Hillary Clinton, TPP, the World of Money & the Center for American Progress

Elizabeth Warren, speaking for the people. Who speaks for money? The Center for American Progress (image source; image artist; more images here)

by Gaius Publius

I'll put the bottom line first. There is no way that Hillary Clinton is not a strong supporter of TPP and Fast Track. Read on for why.

There has been a lot written lately, including here, about the Democratic Party split between progressives and "progressives" — the former of whom have most of the people on their side, and the latter of whom have most of the money. Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Alan Grayson and others are firmly in the progressive camp, what's being called the "Warren wing" of the party.

Most Democratic Party officials and electeds, however, are in the latter camp, which many call the "Wall Street wing," though huge swaths of American (and foreign) moneyed interests, not just those on Wall Street, are supporters and controllers of that wing. To take just one moneyed interest — Big Oil — consider that:

• Exxon is one of the largest owners of unmonetized methane (yet-to-be-fracked natural gas) in the country.
   
• "Left-wing" support groups and think tanks like EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) and NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) strongly support (pdf) the "temporary" transition to natural gas as a bridge fuel.
   
• By many reports both EDF and NRDC receive money in various ways, as well as advice, from the oil and gas industry and their advocates.
   
• NRDC in particular is said to have had a hand in Obama's new climate plan.
   
• And ... President Obama's big climate plan — his "Clean Power Plan" (a very methane industry–like phrase) — happens to preference methane over everything else in our arsenal, including just quitting carbon in a World War II–style conversion and being done with it.

The "Wall Street wing" of the Democratic Party is really the Money wing and represents Money wherever it is found. Though some dispute the claim, it seems to me the split between the Warren wing and the Money wing is huge, a chasm, and shows little sign of healing at the moment. It may heal later, artificially and for a time, around a Clinton candidacy, but that time isn't now.

Hillary Clinton and the Money Wing

I think it's fair to say, regardless of how you view Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, that her biggest hurdle on the Democratic side is her perceived connection to Big Money, and lots of it. Her family grew rich by cultivating people with money; her foundation grew fat by cultivating people (and nations) with money; and her donor list has historically included holders of big money, especially Wall Street holders (though Obama seems to have out-raised her on Wall Street in 2008).

She may be able to shed these concerns — there is much time left, too much in fact, until the Democratic primary elections. But she may not need to shed them; for example, the specter of "Republicans in the White House!" may be too much for even the most progressive of voters. We'll have to see how this plays out. Nevertheless, it's fair to say that the tag "friend of money" is one of the vulnerabilities Ms. Clinton may have to overcome.

Center for American Progress and the World of Big Money

One of the most important — and "centrist" (code for "corporate-friendly") — think tanks in the Democratic Party ecosystem is the Center for American Progress, or CAP. They do some good work, and their associated Web group, ThinkProgress, does excellent work. But when it comes time to put their "money" where Money's mouth is — for example, to support cuts to Social Security and Medicare — CAP is on the anti-progressive side, and reliably so.

CAP is strongly connected to the Clinton ecosystem as well as the party ecosystem. CAP was founded by John Podesta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff. He's now chair of the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. The current president of CAP is Neera Tanden, who worked for the Obama and Clinton administrations, and also on the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign. With $40 million in 2013 revenue, CAP and those associated with it stand at or near the center of the center of mainstream Democratic politics.

CAP is also extremely secretive about where its money comes from. Here's the always excellent Ken Silverstein, writing in The Nation in 2013 (my emphasis):

Nowadays, many Washington think tanks effectively serve as unregistered lobbyists for corporate donors, and companies strategically contribute to them just as they hire a PR or lobby shop or make campaign donations. And unlike lobbyists and elected officials, think tanks are not subject to financial disclosure requirements, so they reveal their donors only if they choose to. That makes it impossible for the public and lawmakers to know if a think tank is putting out an impartial study or one that’s been shaped by a donor’s political agenda. “If you’re a lobbyist, whatever you say is heavily discounted,” says Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and an expert on political ethics. “If a think tank is saying it, it obviously sounds a lot better. Maybe think tanks aren’t aware of how useful that makes them to private interests. On the other hand, maybe it’s part of their revenue model.”

And:

CAP has emerged as perhaps the most influential of all think tanks during the Obama era, and there’s been a rapidly revolving door between it and the administration. CAP is also among the most secretive of all think tanks concerning its donors. Most major think tanks prepare an annual report containing at least some financial and donor information and make it available on their websites. According to CAP spokeswoman Andrea Purse, the center doesn’t even publish one.

Purse told me that CAP “follows all financial disclosure requirements with regard to donors…. We don’t use corporate funds to pay for research or reports.” But she flatly refused to discuss specific donors or to provide an on-the-record explanation for why CAP won’t disclose them.

After growing rapidly in its first few years, tax records show, CAP’s total assets fell in 2006 for the first time, from $23.6 million to $20.4 million. Assets started growing again in 2007 when CAP founded the Business Alliance, a membership rewards program for corporate contributors, and then exploded when Obama was elected in 2008. According to its most recent nonprofit tax filing, CAP’s total assets now top $44 million, and its Action Fund treasury holds $6 million more.

A confidential CAP donor pitch I obtained describes the Business Alliance as “a channel for engagement with the corporate community” that provides “the opportunity to…collaborate on common interests.” It offers three membership levels, with the perks to top donors ($100,000 and up) including private meetings with CAP experts and executives, round-table discussions with “Hill and national leaders,” and briefings on CAP reports “relevant to your unique interests.”

Regardless of what you think of CAP and what it accomplishes, there's no question that CAP inhabits, is part of, the world of Big Money, just as Wall Street is part of that world, Ford Foundation is part of that world, and everything touched by the Kochs, such as PBS. Welcome to the One Percent and their interests.

CAP's Donor List

Since the Silverstein article came out, CAP released its donor list:

The liberal think tank Center for American Progress on Friday revealed that it’s funded by some of the country’s largest and most powerful corporations, trade associations and lobbying firms.

Major donors to the group and its affiliate social welfare nonprofit Center for American Progress Action Fund include major retailers, energy interests, health care companies and other corporate actors who spend millions on lobbying and influence peddling in the nation’s capital, according to a list posted on the center’s website.

The group — which is a fundraising powerhouse that takes in about $40 million a year — released its donor list as founder and chairman John Podesta heads into the Obama White House to serve as a senior adviser.

Those corporations and trade associations represent a cross section of corporate America and include Walmart, Goldman Sachs, Google, defense giant Northrop Grumman, T-Mobile, Toyota, Visa, GE, among others. CAP did not disclose the donation amounts.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP — a major player in the health care debate contributed to the group, as did Hollywood’s advocacy arm, the Motion Picture Association of America. Other corporate donors include Microsoft, PepsiCo, Samsung, CVS Caremark, Comcast NBCUniversal and many others.

The firm also has a number of major K Street lobbying firms on the corporate donor list including Akin Gump, the Glover Park Group, Livingston Group and the Downey McGrath Group. All represent dozens of corporate and nonprofit clients.

Do you think maybe CAP supports TPP? (Can it afford not to?)

CAP Strongly Supports TPP

From the CAP main website, a piece written in 2012:

Japan’s Inclusion Makes the Trans-Pacific Partnership a Big Opportunity

New Agreement Could Lead to Better Trade Between U.S. and Japan

... The prospect of Japan joining the TPP is indeed promising for the United States. U.S. goods trade with current TPP economies constitutes 5.3 percent of total U.S. goods trade. Japan’s inclusion would double this to 10.6 percent.

And while Japan is already a leading destination for U.S. exports, the United States has a $62.6 billion goods trade deficit with it. The TPP could help bring down that deficit by reducing trade barriers and opening the Japanese market up to more exports from the United States and other countries. ...

There's even a nice picture of a woman riding a bike past Sony corporate headquarters, with kind words for each.

How Does Hillary Clinton Not Support TPP and Fast Track?

