gutting funds for basic preventive and reproductive healthcare means a rise in expensive Medicaid-paid births—along with, ironically, the number of abortions. Without funding for family planning, Texas can expect to see a 22 percent increase in the number of abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
* * *
This is the model for women’s health Perry would bring with him to Washington: a commitment to defunding basic health services. And while his chances may be slim, this is a mission also embraced by the Republican base, regardless of who ends up being the nominee. At the Values Voter Summit in October, Perry’s biggest applause came when he said he was “proud to sign a budget that defunded Planned Parenthood in Texas.” Most of the GOP presidential candidates have signed the Susan B. Anthony List’s Pro-Life Presidential Leadership Pledge, vowing to “select only pro-life appointees for relevant Cabinet and Executive Branch positions,” “to advance pro-life legislation to permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion” and, of course, to “defund Planned Parenthood.” Although front-runner Mitt Romney has not signed the pledge, he did support efforts in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood earlier this year. Perry may not win the nomination, but he has demonstrated the political value of a hardline anti-choice agenda.
“This has proved to be a very important arrow in Perry’s quiver for dividing the electorate,” says Mike Villarreal, San Antonio Democratic state representative. “His game is about political victory, not governance, so I think we could expect more of this, but on the national stage.”
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When George W. Bush arrived in the Oval Office in 2001, Sarah Wheat was working for NARAL Pro-Choice Texas. She remembers getting phone calls from reporters and advocates across the country inquiring about the former governor’s record on women’s health issues. Despite his well-known religious views, “he didn’t have much of a record,” she recalls. “So it was much harder to gauge what he might do as president.” Even as Texas was moving to the right—a shift solidified by the 2002 Republican takeover and mid-decade redistricting battle spearheaded by then-Congressman Tom DeLay—the Texas Capitol in those days was a far more moderate place. Most people, regardless of whether they were willing to proclaim it from the stump, understood the benefit of funding preventive healthcare and family planning for women.
Then Perry took office. By mid-decade, Texas was headed toward dismantling the entire women’s health safety net. “I’ve just watched the unraveling,” laments Wheat, who now serves as co-interim CEO for Austin’s Planned Parenthood. “Each year it’s gotten worse under his leadership.”
In 2005 Perry signed into law two significant budget riders that together set in motion his priorities for women’s health. The first set aside $10 million a year from the state’s family-planning budget for so-called Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), one-stop shops that aim to give all low-income uninsured people a “medical home” using federal dollars. Created by Bob Deuell, a doctor and a Republican state senator, the rider’s logic was that such centers provide broader services for the neediest populations than, say, Planned Parenthood clinics (which, like Perry, Deuell openly derides). Once FQHC contractors were funded, any remaining money could go to other providers, Planned Parenthood among them.
The second rider directed an additional $5 million taken from family planning to create the Alternatives to Abortion program, a way to fund crisis pregnancy centers: unlicensed and unregulated “counseling” centers that encourage women to carry their pregnancies to term while providing no medical care whatsoever.
The results were swift. In 2006, the first year after the
reallocation took effect, 41,574 fewer clients were provided health and family planning services, according to calculations made by Fran Hagerty, CEO of the Women’s Health and Family Planning Association of Texas. At Austin’s Planned Parenthood alone, says Wheat, there was a 50 percent decline in the number of clients having Pap smears to detect cervical cancer and a 40 percent drop in the number of clients provided with birth control. Meanwhile, nearly $2 million in unspent funds were returned to the state by FQHC contractors in the first year. This has happened each year since the FQHC rider took effect (though the amount of money returned to the state has decreased). Hagerty and other advocates say that the failure of FQHCs to spend their yearly allocation belies any notion that the new funding plan was meant to increase access to care and to decrease the number of abortions. “We are rewarding the least productive types of contractors,” says Hagerty. “We have set them as a priority…and they have proven over and over that they’re the least productive, least efficient and least cost-effective.”
If cost-effective care was truly Perry’s objective, he would be investing in rather than attacking Planned Parenthood. Last year, 31 percent of the roughly 234,000 clients served with the state’s share of family-planning funds were served by Planned Parenthood at a cost of just $168 per client, Hagerty reports. In contrast, FQHCs served just 13 percent of those clients, at a cost of $225 per patient.
During this year’s legislative session, Perry not only approved massive cuts for Planned Parenthood; he also approved a plan to expand the dysfunctional 2005 funding scheme. With just
$38 million left in the budget to serve uninsured women over the next two years, Texas will continue to be forced to fund FQHCs first. Next, the state must fund only full-service providers, and then, with whatever is left over, the state may fund stand-alone clinics like Planned Parenthood’s. The presumption, of course, is that there won’t be any money left. In fact, as it has turned out, there doesn’t appear to be enough money left to fund any of the “Tier 2” providers, either. For example, People’s Community Clinic has now lost an annual allocation of roughly $500,000 to provide services to more than 2,000 clients.
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Obama's China Syndrome
Michael T. Klare
November 22, 2011 | This article appeared in the December 12, 2011 edition of The Nation.
The policy, described by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns as a “strategic pivot toward the Pacific,” rests on several key precepts. First is a belief that the Pacific has become the “center of gravity” of global economic activity and that the United States must remain the dominant actor in this region if it expects to retain its status as the world’s paramount power. Second is the realization that China has taken advantage of America’s ten-year obsession with Iraq and Afghanistan to establish powerful economic ties with the nations of Southeast Asia, supplanting the United States as the dominant regional actor. And third, there is the conviction that the United States must make up for lost time and contest China’s recent gains by any means necessary. And because Washington lacks Beijing’s economic clout, it must rely on its one remaining strength: military power.
“As we end today’s wars,” Obama declared in Canberra, “I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority…. Our enduring interests in the region demand our enduring presence in this region. The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.”
This strategic shift has several key features, some announced during Obama’s trip to Asia, others still being formulated. Most specific is the decision to establish a base at Darwin, on the Timor Sea, a strategic body of water connecting the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The administration also seeks to bolster US military ties with Indonesia and the Philippines, which both adjoin the South China Sea. While Obama was in Australia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in the Philippines to sign the Manila Declaration, a joint statement pledging closer US-Philippine cooperation in military affairs, especially in the maritime arena.
These moves and others—including a new regional trade pact that purposefully excludes China—are part of what the administration describes as a “redistribution” of US military capabilities in the region, placing somewhat less emphasis on the northwest Pacific and the areas around Japan and more on the southwest Pacific and the South China Sea.
The South China Sea has had increased prominence in Washington’s strategic calculus in recent years as China has asserted its interests there and as its importance as an economic arena has grown. Not only does the sea sit atop major oil and natural gas deposits—some being developed by US companies, including ExxonMobil—it also serves as the main route for ships traveling to and from Europe, Africa and the Middle East to China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The Chinese say the South China Sea is part of their national maritime territory and that the oil and gas belongs to them; but Washington is insisting it will fight to preserve “freedom of navigation” there, at whatever cost. Whereas Taiwan once topped the list of US security challenges in the western Pacific, Hillary Clinton said on November 10 that “ensuring freedom of navigation in the South China Sea” is now Washington’s principal challenge.
Focusing on the South China Sea achieves several White House goals. It shifts the emphasis in US security planning from ideological determinism, as embedded in the increasingly unpopular drive to impose American values on the Middle East and fight a never-ending war against Islamist jihadism, to economic realism, as expressed through protecting overseas energy assets and maritime commerce. By dominating sea lanes the United States poses an implied threat of economic warfare against China in any altercations by cutting off its access to foreign markets and raw materials. And, through its very location, the South China Sea links US strategic interests in the Pacific to its interests in the Indian Ocean and to those of the rising powers of South Asia. According to Secretary Burns, a key objective of the administration’s strategy is to unite India with Japan, Australia and other members of the emerging anti-Chinese bloc.
Chinese officials following these developments must see them as a calculated US effort to encircle China with hostile alliances. How, exactly, Beijing will respond to this onslaught remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that it will not be intimidated—resistance to foreign aggression lies at the bedrock of the national character and remains a key goal of the Chinese Communist Party, however attenuated by time. So blowback there will be.
Perhaps the White House believes that military competition will impede China’s economic growth and disguise US economic weaknesses. But this is folly: China has far greater economic clout than the United States. To enhance its position vis-à-vis China, America must first put its own house in order by reinvigorating its economy, reducing foreign debt, improving public education and eliminating unnecessary overseas military commitments.
Ultimately, what is most worrisome about the Obama administration’s strategic shift—which no doubt is dictated as much by domestic as foreign policy considerations, including the need to counter jingoistic appeals from GOP presidential candidates and to preserve high rates of military spending—is that it will trigger a similar realignment within Chinese policy circles, where military leaders are pushing for a more explicitly anti-American stance and a larger share of government funds. The most likely result, then, will be antagonistic moves on both sides, leading to greater suspicion, increased military spending, periodic naval incidents, a poisoned international atmosphere, economic disarray and, over time, a greater risk of war.
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lol....that's fucked up Johnny...but lol.
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I post non-politically related posts all the time, dummy. ;)
Its just that my great political posts seem to get you and all of your boyfriend's panties here in a bunch, providing me with endless entertainment. :D
I actually never open them but maybe it does piss my boyfriends off.
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Free Speech for Government Employees
Peter Van Buren
November 28, 2011
Those beautiful words, almost haiku-like, are the sparse poetry of the American democratic experiment. The Founders purposely wrote the First Amendment to read broadly, and not like a snippet of tax code, in order to emphasize that it should encompass everything from shouted religious rantings to eloquent political criticism. Go ahead, reread it aloud at this moment when the government seems to be carving out an exception to it large enough to drive a tank through.
As the occupiers of Zuccotti Park, like those pepper-sprayed at UC Davis or the Marine veteran shot in Oakland, recently found out, the government’s ability to limit free speech, to stopper the First Amendment, to undercut the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances, is perhaps the most critical issue our republic can face. If you were to write the history of the last decade in Washington, it might well be a story of how, issue by issue, the government freed itself from legal and constitutional bounds when it came to torture, the assassination of US citizens, the holding of prisoners without trial or access to a court of law, the illegal surveillance of American citizens and so on. In the process, it has entrenched itself in a comfortable shadowland of ever more impenetrable secrecy, while going after any whistleblower who might shine a light in.
Now, it also seems to be chipping away at the most basic American right of all, the right of free speech, starting with that of its own employees. As is often said, the easiest book to stop is the one that is never written; the easiest voice to staunch is the one that is never raised.
It’s true that, over the years, government in its many forms has tried to claim that you lose your free speech rights when you, for example, work for a public school, or join the military. In dealing with school administrators who sought to silence a teacher for complaining publicly that not enough money was being spent on academics versus athletics, or generals who wanted to stop enlisted men and women from blogging, the courts have found that any loss of rights must be limited and specific. As Jim Webb wrote when still secretary of the Navy, “A citizen does not give up his First Amendment right to free speech when he puts on a military uniform, with small exceptions.”
