Tom Geoghegan's New Book: Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs A New Kind Of Labor Movement

In 2009 when Rahm Emanuel resigned from Congress, many of us who aren't from Chicago got to know union activist Tom Geoghegan for the first time. When he decided to run for Emanuel's seat, we did a series of posts about him and his accomplishments here. The special election primary had 26 candidates, including 13 Democrats and 5 Greens-- a real clusterfuck. The ultimate winner-- of both the primary and the general-- was Michael Quigley who took 12,100 votes (22%). Tom was down in the middle of the pack with 3,336 votes (6%). Before and after that one foray into electoral politics, Tom has been writing about reforming American politics and increasing our commitment to democracy. In his announcement for Rahm's seat he told his supporters: "In my life as a lawyer I have lived out a commitment to one cause above all-- to bring economic security to working Americans, in our District, in our country. That’s the same commitment I will bring to Congress." Writing for the Wall Street Journal Thomas Frank couldn't have agreed more:

Now that conservative orthodoxy has collapsed in a heap of complex derivatives, I can't help but think what a refreshing dose of plain-spoken Midwestern reality Mr. Geoghegan could bring to the nation as a whole.

To begin with, Mr. Geoghegan thinks big while Democrats in Washington tend to think small, proposing a stimulus package here and better oversight there. The government's goal, as he explained it to me a few days ago, should not merely be "to pump up demand again." It should be to enact sweeping, structural change, "to get in a position where we're not bleeding jobs out of the country."

For the view that working people have no business with retirement and health care in the lean, mean, inevitable future, Mr. Geoghegan has a certain contempt. He wants to increase Social Security payments to make up for the destruction of private pension plans and expand Medicare with the goal of arriving, eventually, at single-payer health care. The $700 billion bank bailout, he says, proves that such expenses can be borne. What's more, they're necessary.

"Economic security is not only compatible with being competitive globally," he tells me; "it's crucial to it." Until we shift the burden of pensions and health care from companies to government we will continue to endure "debacles like General Motors" and so many others.

Tom just published a new book, Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs A New Kind Of Labor Movement [It's on sale at that link to the DWT Book Store. Here's an excerpt:

"So, do you think 'labor' will ever come back?"

As a union-side lawyer I hate when people ask that question as if it’s my problem and not theirs. You’d think with tears in our eyes we’d embrace each other and say: “My God, what should we do?” It’s a question now not of bringing back “labor” but of bringing back the middle class. And neither you nor I have done enough on that.

In forty years as a labor lawyer, I’ve yet to figure it out-- and now? “You and I are done,” said Ed, who’s my age. “It’s up to younger people to figure it out.”

Well, I’m not done. With my 401(k), I have to keep going.

The other day I spoke to the guy at T. Rowe Price: “What do you think? Should I be in bonds? Maybe I should preserve capital?”

He seemed astonished. “You-- preserve capital? You still need growth.”

I’m sixty-five and I still need growth. That’s why at this point in my life the collapse of labor is something personal. When I was younger, I thought of it as a problem for other people. But as I get older, I realize: I should have either saved more or made sure there was a labor movement to protect me. As it is, even Barack Obama seems ready to cut my Social Security.

It scares me how many of my friends are scrambling harder than ever. Here’s what one told me: “I thought when the kids were gone, my wife and I would have it easy. But somehow both of us seem to be working harder than ever. Those violin lessons I imagined I’d be taking in the morning? Forget it. It’s as if someone shows up and shouts in your ear: ‘Fine, your kids are gone, they’re all through college, great-- NOW GET TO WORK!’”

With no labor movement, no pension, what’s to become of us? And we’re, relatively, well off!

At Starbucks I wince when the little old white-haired lady behind the counter says, “Can I start something for you?”

Start an IRA, for both of us. Only she and I know it’s too late. At least she’s working. I have friends my age who have no pension, nothing, and know they will never work again. They hope so, but…

“There should be a March on Washington,” said my friend Tony, “for all us guys, over sixty, who know we’ll never find a real job again.”