The Center for American Progress sits squarely in the world of money, the world that Obama and his push for TPP seem determined to serve. Hillary Clinton sits squarely in both the world of money and the world of CAP infrastructure. How does she not support TPP? When asked about TPP, all she can say is this:

Clinton punts on trade

Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she will wait until negotiations are completed to take a position on the sweeping Asia-Pacific trade deal being negotiated by the Obama administration.

“So, I have said I want to judge the final agreement,” she said during a campaign stop in Cedar Falls, Iowa. “I have been for trade agreements. I have been against trade agreements.”

Pressure on Clinton to take a position on trade has been coming from both sides, with liberal groups urging her to stand against the trade deal.But doing so would be difficult for Clinton, who backed the deal as a member of President Obama's administration.

When asked about the TPP issue, campaign chief John Podesta, the same man mentioned above, former CAP chair, reportedly quipped, "Can you make it go away?"

This is not the behavior of a TPP opponent. Given all the information here (and there's plenty more elsewhere), there is no way Hillary Clinton is not a strong supporter of TPP and Fast Track.

Clinton's full answer on TPP. Note the mention of "national security" near the end. Obama's Pentagon chief has come out in favor of TPP on "security" grounds.

About those wishy-washy answers, though, I give her points for this — I do believe she's trying hard not to lie, a virtue in a candidate, and not a common one.

GP

A Collapsing Bridge Is Never Sexy

Yesterday Elizabeth Warren was on NPR fighting against the latest attack by Wall Street-owned politicians on the middle class. Her main emphasis was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the conservatives' toxic trade agenda, which David Dayen eviscerated at Salon yesterday. 

"I have three objections," explained Warren. "The first is that the president is asking us to vote to grease the skids on a trade deal that has largely been negotiated but that is still held in secret. The second is that we know that corporations under this deal are going to get to sue countries for regulations they don't like and that the decisions are not going to be made by courts, they're going to be made by private lawyers. And the third problem is that he wants us to vote on a six-year, grease-the-skids deal."

Meanwhile, also yesterday, the Roosevelt Institute presented a report on the "link between the rapidly rising fortunes of America's wealthiest citizens and increasing economic insecurity for everyone else" from Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. That was followed by Bill de Blasio and Elizabeth Warren presenting their Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality. All of these underlie Bernie Sanders' presidential platform. Katrina vanden Heuvel took to the pages of the Washington Post to explain what all these proposals have in common and how they add up to the progressive agenda.

Public Investment to Create Jobs: All share a central strategy-- major, long-term public investment in rebuilding America; modernizing our decrepit roads, sewers and transport; creating good jobs in the process. Sanders, the Populism Platform and the CCC agenda also emphasize meeting the threat posed by climate change, investing in new energy and energy efficiency and capturing a lead in the green industrial revolution. The CCC agenda also pays needed attention to giving investment priority to the “poorest communities.”

Progressive Tax Reform: All call for raising taxes on the rich and the corporations not out of envy but to provide the resources for needed public investment.

Predistribution: Each agenda seeks to ensure that the rewards of growth are widely shared, by empowering workers to gain their fair share. That includes lifting the floor-- raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing paid sick and vacation days and family leave, funding child care, cracking down on wage theft, enforcing pay equity for women, revising overtime laws and more.

Most of the plans also emphasize empowering workers to organize and bargain collectively, arguing that the assault on unions has tilted the scales against workers. Both Sanders and the CAP committee also call for subsidizing worker-owned companies and cooperatives and for various forms of profit-sharing.

The Populism Platform, CCC agenda and CAP committee all call for redressing discrimination, including an end to mass incarceration and reform of our biased criminal justice system, comprehensive immigration reform, and pay equity and support for women. (“The Progressive Agenda” may soon include additional planks on debt-free college, expanding Social Security and criminal justice reform.)

Finally, all would curb the excesses at the top, cracking down on perverse CEO compensation schemes that give executives incentives to cash out their own companies.

Trade and Wall Street: Other than the more focused CCC agenda, all challenge the entrenched structures that fuel inequality, expressing opposition to current trade policies, and calling for curbing Wall Street excesses. Most would break up the big banks (with Summers an exception to that).

The Basics in Education: Most challenge the limits of our punitive education debate, focusing instead on basic investments in education: universal pre-K, investments in public education and various roads to debt-free public college.

Expand Shared Security: Most support expanding Social Security benefits. Sanders and Stiglitz emphasize Medicare for all. The CAP report calls for a new automatic program to provide jobs for the young in times of high unemployment.

Let's go back to the very first point: investing in the country's future, which is, in great part, fixing America's crumbling infrastructure, that unsexy task John Oliver delved into in the video up top. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, writing for the Harvard Business Review, is worried about America's accelerating disunity and lack of a common will and a common vision. "Unless there's strong public will that translates into votes, a Congress elected every two years can't be expected to rally behind raising taxes to pay for big projects, despite the certainty that red states' bridges can crumble as readily as blue states'." She uses national Infrastructure Week as a backdrop to the "numerous problems [that] plague businesses and consumers: Goods are delayed at clogged ports. Delayed or cancelled flights cost the U.S. economy an estimated $30-40 billion per year-- not to mention ill will of disgruntled passengers. The average American wastes 38 hours a year stuck in traffic. This amounts to 5.5 billion hours in lost U.S. productivity annually, 2.9 gallons of wasted fuel, and a public health cost of pollution of about $15 billion per year, according to Harvard School of Public Health researchers. The average family of four spends as much as 19% of its household budget on transportation. But inequality also kicks in: the poor can’t afford cars, yet are concentrated in places without access to public transportation. To top it all, federal funding for highways, with a portion for mass transit, is about to run out."

The situation is urgent. But where is the sense of urgency? That’s what I set out to explore for the Harvard Business School U.S. Competitiveness project. I put aside work on a book about leadership to tackle the infrastructure issue. Then I realized that infrastructure led me straight back to leadership, but of a bigger kind-- leadership to look beyond one’s own business to think about solving big problems.

It’s often said that when the pain gets bad enough, people will support change. I’m not sure that’s enough. Change requires a vision of the future sufficiently compelling that people will overcome inertia and support investment. Change requires an awareness of common fate-- that everyone shares a piece of the suffering but can benefit from contributing to improvements.

American strengths in innovation and entrepreneurship offer numerous possibilities for upgrading infrastructure, and the transportation sector numerous possibilities for exciting business investments, if leaders see the future. Revitalized cities can have people-friendly streets, smarter roads containing sensors to improve traffic flow and spot repair needs, vehicles that can prevent accidents, apps to summon cars or find parking as well as tell blind people when they’ve wandered outside the lines at a street crossing (I call this a seeing-eye phone). Data analytics, such as the Weather Company’s Total Turbulence package, can reduce weather-related flight delays by providing real-time weather data.

Cross-sector innovation is also promising. Oregon is running an experiment with a vehicle-miles-traveled fee to replace gasoline taxes for roads and bridges, which anticipates the spread of electric vehicles such as the Tesla that use roads but don’t buy gas. Collaboration via public-private partnerships can potentially tap diverse forms of funding, combine expertise, and make it possible to get public-buy-in.

Unless there’s strong public will that translates into votes, a Congress elected every two years can’t be expected to rally behind raising taxes to pay for big projects, despite the certainty that red states’ bridges can crumble as readily as blue states’. That’s why leaders need to pitch a big tent. Inclusiveness means making infrastructure a family issue and women’s issue. It often seems to be a man’s world, but outstanding woman leaders, such as former FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, DSC logistics company CEO Ann Drake, MIT robotics lab head Daniela Rus, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, and IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, prove that cars are not just toys for boys, and women can become sought-after engineers.

Events like Infrastructure Week sound the alarm. Then leaders must step in to give people reason for hope. To succeed, leaders need inspiring visions, strategic thinking, openness to innovation, and change processes that involve coalition building and uniting constituencies behind common goals-- the essence of leadership. It can come from corporate chiefs, enlightened officials, tech entrepreneurs, consumers, citizens, and activists who are informed and motivated to seek change. It’s time to move.