Free speech is considered so basic that the courts have been wary of imposing any limits at all. The famous warning by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes about not falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater shows just how extreme a situation must be for the Supreme Court to limit speech. As Holmes put it in his definition: “The question in every case is whether the words used…are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” That’s a high bar indeed.
The Government v. Morris Davis
Does a newspaper article from November 2009, a few hundred well-reasoned words that appeared in the conservative Wall Street Journal, concluding with these mild sentences, meet Justice Holmes’s high mark?
Double standards don't play well in Peoria. They won't play well in Peshawar or Palembang either. We need to work to change the negative perceptions that exist about Guantanamo and our commitment to the law. Formally establishing a legal double standard will only reinforce them.
Morris Davis got fired from his research job at the Library of Congress for writing that article and a similar letter to the editor of the Washington Post. (The irony of being fired for exercising free speech while employed at Thomas Jefferson’s library evidently escaped his bosses.) With the help of the ACLU, Davis demanded his job back. On January 8, 2010, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Library of Congress on his behalf. In March 2011 a federal court ruled that the suit could go forward.
The case is being heard this month. Someday, it will likely define the free speech rights of federal employees and so determine the quality of people who will make up our government. We citizens vote for the big names, but it’s the millions of lower-ranked, unelected federal employees who decide by their actions how the laws are carried out (or ignored) and the Constitution upheld (or disregarded).
Morris Davis is not some dour civil servant. Prior to joining the Library of Congress, he spent more than twenty-five years as an Air Force colonel. He was, in fact, the chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo and showed enormous courage in October 2007 when he resigned from that position and left the Air Force. Davis had stated he would not use evidence obtained through torture back in 2005. When a torture advocate was named his boss in 2007, Davis quit rather than face the inevitable order to reverse his position.
In December 2008, Davis went to work as a researcher at the Library of Congress in the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division. None of his work was related to Guantánamo. He was not a spokesperson for, or a public face of, the library. He was respected at work. Even the people who fired him do not contest that he did his “day job” as a researcher well.
On November 12, 2009, the day after his op-ed and letter appeared, Davis was told by his boss that the pieces had caused the library concern over his “poor judgment and suitability to serve…not consistent with 'acceptable service'"—as the letter of admonishment he received put the matter. It referred only to his op-ed and Washington Post letter, and said nothing about his work performance as a researcher. One week later, Davis was fired.
But Shouldn’t He Have Known Better Than to Write Something Political?
The courts have consistently supported the rights of the Ku Klux Klan to use extreme and hateful words, of the burners of books and of those who desecrate the American flag. All of that is considered “protected speech.” A commitment to real free speech means accepting the toughest cases, the most offensive things people can conceive of, as the price of a free society.
The Library of Congress does not restrict its employees from writing or speaking, so Davis broke no rules. Nor, theoretically at least, do other government agencies like the CIA and the State Department restrict employees from writing or speaking, even on matters of official concern, although they do demand prior review for such things as the possible misuse of classified material.
Clearly, such agency review processes have sometimes been used as a de facto method of prior restraint. The CIA, for example, has been accused of using indefinite security reviews to effectively prevent a book from being published. The Department of Defense has also wielded exaggerated claims of classified material to block books.
Since at least 1968, there has, however, been no broad prohibition against government employees writing about political matters or matters of public concern. In 1968, the Supreme Court decided a seminal public employee First Amendment case, Pickering v. Board of Education. It ruled that school officials had violated the First Amendment rights of teacher Marvin Pickering when they fired him for writing a letter to his local paper criticizing the allocation of money between academics and athletics.
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Two Speeches, Two Lefts: Barack Obama and Teddy Roosevelt
Yesterday, Barack Obama sounded a little like Theodore Roosevelt: scourge of wealthy special interests, champion of a middle class society, defender of government's necessary role in the economy. So it was a fine stroke to deliver the president's most populist speech yet in Osawatomie, Kansas, where Roosevelt went in 1910 to lay out his reform program, which the Bull Moose presidential candidate called "the square deal."
It was more than a stunt. Obama's speech was a creditable successor to Roosevelt's. He detailed and denounced the soaring inequality that helped spur the Occupy movement, defended higher taxes for the rich and strong safety nets for the middle class, and called for stronger regulation and more public investment in science and infrastructure. His refrain was that a good country offers a decent life to anyone willing and able to work. All of that is certified Roosevelt.
But there were big differences, and they show a lot about how far the country has moved from the middle class, strong-government idea that Roosevelt helped found and Ronald Reagan -- one of Obama's rhetorical models -- did so much to disassemble.
Roosevelt put citizenship -- civic and political engagement -- at the heart of the good life he wanted for Americans. He argued for security and equality because no one could be a good citizen without them, and because the country owed this much to those who contributed to it. For him, public spirit was the highest motivation, and selfishness was never legitimate: he warned that "ruin in its worst form is inevitable" with "the triumph both in politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism." He roared that earning a dollar was legitimate only when the profit-making also served the public interest.
There is almost none of this in Obama's speech. His touchstone is a fair shot at a middle class life, for its own sake more than for the national community's. Even education, that most civic of public investments, is just about economic opportunity. This may give some hint of why Obama doesn't seem to know what to do with the movement he inspired four years ago, other than try to reconstitute it for the next election.
It's also the temper of the time. Nearly everyone thinks economic success is admirable, and far fewer think that about politics. Obama has deferred to this prejudice throughout his presidency by favoring personal aloofness over calling his supporters into political action. By following that strategy, this speech cuts off one leg of Roosevelt's paired political and economic vision.
Roosevelt's speech was also much more unapologetically radical than Obama's. He quoted Abraham Lincoln to say that labor is superior to capital, and praised active "struggle" against unfair inequality: "to take from some ... class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth ... which has not been earned by service to ... their fellows." He told his listeners that progress arose from the contest between those who possessed more than they had earned, and others who earned more than they possessed -- plainly implying that most of Osawatomie was in the second group, the 99 percent of their day. Where Obama's speech was basically conciliatory, Roosevelt's was filled with images of what today would be called class warfare.
Much of this difference was because Roosevelt had strong movements to his left. While he pointed out that he had been called a socialist and a communist for his proposals -- an observation that Obama coyly repeated, implicitly referring to himself while naming Roosevelt -- the earlier president could also point to socialist newspapers in Kansas that denounced him as a reactionary tool of Wall Street. Two years later, the state gave more than seven percent of its presidential votes to the Socialist Eugene Debs. Two years earlier, six times that many had supported the barn-burning prairie populist, William Jennings Bryan. Despite the changed conversation that the small Occupy movement has helped inspire, Obama's centrism has far less muscle and energy to its left flank than Roosevelt's did. Not surprisingly, Roosevelt, eminently a centrist reformer of capitalism, sounds like a socialist today because he had to take account of vital socialist and populist strands in public life.
Roosevelt called explicitly for much more regulation of corporations, and economic life in general, than the country had known before. For one thing, he wanted to keep corporations out of politics entirely. The Supreme Court has pretty much closed this door to Obama in a series of decisions protecting political spending as First Amendment speech, and he has apparently decided that running against the Court is bad politics.
But more basically, Roosevelt believed that regulation was a necessary response to a changed economy. An agricultural frontier society had become a continental industrial economy, and innovations like labor law, antitrust, public-health regulation, and conservation had to follow. Without regulation, concentrated wealth would translate into political power, the system would be corrupted, and the ideal of equal opportunity for all would be lost.
In other words, Roosevelt had a theory of what the new economy was all about, how it undermined core American values, and how government had to change to restore those. He feared that, if he failed, the country would go further to the left than he thought wise. We, too, live in a changed economy -- in our case global capitalism -- that is threatening equal opportunity and the indispensable belief that we're all in this together. But we don't have a theory about how that economy works or how government can effectively correct it, and for the moment all the alternatives come from the right, which is more interested in tearing down twentieth-century regulation than designing government for the twenty-first.
Barack Obama's Osawatomie speech is a symptom of this situation. If the problems can be solved, it will take political engagement of a kind we don't have yet, and which the president has encouraged ambivalently, at best. It will take more and better politics to produce another Teddy Roosevelt. It wouldn't hurt if President Obama's salutary interest in economic fairness inspired him to talk even more like the old Republican he evidently admires.
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A Hopeless Legion of Loons
Posted by Sheila Samples in Politics/Campaigns
Tue Dec 06th 2011, 03:42 PM
"Oh, big conniver, nothing but a jiver, done got hip to your jive,
Slippin' and a slidin', peepin' and a hidin', won't be your fool no more."
~~Little Richard
Fear and despair are billowing across the US political landscape, due in no small part to nearly three years of President Barack Obama's soaring jive even as he was breaking promises to millions of jobless, homeless, helpless Americans. Many of us watched, aghast, as Obama repeatedly took careful aim and shot himself in both feet; then, rather than deciding to fight on his knees, began scrambling around on them in a futile search for bipartisanship.
Ain't gonna happen. Those hoary old Republicans with whom he has strenuously attempted to bond have been around the political block more than once. Most are sexist; homophobic to the core, and racist from the core...on in. They're absolutely committed to -- obsessed with -- not only Obama's failure, but his complete destruction.
Obama should have learned by now there is no compromising with these filthy connivers -- that every single one of them is hell-bent on his destruction even if the nation goes down with him. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has brazenly bragged since Obama's election that, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." They spent the first two years of his administration in an obsessive campaign to prove that not only was he (shudder) black -- but he wasn't even an American citizen. They continue to insanely double down on blocking every piece of legislation he suggests, no matter how minute; and delight in blaming him for the resulting chaos.
Indeed, Republicans hold Obama in such contempt (he's black, remember?) that they make no effort to hide their political goal. Four days before Obama's inauguration, radio jiver Rush Limbaugh was spewing hate across the airwaves, blatantly calling for Obama to fail. It was a call to arms. The response was immediate, and continues to pick up steam.
If anyone doubts that Limbaugh is the titular head of the Republican -- or Grand Old Dittohead (GOD) -- Party, they have but to recall his bouncy, drug-addled hour-and-a-half hate screed in 2009 to the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC). Or calling Obama a "jackass" during his debt "compromise" speech ... "He's a jackass." Limbaugh screeched. "He's an economic illiterate. He's an economic ignoramus. And that's being charitable."
No, you don't have to wonder where their loyalties lie. When elevated to House Speaker, John Boehner (R-Oh) briefed Boss Hog Limbaugh on his debt-ceiling plan before even showing it to his conference, let alone his President.
These creatures claim self-righteously that, ultimately, the horror they are inflicting on the people is for the people. The Stockholmed masses just need to hang on to hope -- to understand that once the corrupt McConnell and his rapacious gang destroy the government prior to the election and blame it on Obama, things will get better. Much better.