It’s the last act for us: old guys, marching, like the Bonus Army in the Depression. Perhaps, as in the 1930s, General MacArthur will send in horse soldiers to sweep us away-- all of us tottering baby boomers who were never in a war.

Of course it’s for the young I feel sorry: after all, it was on our watch that a labor movement disappeared. Am I wrong or do they seem intimidated? So far as I can tell, at least on the El, they seem to shrink from one another. They stare pitifully down at their iPhones, which stare up pitilessly at them. Their own gadgetry sits in judgment of them.

But why pick on them? Everyone seems demoralized. In my practice, I long ago came to accept that when labor disappeared, I’d stop seeing union members. But now they are not even “employees.” More and more I have clients who have signed away their rights to be considered “employees” at all-- which means there’s no minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, no Social Security, nothing. Years ago they should have said something when the HR people said: “You’re no longer employees here-- but cheer up, you’ll go on working for us as independent contractors.” In one case we have, the boss even made the guys set up their own personal “corporations,” as in “John Smith, Incorporated.” Then HR says: “We don’t pay you, John Smith, but John Smith, Incorporated.” My friends ask: “How can people live on the minimum wage?” But as an independent contractor, John Smith, Incorporated, doesn’t even make the minimum wage. Sometimes I think: one day, every American worker will be a John Smith, Incorporated, every cleaning lady, every janitor, every one of us-- it will be a nation of CEOs in chains. “How did I let this happen?”

At some point, maybe 2034, it won’t even occur to us to wonder. We’ll just be too beat.

I’m thinking of the road dispatchers we represent-- the guys who come out and jump your car if you’re in an auto club. They used to be employees; now they’re independent contractors, and after they pay for the lease of the truck and the gas, they typically don’t clear the minimum wage.

Or we may all end up like the cabdrivers. Right now we have a suit against the city of Chicago, which sets their fares. We’re trying to get a ruling that after driving forty or fifty hours per week the cabbies should at least be clearing the minimum wage. They drive, and drive, and drive, up to twelve hours a day, but after paying for the lease and gas many end up under $7 or even $6 an hour, and some go in the hole.

What about tips? Yes, that’s with tips.

It’s true the crafty old foxes make more: they know when to pounce at the Board of Trade. But they have to put in seventy or eighty hours a week. When you’re as old as I am, you try putting in those hours.

So in the case of McDonald’s or Wendy’s, I’m all for raising the minimum wage-- to any level Elizabeth Warren wants. But for a lot of our clients, it would be a big deal to make $7.25 an hour, and I don’t just mean the wretched of the earth but even “John Smith, Inc.”

It’s eerie to think that in the famous Great Depression play Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets, those cabdrivers who went on strike had more rights than many of us do today. At least in those days, unlike now, the cabdrivers still worked for actual employers; at least, unlike now, they could count on getting Social Security.

Aside from often not being “employees” at all, I have seen one other big change in clients over the years: they seem much quieter than they used to be.

By 2034 or 2044, when I’m long gone, they may hardly make a peep. Like the kids on the El, everyone will be looking down or glancing away.

Maybe everyone is exhausted.

The other night I went to a class at Northeastern Illinois University. It’s late at night, and the kids come to the night class after a full day at work. I was supposed to talk about being a lawyer, but they were beat, I was beat. Then one young man in the back finally raised a hand: “Where . . . this city, where do you think it’s all heading?”

Though I wanted to say something serious, I was too exhausted. I was ready to say, “I don’t know.”

Come on: give him a real answer.

So I paused. And I gave him a real answer: “I don’t know.”