Moving doesn't mean moving towards more Clintons and Bushes in national leadership. Right now moving means... Bernie Sanders. Here are Bernie's 12 steps forward-- his agenda for America:

• Rebuilding Our Crumbling Infrastructure
• Reversing Climate Change
• Creating Worker Co-ops
• Growing the Trade Union Movement
• Raising the Minimum Wage
• Pay Equity for Women Workers
• Trade Policies that Benefit American Workers
• Making College Affordable for All
• Taking on Wall Street
• Health Care as a Right for All
• Protecting the Most Vulnerable Americans
• Real Tax Reform

It isn't just on the presidential level where we need help. P.G. Sittenfeld is the progressive candidate running for the Ohio Senate seat held by reactionary Republican Rob Portman. Sittenfeld was one of the first candidates in the country to sign on to De Blasio's manifesto. Watch:

U.S. Trade Rep Says Murdering Union Leaders Not a Violation of U.S. "Trade" Agreements

Operators are standing by: (202) 225-3121.
Seriously. Please call.

by Gaius Publius

You can't make this stuff up; it invents itself faster than you can find and print it. Two quick points, both about TPP and Ron Wyden's Fast Track sell-out.

First, AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka testified before the Senate Finance Committee in opposition to Wyden and Hatch's Fast Track bill. (For its toxic and deceptive provisions, see here.) Like almost every progressive leader and follower you can name, he's opposed to it. Because he represents the largest labor organization in the U.S., the AFL-CIO, he's strongly opposed and for good reason. (By the way, just because someone is from the AFL-CIO doesn't mean they're "right" on labor. AFL-CIO was complicit in Reagan's destruction of the Air Traffic Controllers union. But Trumka is very "right" on labor.)

From Trumka's testimony via Huffington Post (my emphasis everywhere):

AFL-CIO's Trumka: USTR [U.S. Trade Representative] Told Us Murder Isn't A Violation Under U.S. Trade Deal

Defenders of the White House push for sweeping trade deals argue they include tough enforcement of labor standards. But a top union leader scoffed at such claims Tuesday, revealing that administration officials have said privately that they don’t consider even the killings of labor organizers to be violations of those pacts.

Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, testified to that claim at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on legislation to grant President Barack Obama so-called fast-track authority to cut at least two new enormous trade agreements with Pacific Rim nations and the European Union. It appears to be the first time anyone has revealed such a stance on the part of a U.S. government that has been touting its efforts to improve wages and working conditions among its trading partners, relying in part on trade agreements. ...

“When you say, ‘Oh these are some standards, they’re better than no standards,’ we were told by by the [United States Trade Representative] general counsel that murdering a trade unionist doesn’t violate these standards, that perpetuating violence against a trade unionist doesn’t violate these agreements,” Trumka said, directing his remarks to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who backs the deals.

The article verified Trumka's claim; click to read how.

Second, union leaders are frequently murdered in Colombia, a country with whom we have a strong "trade" agreement. Trumka again:

Trumka pointed specifically to the Colombia trade pact that was signed in 2006, but passed by Congress in 2011. Trumka said that even after the Obama administration crafted an agreement to tighten labor protections four years ago, some 105 labor organizers have been killed, and more than 1,300 have been threatened with death.

“Excuse me. Excuse me if I’m not willing to accept that standard.” Trumka said.

And Coca-Cola, the mega-wealthy global corporation, is complicit in those killings:

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Florida accuses the Coca-Cola Company, its Colombian subsidiary and business affiliates of using paramilitary death squads to murder, torture, kidnap and threaten union leaders at the multinational soft drink manufacturer’s Colombian bottling plants. The suit was filed on July 20 by the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund on behalf of SINALTRAINAL, the Colombian union that represents workers at Coca-Cola’s Colombian bottling plants; the estate of a murdered union leader; and five other unionists who worked for Coca-Cola and were threatened, kidnapped or tortured by paramilitaries.  ...

Not directly, of course; that's unregulated what right-wing militias are for. What's not to love about "free trade" if you're the killer Coke company? TPP — Alan Grayson calls it the Fast Track to Hell. He's right. Click to play the video above to see why.

About Ron Wyden's Betrayal of Progressive Values

This is only "bipartisan" — Obama's characterization — because of Ron "I'm the designated Democratic Party Perp on this one" Wyden. If you'd like to explain yourself to Mr. Wyden, here's all you need to know. And here's how to contact him:

Senator Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C., 20510
Tel (202) 224-5244

Suggested messages: "Thanks to your betrayal of progressive values, I'll close my checkbook to any of your appeals for funds."

And for the very bold in Oregon: "Thanks to your betrayal of progressive values, I'll vote against Mr. Wyden, even in the general election. TPP is that bad for my state and its wood products industry."

(Hint: You can decide later how to vote. You can decide now what to say to Ron Wyden's staff.)

GP

​

Does "Progressive" Mean Something Else In Oklahoma? Meet Joe Dorman, Rachel Maddow's Idea Of A Progressive Candidate For Governor

I ran into a neighbor, one of the world's most talented drummers, the other day and he asked me if the DCCC is as bad as I say it is on my blog. "Even worse," I assured him, telling him about quintessential Steve Israel recruit Jennifer Garrison. He asked me to suggest some candidates he could contribute to who were the opposite of Garrison. I suggested the 2 Blue America candidates in the L.A. area, Eloise Reyes and Lee Rogers since he could meet either one of them if he wanted to. And then I remembered his family is from Oklahoma. So I sent him some information about Tom Guild, the progressive Democrat running against right-wing extremist James Lankford in Oklahoma City. "There are still Democrats in Oklahoma?" he asked. "Progressive Democrats? I thought they were extinct!"

Absolutely, I assured him. Real progressives, not even Republican-lite Democrats like George Bush's favorite fake Democrat, Blue Dog and former Oklahoma Congressman Dan Boren. And then the following evening, this remarkable report from Rachel Maddow on the new progressive Democrat running for governor of Oklahoma, state Rep. Joe Dorman. I'm not sure who does Rachel's research but when I looked at his voting record, it didn't look even remotely "progressive." I'm sure he's better than Mary Fallin, a notorious wing nut and he's a progressive on tornado shelters for public schools but he seems to have voted with the Republicans on all their godawful abortion legislation that Maddow is always-- and rightfully so-- railing against, their bill to allow school employees to carry handguns on school property and with them on their draconian anti-immigrant bill, as well as their reactionary repeal of the estate tax. He skipped out on the vote the legislature took on March 13 to prohibit enforcement of the Affordable Care Act and he was a cosponsor of the state's ALEC-inspired Stand Your Ground law. Last year he got a 100% from the NRA and the year before they rated him an A+.

Watch the video up top. It's exciting to think of a progressive running against Fallin. Dorman seemed like a nice guy and he may well be a good Democratic candidate, and God knows Oklahoma schools need tornado shelters. I spoke to half a dozen progressives I know in Oklahoma. Every one of them agreed that the only way Dorman could be viewed as a "progressive" would be in comparison to Fallin (or R.J. Harris, the other "Democrat" in the race, an "ex"-Republican and Ron Paul cultist who ran against Tom Cole in 2012). The administrator of Progressive Oklahoma refused to endorse Joe Dorman and garden variety Democrats are giving her a hard time. She posted his voting record to explain her decision. She says people who “like” his page to get him to run are now “liking” Progressive Oklahoma. She posted a troll alert.

But what's important here is that the word, "progressive" means something-- and Dorman's not it. I expect Maddow to hold herself and her staff to higher standards than the usual cast of morons who dominate commercial television infotainment.

Here's Why We Endorsed Daylin Leach

I used to be the president of my university's Young Democrats. That didn't even last a full semester. I soon discovered that there was a sharp, sharp difference between a progressive and a Democrat. These days there aren't any Republicans who are progressive. There are barely any Republicans left who are even conservative. They've moved so far right-- from conservative to reactionary-- that they left plenty of room for the Republican wing of the Democratic party to feel comfortable donning conservative mantles. Those aren't the kinds of Democrats Blue America backs. In fact, those are the kinds of Democrats Blue America opposes.