Those on the right who fall for that crap are little more than frogs basking in the slowly increasing "warmth" of right-wing water. Sadly, those of us on the left are in as bad -- or worse -- shape, if only because we realize we are in serious political trouble. Many of us have been stumbling around in an Orwellian fog for so long our hope tanks are dangerously close to running on empty.
Like Robert Reich wrote recently...
"President Obama will be supported by progressives and the Democratic base, but without enthusiasm. His notorious caves to Republicans and Wall Street -- failing to put conditions on the Street's bailout (such as demanding the Street help stranded home owners), or to resurrect Glass-Steagall, or include a public option in health care, or assert his constitutional responsibility to raise the debt limit, or protect Medicare and Social Security, or push for cap-and-trade, or close Guantanamo, or, in general, confront the regressive Republican nay-sayers and do-nothings with toughness rather than begin negotiations by giving them much of what they want -- are not the stuff that stirs a passionate following."
However, when Obama comes soaring in once again, slippin' and slidin', grinning from ear to ear, proudly claiming to be a "warrior" for the middle class, many will be unable to keep from hoping for hope -- from ultimately voting for hope. It's not that they've forgotten the recent years of betrayal; of abandonment. It's that, somehow, when considering the alternative -- Obama's campaign jive sounds better and better to them.
French novelist Jean Giraudoux once joked, "The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made." Well, if you look at those who are challenging Obama, you can't help but hope he's got it made. And that's no joke.
Even with Sarah Palin, who was leading the pack, locked and loaded and firing away at Obama until she ran out of ammo and slipped and fell into a pool of "blood libel" -- and Herman Cain, with five women accusing him of sexual harassment and a sixth of a 13-year affair -- gone from the race, it's still a shuddering mess. And it ain't "fixable." Like C.S. Lewis once wrote, "No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet."
From Perry poop to Gingrich garbage to Bachmann blather, the stench billowing from the Republican presidential wannabes is overwhelming. The entire gang appears disjointed -- in total disarray -- mired in ideological confusion. It's impossible to come up with a single issue that this tangled mass can agree upon -- other than running that black guy out of town.
If it weren't so ghoulishly frightening, it would be amusing to watch the shallow, dumb-as-dirt little creatures shucking and jiving out there, racing madly from one media outlet to another in a desperate attempt to find a message that will catapult them to the top of the presidential heap. And what a heap it is. Just a gang of thin-skinned, egocentric Charlie Sheenians who are interested in one thing -- D'UH ... Winnnning!
With few exceptions, they have proudly announced they are pro-torture; most are panting for war -- have promised to attack Iran before the sun sets on their inauguration. Think about it. Because, as Robert Parry succinctly points out, the "hard reality" is ...
"Even if the two candidates' policies were identical, temperament would also be important, since the U.S. president controls a nuclear arsenal that can literally end all life on the planet."
It is possible -- even probable -- due to the masturbatory media coverage this bunch is getting, that one of this hopeless legion of loons will kick back from their crack buffet and emerge with the keys to the White House in one hand and a jug of tiger blood in the other.
If we have learned but one thing from these fools, it is that they will not compromise, regardless of the destruction they leave in their wake. Therefore, we need to wake up and realize that the November 2012 election is quite likely a matter of life or death.
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Chris Hedges' Columns
Where Were You When They Crucified My Lord?
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Posted on Dec 5, 2011
Illustration by Mr. Fish
By Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges gave an abbreviated version of this talk Saturday morning in Liberty Square in New York City as part of an appeal to Trinity Church to turn over to the Occupy Wall Street movement an empty lot, known as Duarte Square, that the church owns at Canal Street and 6th Avenue. Occupy Wall Street protesters, following the call, began a hunger strike at the gates of the church-owned property. Three of the demonstrators were arrested Sunday on charges of trespassing, and three others took their places.
The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance. The mainstream church, battered by declining numbers and a failure to defiantly condemn the crimes and cruelty of the corporate state, as well as a refusal to vigorously attack the charlatans of the Christian right, whose misuse of the Gospel to champion unfettered capitalism, bigotry and imperialism is heretical, has become a marginal force in the life of most Americans, especially the young. Outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo the Beatitudes:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
It was the church in Latin America, especially in Central America and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, which provided the physical space, moral support and direction for the opposition to dictatorship. It was the church in East Germany that organized the peaceful opposition marches in Leipzig that would bring down the communist regime in that country. It was the church in Czechoslovakia, and its 90-year-old cardinal, that blessed and defended the Velvet Revolution. It was the church, and especially the African-American church, that made possible the civil rights movements. And it is the church, especially Trinity Church in New York City with its open park space at Canal and 6th, which can make manifest its commitment to the Gospel and nonviolent social change by permitting the Occupy movement to use this empty space, just as churches in other cities that hold unused physical space have a moral imperative to turn them over to Occupy movements. If this nonviolent movement fails, it will eventually be replaced by one that will employ violence. And if it fails it will fail in part because good men and women, especially those in the church, did nothing.
Where is the church now? Where are the clergy? Why do so many church doors remain shut? Why do so many churches refuse to carry out the central mandate of the Christian Gospel and lift up the cross?
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Some day they are going to have to answer the question: “Where were you when they crucified my Lord?”
Let me tell you on this first Sunday in Advent, when we celebrate hope, when we remember in the church how Mary and Joseph left Nazareth for Bethlehem, why I am in Liberty Square. I am here because I have tried, however imperfectly, to live by the radical message of the Gospel. I am here because I know that it is not what we say or profess but what we do. I am here because I have seen in my many years overseas as a foreign correspondent that great men and women of moral probity arise in all cultures and all religions to fight the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed. I am here because I have seen that it is possible to be a Jew, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu or an atheist and carry the cross. The words are different but the self-sacrifice and thirst for justice are the same. And these men and women, who may not profess what I profess or believe what I believe, are my brothers and sisters. And I stand with them honoring and respecting our differences and finding hope and strength and love in our common commitment.
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Upheaval at the New York Public Library
Scott Sherman
November 30, 2011 | This article appeared in the December 19, 2011 edition of The Nation.
Eleven weeks later, a senior NYPL official replied on LeClerc’s behalf: “If I may put this matter into its sadly grim financial context, in the last two fiscal years our budget has been reduced by $20 million and our workforce by 300 positions. While we recognized and prized the special cultural and scholarly resource that was the Slavic Reading Room, we simply could no longer afford to operate it.”
The New York Public Library, which comprises four research libraries and eighty-seven branch libraries, has seen other cutbacks as well. Since 2008 its workforce has been reduced by 27 percent. In a recent newsletter to library supporters, the institution reported that its acquisitions budget for books, CDs and DVDs had been slashed by 26 percent.
Despite these austerity measures, NYPL executives are pushing ahead with a gargantuan renovation of the Forty-second Street library, the crown jewel of the system. The details of the Central Library Plan (CLP) are closely guarded, but it has already sparked criticism among staff members, who worry that the makeover would not only weaken one of the world’s great libraries but mar the architectural integrity of the landmark building on Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, renamed the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in 2008, following the Wall Street billionaire’s gift of $100 million. (Every staff member I spoke with demanded anonymity; a number of them talked openly about their fear of retribution from management.)
These are arduous times for public library systems. More people are using libraries during the economic downturn, but state and local legislators are steadily cutting their budgets. The American Library Association notes that since 2008, “more than half the states have reported a decrease in funding, with cumulative cuts averaging greater than ten percent.” Library systems of all sizes are under pressure. The Los Angeles County public library system, which serves 3.7 million citizens, faces a structural deficit of $22 million a year for the next decade. Budget cuts have forced the Seattle Public Library, one of the nation’s finest, to shut down for a week in late summer. Thomas Galante, CEO of the bustling Queens Library, which serves hundreds of thousands of immigrants in New York City, spoke reverently about one healthy and outstanding public library—in Toronto.
The man who must contend with the NYPL’s budget difficulties is its new president, a tall, amiable, casually dressed political scientist named Anthony Marx, who started at the library on July 1. Marx had been the president of Amherst College, where during his eight-year tenure he raised great sums of money and did much to diversify the student body. But obtaining the financial resources to sustain the NYPL in these lean and mean times is a task that’s sure to keep Marx tossing in his bed at night. (Personal reasons may also keep Marx from sleeping soundly: on the afternoon of November 6 he was arrested in Upper Manhattan for driving while intoxicated; his blood alcohol level was 0.19. He is scheduled to appear in court on December 9.) He faces an additional challenge with the CLP, devised by his predecessor and scheduled to be completed in 2015.
The centerpiece of the CLP—expected to cost anywhere from $250 million to $350 million—is the construction of a state-of-the-art, computer-oriented library designed by British architect Norman Foster, in the vast interior of the Schwarzman Building. To make space for this library within the library, the seven levels of original stacks beneath the third-floor Rose Reading Room—stacks that hold 3 million books and tens of thousands of adjustable and fixed shelves—will be demolished (the exterior of the building is landmarked; the stacks are not). When the new library is completed, patrons will be able to leave the building with borrowed books and other materials; for decades, those materials had to be used inside the library.
NYPL officials have grand hopes for their new high-tech circulating facility: it will be “the largest comprehensive library open to the public in human history,” LeClerc wrote in an internal NYPL publication in 2008. How will it be paid for? The City of New York will provide about $150 million for the project. The NYPL expects to raise another $100–$200 million by selling off two prominent libraries in its system: the busy (but decrepit) Mid-Manhattan branch library on Fortieth Street, and the Science, Industry and Business Library on Thirty-fourth Street, a research library that opened in 1996 to considerable fanfare.
* * *
Today, top NYPL officials talk about the CLP—announced in late 2008 but delayed by the economic downturn—as a done deal. But Marx says the NYPL’s powerful board of trustees has not yet given its final stamp of approval; he adds that he is still analyzing the plan. Yet the CLP has gathered an enormous amount of momentum. On June 29 I was sitting in the cavernous office of Ann Thornton, a top NYPL librarian, when LeClerc, just days from retirement, burst in, in a state of high excitement. “Here’s the news,” he declared. “We got the $100 million from the city. Isn’t it just fantastic?” (Noting my puzzled look, LeClerc turned to me and said, “It’s for Norman Foster’s renovation of this building.”) Thornton jumped to her feet and embraced him. “Paul, that’s wonderful!”
The CLP raises thorny questions. Will Forty-second Street remain a serene environment for scholars, serious readers, intellectuals and book lovers, or will it be converted into a noisy, tumultuous branch library? Might the $250–$350 million designated for the renovation of Forty-second Street be better spent on the eighty-seven branch libraries, many of which need structural improvements as well as books, periodicals, DVDs and computers? Finally, there is the question of the public good. NYPL executives say the objective of the CLP, which involves the sale of two prime Manhattan properties, is to democratize the Forty-second Street library, incorporate the latest digital technology and serve the public. They emphasize their desire to expand public access to Forty-second Street: Thornton told me that in a building of 600,000 square feet, only 32 percent of that space is available for public use. After the renovation, she says, users will have access to almost 70 percent of the building.