I just know my city, this city, the Chicago of the future, can be scary to contemplate. Like the cities of the Midwest, and most of the South, there’s not much mobility here. The private sector is more predatory than ever. The payday loan stores keep spreading, many of them secretly owned by the banks. The Fortune 500 companies have hierarchies more rigid than ever. The kids in this night class at Northeastern Illinois will die when they try to climb those much steeper corporate ladders. In the public sector, there’s still a middle class, but it’s shrinking because we’re selling off the public sector. Chicago’s 36,000 parking meters were sold off to Morgan Stanley, and its partners, who keep extending the hours and jacking up the rates. And now that the city has stopped funding the mental health clinics, we have more people hallucinating and wandering the streets. That may be the Chicago of the future, the city into which all of us clutching our 1099s will be descending.

But will it really be so bad? I don’t know.

For all I know, an increase in inequality may be fun. It may turn out that the city will be full of laughter and dancing, because we’re all poor but happy and no longer care about material things.

Either way it will come down to the same thing: the drop-by-drop disappearance of the middle class.

Want more of this. You can buy Only One Thing Can Save Us here.

Could The Bible Have Saved Us From This Time Of Troubles? Sure... Or Hammurabi's Code

When activist/author Tom Geoghegan was running for Congress he came out to L.A. for a question and answer session with West Coast bloggers at BraveNewFilms. I was struck by the man's capacity to consistently refuse to fall into any boxes that trap even the most well intentioned political leaders. Tom is used to setting the agenda, not following someone else's. It's why so many of us supported his quixotic bid to capture a Machine-oriented Chicago seat held consecutively by three of the most disreputable characters in contemporary American politics: Dan Rostenkowski, Rod Blagojevic and, worse by far, Rahm Emanuel. And of all the outside-of-the-box formulations Tom laid on us that day, none made a greater impression than a discussion of usury.

When Obama was taking questions at his town hall meeting in Orange County last week, someone asked him about out-of-control interest rates. Obama isn't as hawkish on this as Geoghegan, but, clearly, he's thought about it. His comment pointed to a study by the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, Elizabeth Warren.

[S]he made a simple point… if you bought a toaster, and the toaster blew up in your face, there would be a law, a consumer safety law, that would protect you from buying that toaster. But if you get a credit card that blows up in your face, that starts off at zero-percent interest… and suddenly, it’s 29 percent; and if you’re late two days, suddenly you just paid another $30-- well, somehow that’s okay.

I think generally having some consumer safety, some consumer protection around credit cards, is important.

Geoghegan will tell you just how important in the new issue of Harper's Magazine-- How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed The Economy. It was for this kind of thinking I thought it was so important to elect a man of Geoghegan's intellect to Congress.

According to a front-page story in the Chicago Tribune last June, the number of collection cases before the circuit court of Cook County came to over 130,000. That’s double the number of cases in 2000, and well before the meltdown: obviously the number is even higher now.

...And then there are the home foreclosures, some 44,000 of them in 2008. The number of collection and foreclosure cases in this one county-- 174,000-- is equal to the total number of people in three entire Chicago wards: every man, woman, and child. I stress “child” in particular, since the banks give out credit cards like candy.

Yes, 174,000 cases-- and that was before the economy tanked. These are not old-fashioned collection cases either. Typically, the banks are enforcing arbitration awards handed down by “private arbitrators” who more or less work full time for the banks. So the banks can sue anyone anywhere in any court in America without having to provide a witness or prove a case.

The pain of all this may get much worse. If deflation comes (even in a mild form), it means each dollar of debt will be harder to repay. That’s why populists in the 1890s took up their pitchforks: deflation made it increasingly difficult to pay off the principal on their loans. But at least in the time of William Jennings Bryan, they were only paying back at 5 percent. While we deflate, credit-card holders will be paying off at rates of 20 percent to 35 percent, and 1890s-type deflation would make the rate feel more like 35
percent to 50 percent.

What’s the worst of all the legal changes that fill up collection courts? There are so many, but I’d pick the legalization of usury. It’s the form of deregulation that not only drove us into debt but also sped up the loss of the manufacturing jobs that created our middle class-- that, in short, brought about our current Time of Troubles.