We first discovered Pennsylvania state Senator Daylin Leach when he released the Liberal Lion video. He's running for the open congressional seat in Northeast Philly and Montgomery County and we endorsed him a few month ago. He's one of those Democratic wing of the Democratic Party Democrats, a proud progressive. Earlier today he released the video up top, which only reminded us of how great it would be to give progressive leaders in Congress like Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Raul Grijalva and Barbara Lee another strong, proven fighter to work with in coming up with ways to right the balance between ordinary working Americans and the corporate behemoths in control of the GOP and most of the Democratic Party.

Watch that video and think about chipping in for Daylin's campaign.

A lovely fantasy: What if the president believed in some of the stuff FDR did? (And defiantly said so!)

"What Roosevelt had going for himself was a real set of policies and the capacity to speak on their behalf -- a willed capacity to state things plainly, forcefully, and effectively."

-- New Yorker editor David Remnick, in a blogpost,
"F.D.R.'s Message to B.H.O."

by Ken

David Remnick explains in this newyorker.com News Desk post that the FDR video was sent to him by a friend "for the obvious reason: F.D.R. sounds as if he is sending a message in a bottle (a YouTube bottle) to Barack Obama as he prepares for the second debate with Mitt Romney on Tuesday."

In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt was faced with a vicious reëlection campaign. He was vilified for the New Deal reforms. The word "boondoggle" was popularized in the U.S. the year before to describe alleged abuses of the New Deal. Opposition politicians and critics compared F.D.R. to Lenin. The Depression was still on, and unemployment, which had dropped significantly, was still high, over fourteen per cent. (It would rise again in 1938.) What Roosevelt had going for himself was a real set of policies and the capacity to speak on their behalf -- a willed capacity to state things plainly, forcefully, and effectively. Never more so than on September 29, 1936, at the New York Democratic State Convention, in Syracuse. Here is the most famous passage of the speech, which came in the thick of the national campaign:

Let me warn you and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion which says, "Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them -- we will do more of them, we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything."

But, my friends, these evaders are banking too heavily on the shortness of our memories. No one will forget that they had their golden opportunity -- twelve long years of it.

Remember, too, that the first essential of doing a job well is to want to see the job done. Make no mistake about this: The Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job’s being done.

The video of the Syracuse speech has been kicking around -- you’ve got to watch it; F.D.R. is sharp, funny, and masterful -- and the full text is well worth reading, too. A friend sent it to me for the obvious reason: F.D.R. sounds as if he is sending a message in a bottle (a YouTube bottle) to Barack Obama as he prepares for the second debate with Mitt Romney on Tuesday.

P.S. Roosevelt’s Republican opponent was Alf Landon of Kansas. F.D.R. won forty-six of forty-eight states.

What's not entirely clear is whether DR understands that the president isn't just that "willed capacity to state things plainly, forcefully, and effectively," but "a real set of policies" on whose behalf he might undertake to speaky. Oh, he has policies, all right, but I think it's pretty clear by now that they're of the right-of center corporatist, neolibe sort, policies that have hardly anything in common with those we can see and hear FDR advocating, policies that don't lend themselves to FDR-style plain, forceful, effective advocacy.

Still, it makes for an appealing fantasy, doesn't it? Like as if some political fairy godmother could wave her magic wand and make President Obama believe these things -- and say so cloudly and clearly.

Okay, back to reality. But it was nice while it lasted.


OR THERE'S THIS APPROACH FOR THE PRESIDENT

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- With his polite and well-mannered performance widely panned in the first Presidential debate, President Barack Obama is under mounting pressure to prove that he can act like an asshole in the second debate tomorrow night, a campaign aide confirmed.

“In America, we demand that our President remain cool and calm in a crisis but go batshit in a debate,” the aide said. “Tuesday night is all about that second piece.”

Rather than unspooling a laundry list of facts and numbers as he did in the first debate, this time Mr. Obama will focus on tearing Mr. Romney a new one.

Unfortunately, the aide acknowledged, such classic dick moves as dismissively interrupting an opponent and laughing over his answers do not come naturally to Mr. Obama: “That’s why we’re having Joe Biden work with him.”

But even as Mr. Obama worked around the clock to practice being a douche, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, doubted his efforts would succeed.

“Being an asshole isn’t a skill that you can just pick up overnight,” Mr. Rhoades said. “Mitt Romney’s been working on it all his life.”

#

In Her First Interview After Winning A House Seat, Corrupt ConservaDem Janice Hahn Offers To Bargain Away Social Security & Medicare

Hahn (on the right) is the worst kind of Democrat, one who looks at her constituents as career stepping stones

Tuesday night liberals across the country were greatly cheered by the 6 clear cut victories by progressives-- 5 by landslides-- against Scott Walker's fake candidates in Democratic primaries across Wisconsin. What you didn't read-- not at this blog-- was any cheering for Democratic Party hack Janice Hahn, who won-- narrowly-- her election bid for the west L.A. congressional seat vacated by her disreputable and sleazy crony, Blue Dog Jane Harman.

Hahn, a Democrat in an area where her party enjoys an 18-point registration edge, defeated Republican Craig Huey, 54.6% to 45.4%. But she'll need to start campaigning again soon, as next year's primary is less than a year away.

In an interview Wednesday, Hahn, 59, said she was prepared for both the challenges of her new job and the rigors of a looming campaign.

And she immediately set out to reassure conservatives that they have no reason to not support her. Interviewed on KPCC soon after her sad little victory-- in which so many progressives just abstained-- over a lunatic fringe teabagger, Hahn made it clear that she's ready to take part in dismantling the New Deal, the decades long dream of rightists in America. When asked if she would vote to cut Social Security and Medicare in exchange for raising the debt limit she obfuscated and then let slip her willingness to bargain away the lives of America's most vulnerable citizens, the elderly and infirm. "Americans want us to get together and come up with common sense solutions... If compromises need to be made, I will certainly follow the lead of the President."

That's very different from what we're hearing from Democratic candidates trying to appeal to Democratic-- rather than Republican-- voters. In announcing his intention to run for Congress again, Alan Grayson, a stalwart champion of ordinary working families, made an impassioned speech aimed squarely at weenie-Democrats like Hahn.

Washington is now divided between the Meanies and the Weenies; that's the real two party system today... The Meanies want to take Social Security and Medicare away from grandma and grandpa and the Weenies are quite willing to go along with it and "compromise." Well, people need Social Security and Medicare to live and there's no compromise between life and death; there's no middle ground.

Hahn is exactly what the Democratic congressional caucus does not need-- another despicable lobbyist-driven weenie, pulling the caucus inextricably rightward in the direction of her corporate donors. At the same time she was offering to bargain away the lives of American seniors to avaricious Republican nihilists, the Blue America candidates were making it clear they are on the same page as Grayson-- standing and fighting not just to preserve Medicare and Social Security but to expand and strengthen them. I was especially impressed by a statement from central Florida candidate Nick Ruiz, a very different kind of Democrat than the execrable Hahn.

Whatever debt deal is struck between the two prevailing factions will be primarily a pact of collusion. Thoughtless aristocrats win-- at the expense of the majority of Americans who continue with record losses on a variety of levels. Exchanging cap feathers from largely connected paymasters, the political jesters will cartwheel out of Capitol Hill like ‘winners.’

Make no mistake-- both sides aim to deliver austerity down the barrel of a gun to the American people. And for us, it’s not a matter of whether or not any of the current crop of politicians will block it-- they won’t. It will be a matter of undoing what they’ve done in the next cycle. To do that, we will need more than token Democrats.

Will the U.S. default on its payments? Not likely. But if it does, you can bet all of the major financial interests will know it ahead of time and be short every financial instrument that seems set to implode. Robotic traders know many markets are due for a large correction-- what better way to precipitate it than with Grecian spectacle?

You won’t benefit from this-- but many of them will. And it is why we need a Public Trust-- to hedge against the hedgers.

In every sense, Capitol Hill has already defaulted on its people, and by every measure appears to enjoy the prospects of continuing to do so right through 2012 and beyond, notwithstanding exceptions, such as Bernie Sanders (I-VT) et al.