NYPL executives may be keen to serve the public, but they are not so keen to engage it. Many aspects of the CLP remain cloaked in secrecy, and top NYPL staff imparted details of the plan only with great reluctance. The NYPL’s mission statement, which executives are quick to invoke, highlights the word “accountability.” My reporting, which included sixty interviews, left me with a different impression: the NYPL preaches accountability, but it doesn’t always practice it.
When the Beaux-Arts building at Forty-second Street, designed by famed architects Carrère and Hastings, opened on May 23, 1911, more than 30,000 people came to see a library that had taken twelve years to construct. “The first book to be delivered,” Phyllis Dain wrote in her 1972 history of the NYPL, “seven minutes after deposit of the call slip, was a Russian-language study of Nietzsche and Tolstoy.” Over the decades, the NYPL would acquire a spectacular range of materials: Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence, Walt Whitman’s personal copy of Leaves of Grass, Virginia Woolf’s cane, Man Ray’s portrait of Arnold Schoenberg, Oscar Wilde’s early typewritten versions of The Importance of Being Earnest, Beethoven’s sketches for the “Archduke Trio,” a first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The list goes on.
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lol....Still going?
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I actually read jnn's post half way through before I realised it's a joke....
lol just kiding ;D
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Saluting a Sick System: 'Sports Illustrated' Honors Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski
Dave Zirin on December 5, 2011 - 2:07pm ET
In a decision that speaks to the worst impulses of a proud magazine, Sports Illustrated has chosen the two active legends of College Basketball coaching, Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt, as their Sportspersons of the Year. It’s impossible to quibble with the choice of Tennessee’s Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA hoops history, after thirty-eight seasons and eight championships leading the Lady Vols. The tough-as-leather coach who insists her players refer to her as “Pat” was diagnosed earlier this year with Alzheimer’s disease. She has insisted on coaching as long as her body will allow while also starting a foundation to fight the crippling illness. Coach Summitt is without question an absolute inspiration in how one can use sports to leverage the greater good.
The choice of Krzyzewski speaks to a far different impulse. Certainly his accomplishments speak for themselves. He recently set the all-time record for men’s coaching wins, but that is only part of the majesty of Coach K’s recent history. As Sports Illustrated’s Alexander Wolff put it succinctly, “No other coach has ever won the Olympics, the NCAAs and the Worlds—and Coach K did so in a span of 26 months.”
But Wolff and company could not have picked a worse time in our sports history to burnish the legend of Coach K. I don’t object to the choice of Krzysewski because I dislike, as so many do, the elitist trappings of Duke University. I don’t object because, for all his pretensions of sportsmanship, Coach K swears at players and refs in a manner that would make his mentor, Bob Knight, blush. I don’t even object because I’m a proud fan of the University of Maryland. I object because of the unspoken reason he is receiving this honor. It’s because at no time in the history of amateur sports has the NCAA been so mired in crisis, crippled under the weight of its own culture of corruption. Sports Illustrated is not merely honoring Coach K but giving reassurance to a rotten system.
In 2011, we all learned just how low the NCAA and its member schools would go to defend their bottom lines. We learned how people in power at Penn State University would put the lives of children at risk, if it meant preserving the lucrative legend of Coach Joe Paterno. We learned what Syracuse University and the surrounding community would be willing to cover up—and how many children they would endanger—to protect their own Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim and the $19 million dollar annual cash cow of Syracuse hoops. We saw saw Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel resign after a series of scandals that now look quaint, and we witnessed the University of Miami Athletic Department reel under the weight of the gutter economy of exchange between criminal boosters and the school’s President Donna Shalala.
This was also the year that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer, Taylor Branch, published The Cartel: The Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA, which exposes just how corrupt and ugly the amateur industry is. As Branch writes, “ College Athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene….is to catch the whiff of the plantation.”
Coach K has acquired power by inhaling deeply this “whiff of the plantation.” His salary at Duke now stands at over $5 million a year. Nike also pays him seven figures so his players can advertise the Swoosh as they run up and down the court. He defended his income last year by saying, “If you’re at a program for a long time, if you’re at a school for a long time, you become much more than just a basketball coach at the school. You become an ambassador for the school.”
For an ambassador, that’s still one hell of a paycheck.
If we really need to honor an NCAA coach, I’d go with South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier. Not because his Gamecocks are particularly good, but because earlier this year he called for his fellow NCAA coaches to pay players out of their own salaries. As Spurrier said, “We make all the money. We need to get more to our players…. They bring in the money. They’re the performers.” Or SI could have chosen Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini, who had the guts to say, following Nebraska’s visit to Penn State just four days after Joe Paterno was fired, that the “game shouldn’t have been played…. It’s about what doing what’s right in society. It’s about doing what’s right and wrong…. It is a lot bigger than football, the NCAA, the Big Ten and anything else.”
Choosing Spurrier or Pelini—or even Taylor Branch—as Sportsperson of the Year would have been a powerful statement from SI that business as usual in the NCAA has to come to an end. The choice of Coach K is a choice that says: “Have no fear, villagers. We must keep faith in our all-powerful and benevolent Coach-God Rulers.” It’s an awful choice, serving a collegiate status quo currently residing in a moral abyss. Sports Illustrated should be leading the charge to democratize college sports, not burnishing the legend of our last Sun King, Mike Krzyzewski.
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The Postal Service Plots Its Own Demise
John Nichols on December 6, 2011 - 11:28am ET
Express mail forms and priority mailboxes sit on display at the Capitol Station, Monday, December 5, 2011, in Springfield, Illinois. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
There are many appropriate targets for Occupy Wall Street protests. But the OWS protesters hit a bull’s-eye when they invaded a National Press Club briefing where Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe—who likes to make like a corporate executive and refer to himself as “Chief Operating Officer of the US Postal Service”—was giving a speech about the need to close local post offices, layoff workers and, though this was unspoken, take the steps that will lead to the privatization of the one of the country’s greatest public assets.
“Stop closing post offices,” chanted the activists who occupied the press club. “Don’t privatize the post office. It’s a public service. It’s not a profit center for FedEx and UPS to rip off the people.”
Postmasters general do not usually become the targets of passionate opposition. But the protesters were chanting: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donahoe has got to go.”
And rightly so.
On Monday, Donahue laid out a plan that, if implemented, would destroy the postal service as most Americans know it.
And the destruction would come not out of necessity but to perpetuate an austerity lie.
The supposed financial crisis facing the US Postal Service is actually a fiscal fantasy, The USPS, which continues to provide vital services to 150 million households and business each day, which sustains rural communities and urban neighborhoods across he country as a Main Street mainstay, which employs hundreds of thousands of Americans and which has a history of being in the forefront of technological and societal progress, is not in trouble because of competition from the Internet or changing letter-writing patterns. It is in crisis because Congress forced the the postal service to pay roughly $5.5 billion a year into a trust fund for future retiree pensions. The USPS inspector general says the postal service has overfunded pension obligations by $75 billion—something no other federal agency is required to do. In addition, the postal service has been slapped with other charges and obligations that make it appear to be headed for bankruptcy. Simply treating the USPS fairly when it comes to the prepayment of pensions would ease most of the burden facing the postal service.
But Congress is dithering, the for-profit mail services that want to carve up the USPS are salivating, and the postmaster general is surrendering—proposing to end next-day delivery of letters, postcards and other First Class mail.
That postmaster general surrender was signaled Monday by a brutal proposal for deep cost cutting that could:
1. So diminish and slow down first-class mail delivery that the changes will create an opening for private carriers; indeed, Americans are almost being pushed into the arms of UPS and FedEx.
2. Ultimately cause as many as 100,000 job losses is the biggest single blow to employment by any employer in the country, Postal service job cuts hit people of color, women and veterans hardest, as the USPS has a long history of hiring staffs that “look like America.” The proposed closing of more than 250 of 561 postal sorting centers is the equivalent of a wave of factory closings like nothing the country saw even in the depths of the recent recession.
3. Have a devastating impact on thousands of rural communities, where post offices are slated for closure. This is really a case of Washington abandoning rural areas and hard-hit urban neighborhoods at precisely the time they need the support of an engaged federal government.
4. So delay delivery that it would create a nine-day lag time for periodical. This would be devastating for the print press and for the public discourse. Weekly newspapers and magazines might not even arrive until after their next editions were published
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5. Wreck havoc with absentee voting and military voting processes that are already a mess in many states. Hardest hit will be states that have gone to vote-by-mai systemsl, such as Oregon. At a time when Voter ID laws are making it harder to vast ballots at the polls, this makes absentee voting.
By every reasonable measure, the postal service is proposing suicide in the form of not-so-slow cuts. “The Postal Service plan will hasten the demise of the USPS,” American Postal Workers Union president Cliff Guffey said with regard to the agency’s announcement that it would seek an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission on plans to eliminate next-day delivery of first-class mail and periodicals. “The USPS should be modernizing and striving to remain relevant in the digital age, not reducing service to the American people.”
Under what the postmaster general’s “cost-cutting plan,” the postal service would shutter almost half the nation’s mail-processing centers and shed tens of thousands of jobs—at a time when even the most optimistic observers say the country faces a steep climb to address widespread unemployment. The changes would make it impossible for the postal service to reconstitute itself in better times. As such, they an open invitation to private carriers to take over lucrative routes and services—while leaving the great mass of Americans with diminished and substandard services.
The cuts proposed by the postmaster general go way beyond cost-cutting. This is the sounding of the death knell for a postal service that traces its roots to the nation’s first days and that remains an essential service for isolated rural communities and neglected urban neighborhoods.
“The so-called Postmaster General is going to announce details that will lead to the end of the United States Postal Service and universal postal delivery in this country,” said Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, who highlighted the damage the postal service will do to the broader economy.
“This would be an incredible blow to our economy. With real unemployment at 16 percent we cannot afford another 100,000 people laid off,” explained DeFazio. “I’ve already heard from small business owners that rely on USPS and are concerned that the plan would kill their businesses. Some rural Oregonians would have to drive 15 to 20 miles to access their mail. Subscribers of small rural weekly newspapers would have to wait 7-9 days for their papers to be delivered. This is a short-sighted proposal that fails to address the serious long-term issues facing USPS.“
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Unemployment Dips, but That Hardly Makes Up for a Lost Year
Mike Konczal
December 2, 2011
In fact, over the past year, employment-to-population has stayed consistently depressed. Every indicator we look at—job openings, the rate at which people quit their jobs for new opportunities, the number of hours worked in the economy—has stayed weak during 2011. With job growth failing to exceed population growth each month, and with no serious increase in the percent of Americans working, 2011 was a lost year for the economy.