So what is the jigsaw falling into place for us? The New Deal legacy of widening prosperity is in default. Brick by brick, blow by blow, it is being dissembled under the auspices of ‘reform.’ Cutting Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, unemployment insurance; a paltry minimum wage that remains untethered to the CPI, and thus suppresses all other wages above it by keeping the bottom of the scale, anchored oh so low; a persistently bloated defense budget, rampant tax evasion by patricians and corporations, degradation of the atmosphere and environment, from CO2 levels to worldwide fish stocks-- the corporate hand of fate continues to turn the wheel.

Hoover thought nothing was possible after the Crash of 1929-- FDR everything. What tack would you take? It makes all the difference in the world.

Obama seems to have that Hooverian sense that Hahn can't wait to get behind. Bernie Sanders, an inspiration for every progressive political leader in the country, does not. Sanders, in fact is loudly demanding that Obama keep his campaign promises to protect Social Security and Medicare, promises that helped win him the election against McCain in 2008. This is from a press release from Sander's Senate office:

In a Senate floor speech, Sanders focused on the White House’s newfound interest in Social Security as a target for cuts. “Where does this come from?” Sanders asked. “The president understands that Social Security hasn't contributed one nickel to our deficit. In fact, Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus today, can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years. Social Security is funded by the payroll tax, not by the U.S. Treasury.”
 
Sanders noted that during Obama’s campaign for president he made clear he would not cut Social Security: “The American people are sick and tired of candidates who run for office and say one thing and then, after they are elected, do something very different.”
 
Sanders cited Obama’s statement from Sept. 6, 2008, when he disagreed with  suggestions by Sen. John McCain’s campaign to raise the Social Security retirement age and to reduce cost-of-living adjustments. “Let me be clear,” Obama said at the time, “I will not do either.”
 
Changing how inflation is measured to determine Social Security benefits is one option the White House injected at the eleventh hour as part of the budget negotiations. Switching to a so-called Chained Consumer Price Index results in lower inflation levels than the current formula used to adjust benefits. The result would amount to a significant cut to Social Security benefits for today’s seniors. Beneficiaries who retire at 65 would get $560 a year less when they turn 75 and $1,000 a year less at age 85.
 
“So, Mr. President, when you ask why the American people are frustrated with politicians, and are increasingly cynical, it has a lot to do with candidates who say one thing and do another thing,” Sanders said.  “If you told the American people you're not going to cut Social Security, then don't cut Social Security. Keep your word.”

Contrast Janice Hahn's willingness to compromise away Social Security and Medicare with this speech yesterday by Bernie Sanders (I-VT):

Alan Grayson-- The Guy With The Progressive Vision For A Better America

Monday night Alan Grayson was on The Ed Show, not just to announce his candidacy for one of the Orlando congressional seats (the boundaries aren't drawn yet) but to lay out an alternative vision to what we've been seeing from the weenies in the Democratic Party. All I can say is, please watch the clip and, if you're so moved, drop in on the Blue America page and give Alan a hand with his race.

Yesterday James Galbraith posted an exhaustive and perceptive guide to the catastrophic debt ceiling debate and I want to contrast some of his conclusions with what Grayson has had to say about that debate. "News reports," Galbraith reminds us, "hold that President Obama scored a political victory by agreeing to put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block to achieve a 'go-big' $4 trillion deficit reduction. Speaker Boehner had to concede that Republicans won’t vote for any package that includes tax increases-- and the deal died. So the gambit worked and the President emerged with a solid image as the alpha deficit hawk." Grayson referred, politely even fondly, to Obama as "my president" and "the leader of my party," but he was clearly uncomfortable with his approach. When asked by Ed Schultz, "How would you handle this," he answered unhesitatingly, "I would not vote for any cuts in Medicare. I would not vote for any cuts in Social Security and I'd be grabbing anybody else by the collar and telling them they should do the same... I know a way to cut two trillion dollars out of the deficit in the next ten years: you could end the wars. You could end the war in Afghanistan. You could end the war in Iraq and Libya. Those wars cost us $157 billion last year and the cost is going up, not down. If you want to save two trillion dollars, how about peace? Why don't we give that a try!"

When Schultz pressed him on Obama's willingness to cut Social Security, Grayson was very clear:

Washington is now divided between the Meanies and the Weenies; that's the real two party system today... The Meanies want to take Social Security and Medicare away from grandma and grandpa and the Weenies are quite willing to go along with it and "compromise." Well, people need Social Security and Medicare to live and there's no compromise between life and death; there's no middle ground. The average person who retires in America today has less than $50,000 in savings. That's good for one, maybe two years. And those people live for twenty. There's no way [these people] can live without Social Security and Medicare and that's what the right-wing in America wants to take away. I say NO-- no compromise. We need to strengthen Social Security and Medicare. I want to see Medicare cover dental work. I want to see Medicare cover hearing aids. I want to see Medicare cover actual medical leaves.

Galbraith points out that the debt ceiling, dating back to 1917 and the U.S. entry into WWI, was "an exercise in bad faith" right from the git-go-- and still is.

Today this bad-faith law is pressed to its absurd extreme, to force massive cuts in public programs as the price of not-reneging on the public debts of the United States. Never mind that to force default on the public obligations of the United States is plainly unconstitutional. Section 4 of the 14th amendment says in simple language that public debts, once duly authorized by law and including pensions, by the way, “shall not be questioned.” The purpose of this language was to foreclose, to put beyond politics, any possibility that the Union would renege on debts and pensions and bounties incurred to win the Civil War. But the application is very general and the courts have ruled that the principle extends to the present day.

What is going on in Congress at this moment already violates that mandate. It is an effort to subvert the authority of the government to meet and therefore to incur obligations of every possible stripe. It is an attack on the concept of government itself-- as the “Tea Party” by its very name would no doubt agree. It therefore paints those deficit hawks who are using the debt ceiling to take budget hostages as enemies of the United States Constitution.

The President, though supposedly a constitutional expert and though sworn to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, will not say this. Instead he appears to treat the Constitution as an optional matter, to which he will not resort, in the hope that by negotiating with the hostage- takers he can reach some reasonable outcome that will preserve everyone’s good name. (The great Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe recently argued that the President cannot defy the debt ceiling on his own. That’s a debatable point.) It is as though Lincoln in 1861 faced with the siege of Sumter had sat down with Confederate commissioners to see what could be worked out.

In Washington it appears that this assault on government has a large measure of elite and media support, if not on the crass details or vulgar personalities but because it could conceivably force the parties to do “what they should do anyway”-- namely come to a long-term deficit and debt agreement. Such an agreement would cut spending, raise some taxes, put the projected debt-to-GDP ratio on a declining track, and solve the “government’s fiscal crisis.”

What fiscal crisis? The great unasked question in this summer of sound-and-fury is “why?” The United States has many problems at the moment: a high-and-stubborn unemployment rate, a foreclosure catastrophe, a slowing economy that has not recovered and will not recover from the Great Crisis, and the ongoing challenges of infrastructure, energy and climate change. Fiscal crisis? The entire thing is a figment, made up of wise-men’s warnings repeated endlessly and linked to the projections of technicians at the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere.

...There are many people who believe fervently in the resilience of the private sector and for whom government is just a burden. Some of those people are pure predators: resource magnates, media magnates, banking magnates. Others have blinded themselves to the role government actually plays in sustaining the advanced networks, human protections and social systems that make up our lives, and imagine that one can go back to the world of subsistence farming, church charity and credit from the corner store. But there were many fewer people in that world, they didn’t do what we do, and they didn’t live nearly so long.

In broad terms, today’s government does four major things:

– it provides for the national defense.

– it purchases goods and services from the private economy for a wide range of public purposes, most of them individually quite small-scale in relation to GDP.

– it regulates a wide range of private-sector activity, for safety, health, environmental and other purposes, including financial stability-- or so one should hope.

– it administers Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as other pension and health benefit programs.

On what grounds are any of these functions too large? As an economist concerned with peace and security issues, I do believe we would be better off ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan quickly, that we could dispense with the real resource costs of many foreign bases, aircraft carrier groups, fighter aircraft and submarines and nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War. But these are security judgments, not broad economic ones. In other words, I would not cut a single dime of Pentagon spending that was actually necessary to defend the United States, in order supposedly to lower the interest rate on federal debt.