Lost years for the economy have major consequences. Beyond the human misery that results, they put the entire project of liberal governance at risk. Choices made early by this administration resulted in no advancement on three fronts that could bolster the struggling economy: fiscal policy (increasing the deficit through spending on investment and temporary tax cuts), monetary policy (increasing the money supply to stimulate growth), and dealing with the problems in the housing market.
Starting in late 2009, the Obama administration started framing our economic crisis as a “dual deficit problem.” In other words, the administration wouldn’t push for a larger short-term deficit—spending more money to stimulate the weak economy, a key tenet of Keynesian economics—without also cutting the long-term deficit. Treasury officials told a reporter at The New Republic that the administration needed to show “some signal to US bondholders that it takes the deficit seriously” and that “spending more money now [on stimulus] could actually raise long-term [government] rates, thereby offsetting its stimulative effect.”
This was a victory for the network of elites that The Nation’s Ari Berman refers to as the “austerity class.” By buying into the now-conventional wisdom that it was economically unsound to grow short-term deficits without simultaneously decreasing long-term deficits, long-term deficit reduction was turned into a co-equal problem of economic woes. This is like a doctor telling a patient suffering from multiple gunshot wounds that he should have a healthier diet—it might be true, but there’s a much more pressing problem.
Want an example? In the 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama stated that he would freeze 2011 discretionary spending even though unemployment was projected to be above 8 percent, because, he said, if “we don’t take meaningful steps to rein in our debt, it could damage our markets, increase the cost of borrowing, and jeopardize our recovery,” which “would have an even worse effect on our job growth and family incomes.” This conventional wisdom gave the Republicans the leverage they needed to destroy any pro-active economic agenda.
So the administration spent much of 2011 engaging in the wrong analysis of the economy, one that looked like that of the far right. Early in the year the administration brought in new advisers, notably Bill Daley as chief of staff, in order to repair relationships with business in the wake of financial reform. This incorrectly diagnosed the problem as a liberal government beating up on unappreciated job creators, instead of weak income and mass unemployment among workers. In his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama argued that we needed to “win the future” by investing in education and bringing “discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.” Recent college graduates are suffering from high unemployment and there’s no real reason to worry about government debt levels, but you wouldn’t understand that from that speech.
During the debt ceiling showdown this past summer, when the administration was trying to drum up support for long-term deficit reduction, economic advisors like Gene Sperling argued that new confidence in deficit reduction itself would help the economy, ignoring the fact that the markets, with negative real interest rates, were screaming for the government to run a bigger deficit. Meanwhile, President Obama made references to “structural” issues in the labor market, as if the pain of unemployment wasn’t shared broadly across all occupations, industries and types of workers.
Thus the Democrats spent 2011—which could have been a crucial year for the recovery—in a futile debate with the Republicans over the budget. From the original government shutdown in April to the debt ceiling fights in July, Republicans showed that they were capable of making even the most trivial changes to the budget costly to the Democrats. As time went on the administration became ever more willing to make huge concessions to get a deal and restart the economy, and each time was left at the table. When a ratings agency downgraded federal government debt, it wasn’t because of the long-term deficit but instead over this political gridlock.
If these two goals, short-term deficit spending and long-term deficit reduction, had been separated early, with maximal energy put towards job creation until unemployment was much lower, then the economy would be in a much healthier place. The GOP would have had less disruptive leverage and threats like using the Constitution to avoid the debt ceiling fight would have been more credible. The administration pivoted back to jobs in the fall after the disaster of the debt ceiling fight. Time will tell if it was too late, and if they are willing to fight hard to bring unemployment down.
Monetary policy is another avenue that spent 2011 in limbo. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has signaled that he won’t let the economy get worse, but he’s skittish about taking the potential risks that would be required to push the economy to full employment more quickly, regardless of how bad the situation is now. The Federal Reserve is generally hesitant to print more money because of fears of inflation, even though injecting money into the economy would likely stimulate jobs—is it willing to tolerate temporary higher inflation in order to bring unemployment down? If it did, this month’s jobs report, and last month’s, might have looked a little better.
In the midst of collapsing prices, President Franklin Roosevelt in a fireside chat in 1933 announced that “it is the Government’s policy to restore the price level first”—a signal to the markets that the New Deal was going to take monetary policy very seriously. President Obama has shown less interest in monetary policy, reappointing the moderate Republican Ben Bernanke to office and leaving seats open for years. Leaving vacant seats across the judiciary and in key regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Obama’s lack of movement on recess appointments has left the Fed tilted to the right. Since the other people that sit on the Federal Reserve are hardline conservatives appointed by banks, getting people concerned about unemployment there is even more important.
At the end of 2011, key liberals like Christina Romer and Paul Krugman started talking about a new way of doing Federal Reserve policy based on “nominal GDP targeting,” which would allow for higher inflation in weak economic times. Meanwhile, Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans put out a plan to allow 3 percent inflation while unemployment is above 7 percent. These are good ideas; the administration could put them into practice by filling vacancies with appointees who understand their value.
The third important element of the recovery is restoring the housing sector. The burst of the housing bubble has left a quarter of all mortgages underwater and millions of foreclosures hitting every part of the country. Foreclosures are a lose-lose-lose, devastating homeowners and neighborhoods, ravaging municipality budgets and hitting the creditors themselves. Empirical evidence shows a link between foreclosures and decreased economic activity in this recession. The most obvious way to deal with this is to allow courts to write down mortgage debt in bankruptcy, but the Obama administration passed on requiring bankruptcy modification, or “cramdown,” as part of the bailout.
Ever since then, abuses in the mortgage payment “servicing” system—ranging from robo-signing to phantom foreclosure referrals to illegal foreclosures on servicemen overseas—have been reported by both community activists and financial analysts. In late 2010, the largest banks voluntarily halted foreclosures to investigate before going back to business as normal.
The administration could have pushed hard on investigating the foreclosure market. Instead they pushed for quick settlement with the largest banks engineered by several attorneys general, putting pressure on attorneys general like Eric Schneiderman who want to investigate further. A full investigation would have given the administration more leverage in pushing banks to stem the foreclosure crisis.
In 1938, shortly after premature fiscal and monetary tightening triggered a recession, the economist John Manyard Keynes wrote a worried letter to President Roosevelt. He was, he wrote, “terrified lest progressive causes in all the democratic countries should suffer injury, because you have taken too lightly the risk to their prestige which would result from a failure measured in terms of immediate prosperity. There need be no failure. But the maintenance of prosperity in the modern world is extremely difficult; and it is so easy to lose precious time.”
Jonathan Chait is only the most recent pundit to wonder why liberals are so upset about the administration and the state of the economy. But the answer is obvious. Everything progressives have fought for—from the policy advancements of the Obama administration like healthcare and financial reform to the New Deal and Great Society programs that remain, like Social Security and Medicare—has been at risk as a result of this Great Recession. A longer period of sustained joblessness will wreck the working class and devastate the budget, leaving our economy even weaker. Important advancements that will actually win the future—from pricing carbon to emptying out our prisons—are virtually impossible with the country experiencing so high a level of unemployment. There are ways forward; it is just a question of whether the administration is prepared to take them. It is easy to lose precious time, and we’ve just lost a full year with nothing to show for it.
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Turnout High in Egypt's Elections, but Questions About Transition Remain
Sharif Abdel Kouddous
November 29, 2011
Cairo, Egypt
Hundreds of voters waited patiently outside the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo’s upscale neighborhood of Zamalek early Monday morning for a chance to cast their ballot in Egypt’s first election following the ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak last February. Many read newspapers or conversed quietly in pairs as the line inched forward. The faces of parliamentary candidates beamed out at them from campaign posters plastered outside the school walls with the thoughtful, mid-distance stare practiced by politicians seeking office the world over. Voters emerged from the polling booths holding up ink-stained fingers to prove their participation on the first day of Egypt’s nationwide parliamentary elections.
About the Author
Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent based in Cairo, Egypt. His...
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Across the street, a young man stood alone, his hands in his pockets as he stared ruefully at the queue slowly shuffling by. “I don’t feel pride at all, I feel broken” says Hussein, a 29-year-old working in digital advertising who had not yet decided whether to vote. “This is not in the revolutionary spirit, this is compliance. This is bowing your head down.”
The scene reflects the broader complexities of Egypt’s first post-revolutionary elections: an eagerness to participate in the democratic process soured by the realities of a deeply flawed transition plan and the heavy yoke of military rule.
Over the past nine months, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces that assumed power following Mubarak’s ouster, along with a political elite largely looking out for its own interests, have created a deeply confusing electoral system designed to elect a parliament that has no clear mandate or authority and one that, many fear, will serve to further entrench the military’s power.
Monday’s elections are the first in a parliamentary poll that will take three months to complete. Nine of Egypt’s twenty-seven governorates will vote in three separate rounds for the People’s Assembly (lower house) and will repeat again for the Shura Council (upper house). Both house are scheduled to convene in March, though under the current constitutional declaration that serves as Egypt’s interim constitution, the parliament will be largely toothless. The Supreme Council is granted the authority to issue laws by decree, appoint the government (including the prime minister) and sign international treaties.
Voters that went to the polls for the People’s Assembly elections had to make three selections: one list and two individual candidates. The lists are drawn up by parties or alliances and two-thirds of the house seats are allocated this way on a proportional representation system. The remaining third of the seats are open to individual candidates, half of which must be workers or farmers, categories that date back to the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The vote calculation process is extremely complicated, baffling even political scientists and election law experts.
While the primary mandate of the incoming parliament is the drafting of Egypt’s post-revolutionary constitution, the process by which a constituent assembly would be chosen has not been finalized. Under guidelines proposed by the interim government in October, the Supreme Council would appoint eighty of the 100-member body while the parliament would select just twenty. The guidelines would also deny parliament the right to review the military budget and allow the army to interfere in political life. The proposal sparked an uproar but an alternative plan has yet to be agreed upon.
More importantly, the elections come in the wake of a new uprising in Egypt, one that reignited in Tahrir Square last week and quickly spread to Alexandria, Suez and several other cities. The clarion call of the renewed revolt is clear: an end to military rule.
The uprising first erupted on November 19 when Central Security Forces stormed a small sit-in of a few dozen protesters in Tahrir. Riot police beat and arrested those who had set up camp. In response, hundreds of protesters descended to Tahrir in solidarity. They clashed with security forces and forced them to retreat back towards the headquarters of the Minister of Interior. The fighting quickly escalated into some of the fiercest street battles in Egypt since the revolution began.
For five days—nearly 120 continuous hours—thousands of protesters, most of them young men and women, did battle with security forces. Police used live ammunition, rubber bullets, shotgun cartridges and an astonishing amount of tear gas. Protesters fought back with rocks and the occasional Molotov cocktail. What began as a minor street clash had turned into a war of attrition. Downtown Cairo was transformed into a battle zone with a constant white fog of poisonous tear gas wafting in the air. At least forty-two people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded.