By the same reasoning, why should we cut transportation, or public health, or environmental protection, or scientific research, or bank inspectors or funds that support the public schools? One can argue these matters program by program-- and one should. (I would happily cut ethanol subsidies and oil company tax breaks, for starters.) But there is no economic case for placing an overall limit, and it is obvious that the 500,000 public sector workers-- including many teachers, police, fire and park rangers and librarians-- who have lost their jobs since 2009 were doing good and useful things that are now missed. If sacking them had been good for the economy, we would be having a stronger recovery than we are.

Finally there are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Unlike the military or the transportation program, Social Security is not a government purchasing program. It therefore takes nothing directly from the private sector. What it does, is provide insurance: it protects workers from poverty in old age, whether or not their families would otherwise be willing and able to support them. And it taxes all workers, whether or not they would otherwise be burdened with elderly parents, or survivors, or the disabled, to support. Along with Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security is a powerful protector of the entire working population-- young and old. It redistributes purchasing power, in loose relation to past earnings, in a way that meets the basic needs of a large number of Americans who would otherwise, in many millions of cases, be destitute or medically bankrupt.

What economic purpose would cutting such programs serve? To do so would again redistribute incomes. Many of the future elderly would be much worse off, and of course many would die younger than they otherwise would. Survivors and the disabled would suffer as well. In return, what would the federal government and the country gain? A release of real resources to the private sector? Social Security does not take real resources from the private sector! Lower interest rates? The idea is absurd, and not just because interest rates are low today. The notion that cutting Social Security would help keep interest rates down is absurd because interest rates are set in a way that has no relationship at all to the scale of Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

This argument has nothing to do with the trope, oft-repeated and perfectly true, that the Social Security system does not contribute to the deficit. It would not matter if it did. The important question is: are benefits too high? Obviously not. How about payroll taxes-- are they too low? There is no case for that either. One of the very few bright spots in recent policy was the decision to reduce payroll taxes on employees, temporarily, while leaving Social Security benefits alone.

If you wanted to build on that, the right steps would be to lower-- not raise-- the Social Security early retirement age, permitting for a few years older workers to exit the labor force permanently on better terms than are available to them today. This together with a lower age of access to Medicare would work quickly to rebalance the labor force, reducing unemployment and futile job search among older workers while increasing job openings for the young. It is the application of plain common sense. And unlike all the pressures to enact long-term cuts in these programs, it would help solve one of today’s important problems right away.

Instead of this, what do we have, from a President who claims to be a member of the Democratic Party? First, there is the claim that we face a fiscal crisis, which is a big untruth. Second, a concession in principle that we should deal with that crisis by enacting massive cuts in public services on one hand and in vital social insurance programs on the other. This is an arbitrary cruelty. Third, a refusal to stand on the strong ground of the Constitution, against those whose open and declared purpose is tear that document and the public credit to shreds.

There's a real danger in American politics-- and that danger is that independent voices for working families, will be replaced by corporate handmaidens. What would our system be like if all we had were the Boehners and Cantors and Obamas and Liebermen and Ryans without someone to speak up for ordinary working people the way Bernie Sanders, Raul Grijalva and Alan Grayson always do. When the DNC asks you for money to support Obama's reelection, they're telling you two things: the Republicans are worse (true) and Obama's solutions are noble (false). When the DSCC and the DCCC ask you for contributions they're asking for money to help elect or reelect corporate whores like Ben Nelson, Jim Matheson and Joe Donnelly, Democrats who consistently vote against the interests of American families and who reflexively support right-wing Republican positions on issue after issue. But they wear blue t-shirts... for whatever reasons.

You can find Alan Grayson and other independent progressive candidates here. Check them out. Let's make sure regular folks even have a voice. And check out this note from Nick Ruiz to his donors. "Republicrats," he warns, "continued to raise $millions this second fundraising quarter, in order to ensure the New Deal legacy goes down in flames. This is what they want. It’s what their paymasters want. It’s what they have been working toward since FDR. We are outgunned, but never outnumbered-– make those numbers count by volunteering your time and money to people that will work for you, and work to further human progress, rather than increase America’s suffering with their indifference to our shared human struggle... Will you help to put this progressive Democrat in Congress, so I can join Sanders et al. in order to stop them?"


UPDATE: “Look at our campaign. This is what People Power looks like,” said Grayson.

The Grayson for Congress campaign is off to a great start: in less than 48 hours, more than 2,000 contributors have made contributions at the campaign website and through Blue America. That, plus contributions and pledges from other channels, has raised more than $75,000 already for the campaign.

The Grayson for Congress campaign raised more than $5 million for the 2010 campaign.  In fact, he raised more money than any other Democratic Member of the House.

“And it’s all clean money,” says Grayson. “I won’t beg for money from the special interests, the lobbyists and the PACs. I won’t put the law up for sale. I can’t be bought or sold. I owe nothing to anyone but the voters.”

The 2,000 individual contributors yesterday and today are the first “down payment” toward the record number that Grayson attracted to his 2010 campaign. More than 80,000 people made more than 100,000 individual contributions to Grayson’s campaign. By comparison, his 2010 opponent’s Federal Election Commission reports show contributions from 1,336 people.

Games Without Frontiers-- A Guest Post By Nicholas Ruiz III And A Video By Peter Gabriel

Nicholas Ruiz ran for Congress in central Florida as a Green in 2010. This year he's running as a Democrat and he's been endorsed by Blue America. Here's another is a series of posts he's written for DWT that paint a picture of what kind of a congressman he'd be if he wins in 2012. Try imagining fewer like Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and John Boehner and more like Nick Ruiz.

In the following, I aim to present some progressive ideas for America's future. Taking a deep look at our national commitments, we see that for too long our consideration of the vulnerable, that which is equitable, what might be just and conscientious-- are values that have fallen into neglect and disrepair.

I believe that we must first acknowledge that no social status is superior. No gender is superior. No race is superior. No sexual orientation is superior. No age is superior. No religion is superior. No ability, or disability, is superior. Legal equality is the foundation of democracy. Our laws must reflect such truths, and not trample upon the freedom and civil rights of our people. Our commonwealth must lift up all people.
 
Problems? We have more than a few; most of them caused by the callousness and undemocratic philosophy of the past thirty years, beginning with the carelessness of Ronald Reagan. Here’s how we mend them.
 
Social security-– raise FICA with no limit-– that’s how we pay for it. Lower the retirement eligibility age to 55. Open up the opportunity for a new influx of workers. Raise the social security benefit by 15-20%-- encourage people to retire sooner and enjoy the fruits of society’s labor. Society has a new, better future.
 
Universal healthcare-– national security starts with police, fire-– and health protection. Obamacare is not a dirty word. Let’s say Obamacare is the beginning, but certainly, not the end. It ends when everyone is comprehensively covered, universally, without exception. Just like the fire department and the police department cover everyone, without exception. We remember how to manage progressive taxation-– that’s part of the reason the boomtown 1950s were possible, there was a generous tax base from which to pay for government-– we reapply past lessons learned, and correct the mistake of Reagan’s fairy tale of ever increasing tax cuts that lead to nowhere over the rainbow. And runaway healthcare costs are controlled by regulation of the healthcare industry in the same sense that any municipality is regulated. Whether by single-payer or multi-payer, healthcare must be comprehensively and reasonably distributed, and prices must be more reflective of fundamental costs, as in the example of the healthcare systems employed by many of our international friends. Healthcare cannot be subject to rampant profiteering, any more than police or fire department services. That’s how we pay for it.
 
The minimum wage must be a livable wage: $15 per hour. Bubble profits for a tiny fraction of society ala capital gains, dividends, mergers and acquisitions, property and royalty income and so on-- reported via quarterly statements, quarter after quarter, year after year, while wages are artificially suppressed with regulatory restrictions that do not allow wages to rise according to the cost of living is tantamount to indentured servitude for Main Street. People make more-– corporations make less… that’s how we pay for it.
 