In a matter of days, the protests grew from a few dozen to hundreds of thousands filling Tahrir Square in what was perhaps the biggest challenge to military rule in Egypt in sixty years. “The more they kill us, the more we multiply. And that has always been the story of this revolution,” says actor and activist Khalid Abdulla.
Noticeably absent from the demonstrations was the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and best-organized political group in Egypt. Through its Freedom and Justice Party, the group is expected to gain a large number of seats in the parliamentary elections and pushed heavily for the vote to go ahead on schedule. Their members were out in full force on Monday, clearly visible at every polling station, offering to help voters find their registration numbers and distributing campaign flyers to any passersby.
“The Muslim Brotherhood have a political interest which they are declaring now above demands of this revolution to get rid of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces,” Abdulla observes. “I say shame on them.”
Thousands of protesters are continuing their sit-in in Tahrir, and many of them are boycotting the elections. They have instead called for the military council to grant full authorities to a national salvation government that could lead the country through its transition. Mohamed El Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is favored by many protesters to lead the group alongside other prominent politicians and young revolutionaries.
Instead, the Supreme Council on Friday named Kamal al-Ganzouri—a 78-year-old who served as prime minister under Mubarak—to replace interim prime minister Essam Sharaf, who had resigned earlier in the week amidst the violent clashes. In response, several hundred protesters marched to the street that houses parliament and the cabinet of ministers to stage an open-ended sit-in.
On Monday, people in Tahrir stood gathered in groups, engaging in vigorous debates about the legitimacy of the parliamentary poll. “Democracy means elections, the question is do we believe in democracy or not? The elections are the only way to get rid of the Supreme Council,” argues an old man with the long beard and shorn mustache favored by Islamists. As others debated with him over the authority of the incoming parliament a young man strode in the middle and faced the old man. “Where were you last week while we were here dying? The Brotherhood and the Salafis have sold out the country,” he says before storming away.
The calls for a boycott are minimal, however, and the turnout across Egypt of the first day of elections has been reported to be high. A few hundred yards from Tahrir Square, hundreds of women lined up inside the Kasr El Dobara Experimental Language School, a women’s-only polling station on Kasr Al Aini street. Standing in the courtyard speaking to voters was Gamila Ismail, an independent parliamentary candidate favored by many protesters in Tahrir square. The week before, she had suspended her electoral campaign in protest of the brutal police crackdown. Ismail is also the ex-wife of Ayman Nour, who ran for president against Mubarak and was subsequently jailed for four years.
“This election is flavored with Tahrir, with the revolution,” Ismail says. She had a failed run for parliament in November 2010, the infamous elections that were heavily rigged by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party and helped spark the revolution on January 25. “Stepping through this gate in the same place and having a completely different experience is a dream.”
When asked about the call for a boycott from Tahrir square, Ismail says, “I think boycotting and staying in Tahrir and the parliament are two parallel routes to the revolution. They serve each other. Without the square you can never maintain the freedom and the free space in politics.”
Standing beside Ismail in the school courtyard was 28-year-old Nazly Hussein, an activist with the No to Military Trials campaign. Hussein had been badly injured in her left leg while on the front lines during clashes with police and was walking with a crutch. She had also suffered from slightly blurred vision due to an inflamed optic nerve, the result of being exposed to excessive amounts of tear gas.
“I’ve never voted before under Mubarak and I see no reason to vote now, nothing has changed,” Hussein says simply. “This parliament has no real authority. The Supreme Council just wants to avoid a real handover of power and I will not be a part of this sham to give them legitimacy.”
Dusk fell and the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections announced that voting would be extended for two extra hours in all constituencies to accommodate for the heavy turnout. For now, it seems, the majority of Egyptians appear willing to take part in the political process laid out by the military council. Others, in Tahrir and elsewhere around the country, are firm in their belief that real change can only come in the streets.
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10 Fun Facts About the Top 1 Percent
by Joshua Holland | December 7, 2011 - 9:42am
— from AlterNet
As the Occupy Movement has spread like wildfire, we've heard a lot about the top 1 percent of American households and how the “other 99 percent” want a fair share of the fruits of our economic output.
In 2009, there were about 1.4 million households in the top 1 percent. But just who are they? What do they do? Where do they live?
We tried to answer some of those questions with ten fun facts about the top 1 percent.
1. Majority Are Corporate Big-Wigs, Doctors, Lawyers, and Wall Streeters
Mother Jones offers this handy chart that shows the sectors in which most of the 1% work — note that 4 percent of them are either not working or dead.
2. You Won't Find Many in Indiana
Gallup compiled the results of 61 of its surveys to create a sample of the top 1 percent — and the other 99 percent — and found that the wealthiest among us skew toward the coasts. Whereas 22 percent of the rest of us live in the Midwest, you'll find only 14 percent of the those households at the top living in “America's Heartland.”
3. They're More Republican
Interestingly, those at the top are no more likely to identify themselves as conservatives, or less likely to see themselves as liberals, than the other 99 percent. They aren't more likely to favor forced childbirth or worry about the War on Christmas — social issues — but they know where their bread is buttered (or buttered more heavily), so despite the fact that they don't differ much ideologically, they're significantly more likely to support Republicans.
When you include independents who lean towards one party or another, the top 1 percent skews towards the GOP by a 57–36 margin, compared to the other 99 percent, which leans Democratic, 47–44.
4. They Make More Than $500K per Year
As Suzy Khimm notes in the Washington Post, the income cut-off for those households in the top 1 percent was $516,633 last year, down from $646,195 before the crash. But that's the floor — the average income for those in the top 1 percent this year is $1,530,773. (A "household" in this sense can be a single person or a family — it's also known as a "tax unit.")
5. And Have Plenty of Accumulated Wealth
Accumulated wealth is even more skewed towards the top than income, and in 2009, the top 1 percent of households were sitting on an average net worth of almost $14 million, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. Here's another chart from Mother Jones:
What's more, the other 99 percent have been falling behind. In 2009, the ratio of net worth between those in the top 1 percent and a household right in the middle of the pack was 225-to-1 – the highest on record. In 1962, that figure stood at 125-to-1. Here's a chart showing the shift, courtesy of EPI:
6. They've Taken an Ever-Bigger Piece of the Pie
Between 1949 and 1979, those at the top 1 percent took in 10 percent of our pretax income. In Reagan's final year in office, they grabbed 15.5 percent of the nation's income.
By the time George W. Bush was elected, they were taking in 21.5 percent. And in 2007, the year before the crash, they were pulling in 23.5 percent of our pretax income, leaving the other 99 percent to share just 76.5 percent of the fruits of America's economic output.
7. But Have Half the Federal Income Tax Rate Compared to 1980
I have written before that federal income taxes only account for a bout a fifth of the taxes paid in this country, so we shouldn't confuse them with “taxes” in general. Federal income taxes are among the most progressive, meaning that the more you earn, the more you pay.
Nevertheless, because of years of tax cuts targeted at the top — notably the Bush cuts for high earners — the top 1 percent of American households are paying about half the rate that they had to pay in 1980.
8. It's the Top of the Top 1 Percent Making the Real Killing
"We are the 99 percent" fits nicely on bumpersticker — far better than "We are the 99.9 percent." But while the top 1 percent has doubled its share of income over the last 30 years, the top tenth of the top 1 percent have made a real killing. In 1980, this rarified bunch took in 3.4 percent of the nation's income. By 2007, the year before the crash, they were grabbing over 12 percent. Their average incomes, adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars, had risen from $1.4 million to $7.4 million during the same period.
Then there's a tiny group of households in the top 100th of the top 1 percent — just a few hundred families. Their share of the nation's income increased from 1.3 percent in 1980 (an average of $5.4 million in 2008 dollars) to 6 percent in 2007 ($36.4 million).
To put that in perspective, the average income of the bottom 90 percent had barely budged. In 1980, they earned $30,941, and in 2007 — almost 30 years later — they took in $33,666.
9. They Don't Have Crushing Debt Loads
Unfortunately, the data on households with high debt-loads — defined as debt equalling at least 40 percent of income — isn't available for the top 1 percent. But according to EPI, in 2007 fewer than one in 25 of households in the top 10 percent of the distribution had a high debt load, compared to more than one in six households in the bottom 90 percent.
10. Education Is the Big Divide
According to Gallup, educational attainment is “the greatest difference between the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and everyone else. The Gallup analysis reveals that 72 percent of the wealthiest Americans have a college degree, compared with 31 percent of those in the lower 99 percentiles. Furthermore, nearly half of those in the wealthiest group have postgraduate education, versus 16 percent of all others.” (It's likely that those in the upper reaches of the "99 percent also tend to be educated, but Gallup doesn't break this down further.)
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Ron Paul is Excluded from Debate Sponsored by Jewish Republicans. You May Agree or Not Agree With Him, But This Is a Democracy.
by Bill Berkowitz | December 7, 2011 - 9:17am
The Republican Jewish Coalition is hosting a presidential-candidates forum on Wednesday, December 7 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.
Guess which candidate isn't being invited to participate.
Michelle Bachmann and her apocalyptic religious views that leaves Jews stranded in a desert wasteland? Wrong, she'll be there. Mitt Romney and John Huntsman of the Mormon crew that has fancied converting to Mormonism Jews that were killed in the Holocaust in order to swell their numbers in Heaven? Wrong, they'll be there. The uninhibited-unexpurgated Herman Cain? He was invited and he accepted, but since he has suspended his campaign it is unlikely he will appear. Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
The only GOP presidential candidate not being invited to participate in the daylong festivities is Texas Congressman Ron Paul.
Why Ron Paul? He won't stop noshing? He'll kibbitz (joke) inappropriately? He brings too much mishegas (insanity/craziness)? He'll make the audience plotz (explode with aggravation)? He's not schmaltzy (sentimental) enough? He's too big a schmuck (self-made fool) for mainstream conservative Jewish Republicans.?
Paul was not invited because of his "misguided and extreme views," said RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks. "He's just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization," Brooks said. Inviting Paul to attend would be "like inviting Barack Obama to speak."
As Reason.com's Matt Welch recently pointed out, "Brooks gave a more detailed critique of Ron Paul back in May":
"As Americans who are committed to a strong and vigorous foreign policy, we are deeply concerned about the prospective presidential campaign of Congressman Ron Paul. While Rep. Paul plans to run as a Republican, his views and past record place him far outside of the Republican mainstream. His candidacy, as we've seen in his past presidential campaigns, will appeal to a very narrow constituency in the U.S. electorate. Throughout his public service, Paul has espoused a dangerous isolationist vision for the U.S. and our role in the world. He has been a virulent and harsh critic of Israel during his tenure in Congress. Most recently Paul gave an interview in which he voiced his objection to the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden.
Brooks added, "We certainly respect Congressman Paul's right to run, but we strongly reject his misguided and extreme views, which are not representative of the Republican Party."
The Huffington Post reported that "At a recent debate, Paul suggested that Israel could take care of itself in the event that it attacked Iran, claiming its undeclared nuclear arsenal made it self-sufficient. 'Why does Israel need our help? We need to get out of their way,' he said when asked whether he would support an Israeli attack against Iran. If it did happen, 'that's their business, but they should suffer the consequences,' he added."
In addition, the Huffington Post piece pointed out that "Paul supported an amendment that would have ended all U.S. aid to Israel, along with Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan. The U.S. sends about $3 billion per year to Israel in military aid alone.
"Paul criticized U.S. military aid to Israel in an Oct. 18 debate. "That foreign aid makes Israel dependent on us," he said. 'It softens them for their own economy. And they should have their sovereignty back, they should be able to deal with their neighbors at their own will.'"
For more on Congressman Paul and the Jews, see Steve Rabin's report in The Philadelphia Jewish Voice entitled "Congressman Ron Paul and the Jews."
According to the JTA News Service, Paul supporters "deluged the Republican Jewish Coalition's phone lines with complaints " about Paul's exclusion.
Even if we were to stipulate that Ron Paul is no friend of Israel, no friend of the Jews, no friend to anyone in need (remember his answer about a dying man in need of health care at one of the early debates?) those aren't reasons to exclude him from the RJC forum. He is, after all, a legitimate voice in Republican Party politics and he's still outpolling much of the remaining field.
One doesn't need to like Paul's foreign policy perspective to have him invited to a debate. After all, this is a democracy.
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"By Imbeciles Who Really Mean It": Lost Verities and Dirty Hippies
by Phil Rockstroh | December 7, 2011 - 4:09pm
Regardless of the dissembling of corporate-state propagandists, free-market capitalism has always been a government-subsidized, bubble-inflating, swindlers’ game, in which, psychopathic personalities (not “job creators” but con-job perpetrators) thrive.
By the exploitation of the many, a ruthless few have amassed large amounts of capital by which they dominate mainstream narratives and compromise elected and governmental officials, thereby gaming the system for their benefit.
'Occupy Everything' sign (Photo by Angela Tyler-Rockstroh)
Historically, the system has proven so demeaning to the majority of the population that the elite, from time to time, have, as a last resort, due to fear of a popular uprising, introduced a bit of socialism into the system, allowing a modicum of swag to funnel downward, and, as a result, the ranks of the middle-class have been expanded.
For a time, the bourgeoisie are bamboozled by the sales pitch that one day they will be affluent enough to be freed from the taxing obligations of a dismal, debt-beholden existence, when, in fact, they sowed their fate (like those swindled by opening their bank accounts after receiving email from parties claiming to be momentarily cash-strapped Nigerian royalty) by their own greed, i.e. by their self-imprisonment within their own narrow, self-serving view of existence.
These stultifying circumstances will level an atmosphere of restiveness and nebulous rage. In general, the middle-class can be counted on to detest the poor … blaming those born devoid of societal advantage and political influence for the impoverished circumstances that were in place long before the happenstance of their birth.
Moreover, in a bit of noxious casuistry, as despicable as it is delusional, all too many members of the middle-class have been induced by grift artists, employed by the ruling elite, to blame their own declining social status and attendant beleaguered existence on the poor.
“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.”–John Donne
This has proven to be an effective, time-tested grift: Because as long as the animus of the middle class remains fixated on the poor, the criminal cartels known as the economic elite can continue to ply their trade. Of course, in reality, by their greed and complicity, what the middle-class has gained is this: trustee status in the capitalist workhouse.
Although, there is no need to fret: The run of neoliberal capitalism is about over. Don’t mourn: This late-stage, rapacious, mutant economic strain has leveled destruction on community and the planet itself as well as the hearts and souls of too many of those imprisoned within its paradigm.
At this point, the situation comes down to this: paradigm shift or perish. The hour is amenable to reevaluate, reorganize and re-occupy. Doing so will prove helpful in withstanding false narratives.
Apropos: As of late, in my hours spent at Liberty Park, I’ve been witness to increasing numbers of tourists wandering in and repeating derisive, right-wing distortions regarding the OWS movement and its participants.
For example, the distortions allege that the OWS participants are a collection of whiny college students who want taxpayers to be responsible for picking up the tab for their student loans because they are too lazy and spoiled to work off their debt.
These tales are variations of the old canards involving welfare queens, mouths gleaming with taxpayer financed gold teeth, arriving at grocery stores lounging behind the steering wheels of late-model Cadillacs, and proceeding to purchase steaks and fifths of gin with food stamps.
Ronald Reagan spoke of this mythical figure often, affording her near supernatural powers: She, through indolence, guile and a welfare-state-bestowed sense of limitless entitlement, was the near singular cause of the nation’s economic woes; her very existence, not only depleted the U.S. Treasury of dollars, but drained the U.S. free enterprise system of vitality and the very will to compete. She was a succubus who arrived in the socialist haunted night to feed on and zap the very virility of capitalism.
Because of the wealth inequities inherent to capitalism, in order to prevent social unrest, the system is reliant on creating false narratives that foster misplaced and displaced class resentment. These tales are very potent, because they serve as palliatives for the enervating states of shame inflicted on the population at large by their enslavement to the free market.
Accordingly, because the vast majority of the populace are deemed “losers,” due to how the system is rigged, techniques must be created and maintained to displace the rage, born of a sense of powerlessness, that grips the system’s exploited underlings.
OWS is beginning to change the narrative … align it with reality – and that is an alarming development for the 1 percent; hence, the retooled, amped-up propaganda campaign we’re seeing signs of at present.
This is the reality the 1 percent endeavor to obscure: Capitalism is a pyramid scheme; by its very structure, only a few will ever receive its bounty … that is wrung out of the exhausted hides of the vast majority. Fact is, capitalism, the neoliberal variety or otherwise, has never worked as promised; its innate structure ensures exploitation and inequity.
Therefore, time and time again, adding aspects of socialism (e.g., New Deal-era programs and reforms) have saved capitalism from itself. But, after a time, the plutocrats regroup and begin anew to launch a big money-financed, slow-motion coup d’état of government (e.g., the Reagan Revolution).
A vast disparity of wealth within a nation will all but ensure this societal trajectory. But that isn’t going to happen, this time. The planet cannot endure the assaults wrought by a system that requires exponential growth to be maintained.
The run of capitalism is nearly over. A more sustainable economic system, based on horizontal rule, is being developed, globally (e.g., the Icelandic model).
The vertical structure inherent to capitalism brings about the self-perpetuating reign of an insular elite who choose to go the route of empire and, by doing so, overreach and bring themselves down, but only after much unnecessary suffering, exploitation and death – the calling card and ground-level criteria of imperium.
Yet, often within a declining empire, even as the quality of life grows increasingly degraded for the majority of the populace, questioning sacrosanct beliefs, such as, the myth that capitalism promotes societal progress and personal advancement, by means of the possibility of upward class migration, proves to be a difficult endeavor for many.
The reason: Even given the degraded nature of life as lived under late capitalism, the act of taking stock of one’s situation – beginning to question how one arrived at one’s present station in life – will engender anxiety, anger and regret.
Apropos to the shame-based Calvinism of the capitalist state: If I was duped in a rigged game, what does that say about me? The narrative of capitalism insists that if I work hard, applying savvy and diligence, at fulfilling my aspirations then I would, at some point, arrive in the rarified realm of life’s winners.
But if success proves elusive, then my flawed character must be the problem – not the dishonest economic setup – and miasmic shame descends upon me. Yet I can count on right-wing media to provide the type of provisional solace proffered by demagogues, i.e., imparting the reason that folks like me can’t get ahead is because scheming socialists have hijacked my parcel of the American Dream and delivered it to the undeserving thereby transforming my shame into displaced outrage.
And that must be the case; otherwise, it would behoove me to make the painful admission that I have been conned … have co-signed the crimes committed against me. Worse, I would be compelled to question all my verities and beliefs – all the convictions I clutch, regarding, not only the notions that I possess about myself and the methods I’ve adopted in approaching life, but also, the social structure that influenced my character.
Imagine: If you had to re-imagine your life. Imagine, how the act would unnerve your loved ones, threaten friendships, even endanger your livelihood.
What an unnerving task that would prove to be … an ordeal certain to deliver heart-shaking anxiety, devastating regret and nettling dread directly into the besieged sanctuary of what is suppose to be the inviolable precincts of my comfort zone.
“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”–Albert Camus
Accordingly, I might turn to Fox News and other well-rewarded, professional dissemblers of the political Right, imploring them to dissolve my doubts and dread.
To escort and ensconce my troubled form back into my comfort zone by telling me the problem is not the iron boot of the corporate state upon my neck; rather, my oppression stems from the barefoot hippie lefties of OWS “who need a bath and a job”; it is their odious presence in our lives that has subdued my happy capitalist destiny by the pernicious act of laying down an effluvia (more demobilizing than pepper spray) of patchouli musk and has caused capitalism itself to weaken into an enervated swoon.
Yes, this has to be the case: The cause of my oppression. Those America-hating Occupy Wall Street hippies are actually the hidden hand that controls the global order and who possess a craven desire to smelt down the gleaming steel of the humming engines of U.S. capitalism into creepy, Burning Man statuary, who want to hold 24/7 Nuremberg-style rallies in the form of annoying drum circles.
In reality, it is those dirty hippies who are actually “The Man.” Withal, hippies crashed the global economy and pinned the blame on the selfless souls who ply their benign trade on Wall Street.
Now, you know why conservatives harbor such animus towards hippies. Don’t claim that Fox News et al – those selfless souls – who only desire to protect the glories of the present order, and who only have your best interest in mind, didn’t try to warn you.
“I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” –Mark Twain
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at:
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Balancing the Black Energy in Our Culture
by John Grant | December 6, 2011 - 9:19am
Following a decade of military invasion and occupation in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, the United States is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of empires: "We get no respect!"
The undisputed post-World War Two top dog in the world, on virtually every front the United States is more and more playing catch-up with two-faced, Clintonian shuttle diplomacy around the world and a well-entrenched regime of secrecy and sophisticated public relations aimed at keeping the dismal story of decline out of the domestic mind-space.
Economic realities dictate that the US government ratchet down its exorbitant military from the strutting days of Colin Powell's two-front shock-and-awe doctrine to a leaner doctrine centered on highly mobile, focused assassinations. Instead of bombing cities and structures like a boxer who batters the body, we now go for quick, well-placed head shots, especially to the key, sensitive areas of the brain that provide inspiration and leadership to the movements we deem threatening to our declining future.
US citizens are absorbing this accelerating imperial decline without being informed that's what's going on. The myth of exceptionalism must be kept alive and the donut hole of our global empire -- the American homeland where we all work and raise our families -- must carry the burden of sacrifice.