Wall Street owes Main Street. Not the other way around. We create a federal Public Trust. Every issuance of equities, commodities, debt instruments and so on-– delivers 10% of the float to the Public Trust, which federal traders trade for the people, long and short. Quarterly earnings now bring benefits for Wall Street and Main Street. Profits from the Public Trust are used to subsidize anything from healthcare to gas prices to green energy incentives. When gas prices go through the roof because oil futures hit $120 per barrel-- Main Street is entitled to some relief, no? The Public Trust will provide that relief. Wall Street must be Main Street’s partner, not its master. As the Wall Street economy and its service analogs represent an ever larger share of U.S. output, Main Street must be allowed to participate in that economy, not simply shuffled off via job-outsourcing and outright tax evasion by corporations.
 
War is a sponge that absorbs half of our tax revenue. Get out of Iraq. Get out of Afghanistan. Help Libya’s people, but don’t drop bombs on them. Cut the trillion dollar per year defense budget by 25%. The war industry must be better regulated. This is how we do it.
 
Workers have rights-– regardless of unions. We have to extend labor laws so that shared governance and collective bargaining are deemed basic civil rights. Union membership continues to plummet. They cannot hold the line alone. Why not? Because U.S. manufacturing infrastructure and labor are disappearing; the bedrock of union organizations, is disappearing. But U.S. service sectors are expanding. More and more, workers are employed in jobs that have zero union presence. Temporary and part-time work is becoming the norm. Workers must be protected with 21st century labor laws. Better wage laws that are tethered to the consumer price index, and better benefit and shared governance structures must be written into law. Workers must be protected whether or not they belong to a union.
 
America deserves a better future. This is simply part of how we get it done.
 
America is more than a corporation. America is more than its wealth. America is a concept. If you believe in it-– then fight for it.
 
Put a progressive Democrat in Congress.
 
In other words, that’s how we roll:

Have A Cigar-- A Guest Post From Nicholas Ruiz (D-FL)

After that sexy call from ‘David Koch’-- Scott Walker must have had a fat cigar. Feeling high on the perceived power of his makeshift Wisconsin fiefdom, he might have taken a big flaming stick match to the tip of his conceivably illegal hand-rolled Cuban stogie. Next, he may have thought about his next Reagan PATCO moment-- when Reagan, many claim, unjustifiably and unethically, fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers, in a vehement attack upon workers’ rights.

But he was wrong. Wrong about Koch, who was not Koch at all but a journalist, pretending to be Koch. Just like he’s wrong about ‘his’ Reagan PATCO moment that he describes in the phone conversation gone viral on the web. Walker and his brethren were born at the wrong time of history because there will not be another PATCO moment-– if there are representatives we can still call ‘Democrats.’

Rather, because of the thirty years’ war Republicans have wrought upon unions as the last major proxy for workers’ rights-– the Democratic reaction will be a remarkable, 21st century extension of labor laws, so that workers have the same protections as unions, regardless of whether they belong to a union or not. My candidacy for U.S. Representative in Congress for Florida District 24 includes this objective as part of my platform.

People like Rick Scott, whom Walker suggests is an ally while speaking with ‘Koch,’ with regard to his tyrannical plan to batter workers’ rights nationwide, is also wrong. Rejecting $2.4 billion in federal funds for high speed rail in central Florida, which Florida desperately needs to construct to allay the nauseatingly crowded I-4 corridor amid central Florida’s tourism hub, not to mention the work it would provide for one of the most unemployed states in America-- Scott flubbed off what he called the ‘ObamaRail’ in his Twitter stream, reported by Central Florida News 13 on Feb. 17, 2011.

Scott probably lit a fat cigar after that tweet, no?

In another sign of the wrongness of the times, first generation son of Cuban immigrants, and freshman Senator from Florida, Republican Marco Rubio, reported the Miami Herald on Feb. 23, 2011-– declares America is in danger of drowning in her debt. And of course, his probable tea leaf answer is to cut all the tiny social programs that don’t really contribute to the debt, and were already severely under-funded from the start, but yet a lot of people rely upon for everything from kidney dialysis to food in this current wasteland of an economy. Essentially, Rubio-- like Scott, like Walker, like NJ’s Christie who actually suggests we raise the retirement eligibility age and apparently exhibited boyish pride in espousing it on Feb. 16, 2011 at the American Enterprise Institute-– looks for deep nasty cuts, in all of the wrong places.

Truly, America is in danger of drowning, but in Republican fecal rhetoric, misinformation and sandbox mentality-- not debt, which we are servicing just fine.

We could stand a correction to our American revenue stream, however, by taxing more fairly, our citizens and corporations. And where cuts should be made, is where there is truly unfair excess, not where there is already unfair scarcity. And where American populations are growing and expanding, so too, should our government jobs and services. Progress is for everyone, no? America is only as strong as its weakest link. We must help the poor and less fortunate, where we can.

Yes, the government can and should create jobs, alongside the private corporations, hand in hand-- not as master and servant. Hire more teachers, postal workers, social workers and so on-- everybody knows we need more of them; build more schools, universities and medical clinics; invest in cultural infrastructure for the arts and humanities; build more libraries, community educational and environmental centers; expand the educational facilities of NASA, NOAA and the EPA, as well as the NEH and NEA-- teach people that both science and art matter. There’s plenty we can do to ensure that the 21st century is one of Democratic enlightenment, rather than Republican darkness.

So maybe you like cigars. Gordon Gekko likes cigars. We hear Clinton had a thing for cigars, no? FDR smoked. And we hear Obama is struggling to quit the habit-- cigarettes, cigars-- who knows? And lastly, maybe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) should have a smoke, considering his latest stressor in Nevada.

Me? I don’t smoke-- but I sure like this song:



In 2012-- put a progressive Democrat in Congress.

----

Blue America PAC has endorsed Nicholas Ruiz for Congress. In fact, he's our first candidate of the 2012 cycle. You can donate to his campaign on our Act Blue page. His is an all grassroots race to replace a reactionary teabagger and hypocrite. He can use whatever help you can give. Take a look at this video from Wisconsin. This is what Nicholas' campaign is all about and why Blue America is supporting him and other candidates like him:

Can Russ Feingold lead us out of the wilderness?

Russ was scheduled to be a guest with Rachel Maddow tonight to talk about the threats to democracy being promoted by his home state of Wisconsin's new thug-governor, and also his new organization, ProgressivesUnited.

by Ken

Now this is the sort of thing I normally wouldn't give a second thought to, or certainly not a third thought: yet another organization committed to (yawn) advancing progressive values. Yeah, right. What's different is that this comes from Russ Feingold, and Russ is somebody I take seriously. Seriously.

The possibly-good news is that, as of when I tried this evening to click through to the link I received for Russ's new organization, ProgressivesUnited, what I got was something like this:

What a great response!

Support has been so strong that our website has crashed. Clearly, progressives are ready to unite around this cause!

We'll be back up with a full site shortly. In the meantime, watch Russ' video introducing Progressives United here. [Sorry, this little screen capture doesn't play or link to anything. Here's a link for the clip, the very one you can see above. -- Ken]

You can also join the discussion already under way at Progressives United on Facebook, and if you're looking help us combat corporate money, you can click here to contribute.

And then there's an e-sign-up form.

(Why do I describe the quick crashing of the new site as "possibly-good news"? Naturally one would like to think it's just the result of uanticipatably voracious demand, it's not easy to dismiss the possibility that it reflects a certain real-world cluelessness attached to the venture. One doesn't wish this to be the case. One does consider, though.)

I suspect I'm in the same boat with a lot of DWT readers: feeling that the whole politico-economico-socio system is so degraded that there's no hope for it but to tear the thing down, and no reasonable hope of tearing it down. Whereas Russ has built his political life around the conviction that change can be wrought within the system. (And his reward? To be thrown out on his behind by a one of those self-funding right-wing zillionaires with single-cell brains.) Like I said, if it was most anybody but Russ . . .