The imperial system isn't working like it used to; and much of it is being held together by political fantasy. What else can explain the incredible degree of unreality and nonsense more and more at the core of American politics? As the secrecy rises, formal bullshit, as defined by Harry Frankfurt, has become an American language.
Democrats are accomplished with it, but for the masters of bullshit you have to witness the current preposterous level of argument and thinking among the presidential candidates in the Republican Party. There's no presumption of even a grip on reality; it's a struggle for power and nothing else -- with the mainstream media keeping score.
As part of a personal study, I recently watched two classic RKO noir films from 1947 - Out Of The Past and Born To Kill, the former very famous and the latter more obscure. The sensibility of these black and white films seems perfectly in synch for the incredibly corrupt times we live in. Noir means black in French...
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Class Warfare in Canada Orchestrated By Right-Wing Prime Minister Harper
by Bill Berkowitz | December 6, 2011 - 9:12am
In 1960, the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, affirmed a nearly half-century-old policy that tuition-free higher education was in the best interests of the state of California. After a recent demonstration at the University of California, Berkeley, in which one of the grievances raised by students was the rapidly rising costs of a university education, a UC spokesperson suggested that members of the Board of Regents who are well-connected and have the ability to raise large sums of money from well-heeled donors, could raise donations to benefit low-income students.
Charity, the UC spokesperson seemed to suggest, was the way to help low-income students.
What has any of this to do with developments in Canada?
A series of moves being advocated by Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper could spell the beginning of the end for Canada's much-vaunted social safety net. "The Conservative government, libertarian to its core, intends to create the appearance of an increasingly volunteer society as it systematically guts the social and cultural role of government," The Tyee's Murray Dobbin recently reported. "Harper hopes to justify massive cuts to programs (and in general the role of the federal government period) by shifting responsibility to charities and foundations."
According to Dobbin, "This is the Americanization of Canada -- remaking the country in the image of the minimalist government that the U.S. has experienced for decades. The problem is that there is very weak tradition of foundations and corporate giving in this country, so it has to be engineered, too."
Dobbin calls Harper's plan "right-wing social engineering." While Harper has taken on "the status of junior partner in an increasingly aggressive and desperate American empire," he is also launching an "assault on the political culture." In an effort to re-make the country, Dobbin pointed out, there have been "concerted attacks on science, cultural organizations, human rights and women's groups and now the collective bargaining rights for public service workers."
Now, with little apparent support from the people of Canada (a la Ohio Governor John Kasich's attempt - rebuffed on Election Day -- to destroy public unions' collective bargaining rights), Harper seems bound and determined to destroy, or rejigger, many social programs including unemployment insurance, Medicare, subsidized university education, Family Allowance, public pensions, old age security as he can.
According to Dobbin, "All of these elements of Canadian political culture were the result of a democratic imperative. All the polling on these government programs and the social equality they promote suggests at least three quarters of Canadians still support an activist role for government in the interests of community, not to mention the viability of families."
Just as the Bush tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan led to massive deficits in the U.S. and cuts in an already tattered social safety net, it appears that the first stage in dismantling Canada's social programs was to reduce the amount of money available to the federal government.
"[T]hat stage," Dobbin noted, "was implemented early on with the huge, five-year, $60 billion tax cut plan implemented by Jim Flaherty in 2007, the year following Harper's first election victory." By creating the deficit, Harper has created the crisis, and as Naomi Klein has pointed out in her book The Shock Doctrine, it is in those times of "crisis" that political leaders are able to accomplish what has been previously thought of as unthinkable. In this case, the shattering of Canada's social contract.
The Frank Luntz Factor
For Harper, the politics of all this has to be a major consideration. It is unclear how many times Harper and his acolytes have met with Frank Luntz, the vaunted Republican Party pollster, political consultant and message manipulator, but there have been meetings.
In 2006, Julie Mason, a longtime political consultant, reported that Luntz, "A long-time adviser to Preston Manning, ... is no stranger to politics in Canada. Recently he dropped by Ottawa for a quick chat with Stephen Harper, and a speaking engagement on 'Massaging the Conservative Message for Voters' for Civitas, a group of Canadian conservatives that includes Harper's Chief of Staff Ian Brodie, Campaign Manager Tom Flanagan, and National Citizens Coalition Vice-President Gerry Nicholls.
"In his speech," Mason wrote, "Luntz advised Conservatives to look for embarrassing details on Liberals that would 'discredit the Liberals so thoroughly that it will be years before they make it back into power,' ..."
In a long article, the blog "Pushed to the Left and Loving It" pointed out that "According to Lloyd Mackey, in The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper, our PM was 'saved' after being introduced to the writings of C.S. Lewis. This claim is made by many in the New Right movement."
And it is that claim that often leads to monumental excesses.
"Pushed to the Left..." cited a passage from David Kuo, the disillusioned former George W. Bush faith-based initiative staffer, who wrote in his book Tempting Faith: An inside Story of Political Seduction of a passage from Lewis' the Screwtape Letters, that frightened him:
"Let him begin by treating patriotism ... as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the "cause," in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce ... Once he's made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing."
Herbert Pimlott, who teaches and researches communication, media and culture at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, recently wrote that Harper intends (much like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker) "to use 'wedge' issues to drive clear and potentially volatile divisions between Canadians, but not necessarily overtly socio-economic (i.e. class) divisions (since it is likely that many millions more Canadians would end up on the opposing side, although he does have the advantage of corporate media chains!). He is attempting to repeat Republican success in the USA by adopting their tactics for his 'war' on Canadian traditions, values, beliefs and attitudes: to push Canada - or to remake it - in Conservative ideology.
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How Obama's Embrace Turned Teddy Roosevelt Into a Socialist
John Nichols on December 7, 2011 - 10:24am ET
What was Fox News to do when Barack Obama went to Kansas and delivered a speech that echoed the “New Nationalism” address Teddy Roosevelt used to renew and redefine his political prospects? Obama’s oratory was not quite as radical as that of the former Republican president, but it was close enough is spirit and content to create concerns on the part of Fox commentators that the current president might be tapping into the rich vein of American progressive populism that actually moves the masses.
So the network of economic royalism did the only thing it could.
Fox broke away from Tuesday’s speech right at the point where Obama was most closely following TR’s line, with references to how the former president had declared: “Our country…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” And the recognition by Obama that “today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what [Roosevelt] fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women, insurance for the unemployed and for the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.”
Obama had the quote right. And he had the history right.
What was Fox to do?
No problem. They dismissed Teddy Roosevelt as a socialist.
Once the details of Obama’s speech—one of the most effective and well-received of his presidency—were made available, Fox News political editor Chris Stirewelt explained: “What Teddy Roosevelt was calling for was a sort of a socialistic nationalism, in which the government would take things away from people who got things that he didn’t think they should have [and] give it to the working man. They talk about ‘the square deal,’ ‘fairness,’ all of these new mandates for government—something the Republican Party has walked away from in very decided fashion certainly since the Reagan era in terms of what the role and purpose of government is. This is Obama embracing a Republican icon of a bygone era.”
Fox host Megyn Kelly picked up on the theme: “Teddy Roosevelt was calling for something akin to a socialist nationalism. Why would President Obama want to do anything that would associate himself with that word ‘socialist’ which has been used against him by so many of the Republican presidential candidates, among others.”
Yes, Stirewelt responded, “I think the biggest thing [Obama] is trying to do is shame the Republicans. He’s trying to say: ‘Look, one of your own, a great hero of yours that’s on Mount Rushmore, he was a socialist. He called for this sort of socialist nationalism. Why are you people not being like him? Why are you not following in his footsteps?’ ”
“Obviously,” continued Stirewelt, “this is not an unalloyed good thing for the president to line up with this sort of progressivism, and this sort of liberalism and socialism that has become so much maligned and so much disliked in the modern American political discourse.”
On Fox Business News, the discussion turned to a claim that “we’re seeing the return of socialism combined with nationalsm.”
Wow.
So Roosevelt was socialistic, and Obama is adopting “socialist nationalism” by borrowing a page from the Republican commander-in-chief whom the most recent Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, hailed as his hero—as have Republican nominees in every election since the former president’s passing in 1920.
The notion that the Republican Roosevelt was a socialist would have come as news to the old Rough Rider—and to the socialist stalwarts of his time.
When Roosevelt ran for the presidency in 1904 (as a Republican incumbent) and again in 1912 (as the leader of the renegade Republicans who formed the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party), he faced determined opposition from Socialist Party nominees. Indeed, the 1912 campaign saw Eugene Victor Debs win the highest portion of the vote ever accorded to a Socialist candidate: 6 percent.
Roosevelt, in his “New Nationalism” speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, did outline an agenda that supported the establishment of programs like Social Security and Medicare, protections against discrimination, union rights and expanded democracy. In effect, he was arguing for what, under his fifth cousin, Franklin, would come to be known as “the New Deal.”
Some of those proposals were promoted by the Socialist Party in the early years of the twentieth century, which certainly made arguments in its platforms for safety-net programs. But so, too, did moderate Republicans and Democrats. After the “Gilded Age” of robber barons and corporate monopolies, there was mainstream support for tempering the excesses of laissez faire capitalism. They weren’t proposing socialism in any form that Karl Marx might recognize but they were arguing for fairness and responsibility.
“We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used,” Roosevelt said in 1910. However, recalling the language of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt added, “It is not even enough that it should have gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”
That’s hardly a radical notion. It simply says that the accumulation of great wealth ought not come at the expense of society. Or, as Obama explained in Osawatomie, “Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes—especially for the wealthy—our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty. It’s a simple theory—one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: it doesn’t work. It’s never worked.”
This is not some grand redistributionist scheme. It is economic realism. It is the vision of responsible wealth that was broadly accepted by Main Street Republicans until the advocates for a new Gilded Age bought themselves a Tea Party movement.
Roosevelt spoke for Main Street when he said 111 years ago: “The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.”
Barack Obama is echoing that line, speaking a bit more softly and carrying a bit less of a big stick than Teddy Roosevelt. He is coming down on the side of the same basic premise that TR reached in Osawatomie: fairness.
Of course, according to Fox News, fairness is “something the Republican Party has walked away from…”
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Lyoto Machida admits he was surprised when he got the call to face Jon Jones at UFC 140, but he happily accepted.
After defeating Randy Couture at UFC 129, Machida was asked to step in and face Rashad Evans at UFC 133 on short notice, but turned the fight down. So it was a bit of a surprise when the UFC called and asked him to step up and fight for the belt at UFC 140.
Now that the opportunity is here, he's ready to face Jon Jones and get back the light heavyweight title he lost not so long ago.
"That's why I'm here (to get the belt," said Machida. "I'm very motivated."
Check out this interview with UFC 140 main event fighter Lyoto Machida:
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Jones will win.... But Machida is the ONLY guy that stands a chance to beat him. Jones wont lose a fight for at least 2 years (probably 3 or 4)