At this juncture, with the stream of the stream of believe-it-or-not lunacy spewing out of the halls of power courtesy of the surging far-right-wing sociopaths bidding fair to turn the country into a giant sinkhole, we really need to be grasping for . . . I mean, focusing on the available alternatives. For example, the other day I had occasion to mention in a comment the exciting conceptual work we've gotten from Drew Westen and George Lakoff, and it occurs to me that maybe we haven't been listening hard enough to what they've been telling us. I confess that George's work tends to go over my head, but every time Drew comes up with one of his "here's what we could/should be saying now" messaging messages, I'm overwhelmed with the feeling that, you know, I'll bet that could work.

Most recently, as the 2010 elections were shaping up to be, well, the disaster they turned out to be, Drew wrote an astounding post for AlterNet, "What Created the Populist Explosion and How Democrats Can Avoid the Shrapnel in November," which I wrote about in a September 1 post called "Can 2010 electoral disaster be averted? Drew Westen and Mike Lux weigh in." Needless to say, the circle of geniuses around the beleaguered president ignored or actually thumbed their noses at all of Drew's staggeringly sound, insightful prescriptions.

(Our friend Mike Lux's contribution, by the way, was a terrific post called "Weirdest political cycle ever?" on the recently deactivated OpenLeft site. I suppose one of these days we should talk about the quiet passing of OpenLeft.)

#

Let's say we had a "progressive message." Do we have any way of spreading it?

It could just be a coincidence that Rupert Murdoch's ideological obsessions all lead toward greater influence and bigger profits. Or maybe not.

by Ken

We're going to assume for the moment that we actually had a "progressive message," the sort of thing that could be presented to significant segments of the American electorate to persuade them that progressive values are their values and the best route to bringing them a safe and fulfilled life. It's a large assumption, I know, but we're going to be coming back to this part of the equation in the days, weeks, and months to come. My immediate question is, assuming we had such a message, do we stand any reasonable chance to get it before the public?

I'm not going to say it's flatly impossible, but I am going to say that it would be very, very difficult, because of the stranglehold the extreme Right has acquired on the machinery of messaging -- and not surprisingly, a lot of that has to do with money. Tonight I just want to dust off this obvious structural factor we're up against.

In doing so, I'm going to register a point of disagreement with an esteemed colleague, AlterNet's Washington bureau chief, Adele Stan. Last week Addie wrote a rip-roaring diatribe against Apple's Steve Jobs for going into cahoots, I mean business, with none other than Satan's own media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. As she put it:

It's enough to launch an Apple boycott by progressives: Steve Jobs, master innovator of those hipster devices of choice, just delivered a kick in the teeth to Apple's most ardent fans with news of his deal with Rupert Murdoch for an iPad-only newspaper to be known as The Daily, to be made available through Apple's App Store. Subscriptions will go for 99 cents per week.

It was hinted by the New York Times's David Carr, Addie says, that Jobs picked Murdoch over other suitors for this sort of arrangement because of Murdoch's willingness )"against the wishes of other Fox executives") to offer Apple Fox programming for sale on iTunes at bargain prices. Assuming this is what was in the deal for Jobs, what about our Rupert?

What did Murdoch get? Carr crunches a few numbers to show that The Daily is not likely to be a big money-maker for Murdoch. Sure, not as a retail product. But Murdoch has long been willing to prop up enterprises that don't earn big bucks (or sometimes, as in the case of the New York Post, lose big bucks) for the sake of advancing his ideological agenda -- an agenda that, should it be enacted, would yield Murdoch billions more than the 6 billion he's already worth.

Take Glenn Beck (yeah -- please). If Glenn Beck's purpose in life was to earn mega-advertising dollars for Murdoch, he'd have been off the air more than a year ago, once Color of Change's successful advertiser-targeted campaign lost Beck nearly all of the big, corporate sponsors for his eponymous Fox News Channel show. Yet, Beck remains in place because he organizes grassroots activists in the service of Rupert Murdoch's anti-Obama, anti-regulatory, anti-labor, anti-government agenda. Should that agenda succeed, Murdoch stands to reap billions more than the measly millions a rehabilitated Beck might bring in if Proctor & Gamble sold soap in Beck's time slot.

And so Beck is free to draw his multi-episode, defamatory, lie-infused campaign against George Soros, billionaire and donor to progressive causes, straight from the pages of Mein Kampf (without attribution, of course). That Soros is a Jewish Holocaust survivor is somehow twisted to prove the point. If Rupert Murdoch had a problem with Beck's hate-mongering, with Beck's desecration of the memory of 6 million murdered Jews, Beck would be gone in a minute.

But Murdoch does not. And, apparently, neither does Steve Jobs. What's a little Holocaust revisionism when 99-cent episodes of "The Family Guy" are at stake?

In getting the green light to create, without competition, a brand-spanking-new product specific to the iPad, Murdoch will have the opportunity to make inroads into opinion-makers of a demographic group currently beyond his reach: the upwardly mobile hipster, the slick early adopters, cats who are too cool to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and its iPad app but who just might go for a first-of-its-kind product developed specifically for the device, available nowhere else, especially if it's dressed up with smart-boy writers, such as New Yorker music critic and designer Sasha Frere-Jones, who is reported to have signed onto the Murdoch project.

This is same Rupert Murdoch who walks hand-in-hand with David Koch, whose AFP Foundation and sibling organization, Americans For Prosperity, convinced a certain contingent of fearful white senior citizens that the new black president was looking to use health-care reform to kill them off. Together, the organizations headed by Koch -- who also heads a corporation that is a major polluter -- and Murdoch advance race-infused conspiracy theories in their campaign against the president of the United States that poison the national culture, render facts irrelevant and make bipartisan cooperation impossible.

Obviously, I don't disagree in any way with the perniciousness of the Murdoch empire, or of the Koch brothers'. I would just suggest disagree that with Murdoch and the Kochs ideology trumps profits. To me the problem is more sinister: Profits are these people's ideology.

As Jane Mayer wrote early on in her still-indispensable New Yorker exploration of the world of Charles and David Koch and Koch Industries:

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry -- especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers' corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a "kingpin of climate science denial." The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups.

As Mayer showed throughout the piece, by eerie chance the Kochs' massive cash investments in its chosen ideological instruments all seem to have the effect, or at least the intended effect, of enriching Koch Industries' bottom line. And yes, Rupert Murdoch is willing to operate some of his businesses, like the New York Post, without regard to maximum profits, or even any profits at all, because they serve to advance his influence and ideological predilections, but i would argue that the reason he wants to advance his influence and ideological predilections is to maximize his profits.

As I've pointed out before, he's even happy to have himself and his properties ridiculed by The Simpsons as long as the show continues to shovel money into his coffers. In my way of looking at Rupert's operation, it's why he doesn't care about the moral repulsiveness of Glenn Beck's psychotic fantasies; over the long haul Glenn B is going to help him raise the News Corp empire to even more dizzying heights of profitability.

In the end, I don't think it matters whether Addie's right or I am about the motivations -- the result is the same. The fact remains that the right-wing zillionaires who bankroll the Far Right these days can do so as an investment. And that's something we on the Left won't ever, as far as I can see, be able to compete with. As far as I can tell, for all the money George Soros has contributed to progressive causes, I don't see that he stands to make a dime on them.

So as the Supreme Court continues to make "Money Talks, Screw You" the electoral law of the land, what's most frightening to me is the prospect that the Right can raises these gigantic war chests from super-rich Righties who undoubtedly have ideological axes to grind but who also expect to turn a healthy profit on their investment.


OF COURSE IT'S NOT JUST OUR RUPERT
AND THE KOCH BROTHERS

There are important reasons why we tend to focus on Rupert Murdoch (the reach and calculated-for-influence organization of his media empire) and the Kochs (the scale and, again, organized-for-maximum-influence network of ideologically driven organizations). But of course they're hardly alone as cash cows for the Far Right. Brad Reed has a useful piece, also on AlterNet about "5 Right-Wing Scumbags Bankrolling Dangerous (and Plain Weird) Conservative Causes, leading off with an old DWT favorite, Sheldon "Moneybags" Adelson.

#