...Some people still think our financial collapse was the result of a technical glitch-- a failure, say, to regulate derivatives or hedge funds. All we need is a better chairman of the SEC, like brass-knuckled Joe Kennedy, FDR’s first pick. It’s personnel-- it’s Senator Gramm’s fault. Or it’s Robert Rubin’s fault.

In fact, no amount of New Deal regulation or SEC-watching could have stopped what happened. Hedge funds in themselves did not cause Wall Street to collapse. Some New Deal–type regulation was actually introduced in recent years, but it failed to do much: think of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, which made CEOs swear an oath that their financial statements were not fraudulent. No, the deregulation that led to our Time of Troubles was of a deeper, darker kind. The problem was not that we “deregulated the New Deal” but that we deregulated a much older, even ancient, set of laws.

First, we removed the possibility of creating real, binding contracts by allowing employers to bust the unions that had been entering into these agreements for millions of people. Second, we allowed those same employers to cancel existing contracts, virtually at will, by transferring liability from one corporate shell to another, or letting a subsidiary go into Chapter 11 and then moving to “cancel” the contract rights, inluding lifetime health benefits and pensions. As one company after another “reorganized” in Chapter 11 to shed contract rights, working people learned that it was not rational to count on those rights and guarantees, or even to think in these future-oriented ways. No wonder people in our country began to live for the moment and take out loans and start running up debts.

And then we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter’s term, and which had been so taken for granted that no one ever even mentioned it to us in law school. That’s when we found out what happens when an advanced industrial economy tries to function with no cap at all on interest rates.

Here’s what happens: the financial sector bloats up. With no law capping interest, the evil is not only that banks prey on the poor (they have always done so) but that capital gushes out of manufacturing and into banking. When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing. Sure, GM is awful. Sure, it doesn’t innovate. But the people who could have saved GM and Ford went off to work at AIG, or Merrill Lynch, or even Goldman Sachs. All of this used to be so obvious as not to merit comment. What is history, really, but a turf war between manufacturing, labor, and the banks? In the United States, we shrank manufacturing. We got rid of labor. Now it’s just the banks.

And Geoghegan's solution to all this? His plan? A state owned bank in every state; a cap on interest rates (9%); public guardians on the Boards of Directors that the government has bailed out; a bail out by banks of unconscionable, usurious consumer debt; and "injecting equity directly into the accounts of working people rather than into banks."

The best way to do this is to announce a plan to raise the gross replacement rate of Social Security from 44 percent to something closer to 65 percent, which is still short of the rate in many European social democracies. We can afford this as much as or more than they can.

Like I said, Tom thinks outside the box. It's exactly what we need in this country-- a lot more Tom Geoghegans and a lot fewer Tom Prices, Tom McClintocks, Tom Coles and Tom Coburns. Meanwhile, at least a more prosaic congressional mind, NY Representative Carolyn Maloney's, has come up with the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights which would, among other things, "ban unfair interest rate increases on existing balances and prohibit 'double cycle' billing-- a practice in which credit card issuers charge interest on debt that has already been paid during the previous billing cycle." Last time the bill came up (September 23rd, 2008) it passed overwhelmingly, 312-112, with 84 Republicans abandoning their corrupt leadership to cross the aisle and vote with all the Democrats except one, Blue Dog corporatist Stephanie Herseth Sandlin. It then died in the Senate. Unless Evan Bayh's anti-Obama bloc wants to commit mass suicide-- an attractive idea-- by crossing the aisle to the Republican side on this one, it will pass if it comes up in the current session.

Tom Geoghegan In The Final Stretch-- Chicago Special Election Is Next Tuesday

Ken seems to put a great deal of stock into a very few pundits he admires. One is Harold Meyerson and through Ken's commentary I have come to see the wisdom of his perspective on a great many issues. Today's Washington Post column, Another Star in Chicago, coming on the heals of President Obama's unifying speech last night is something I hope that at least everyone in Illinois' 5th congressional district reads.

Today Meyerson was moved to venture into the heartland for a topic, just as he had been almost exactly 5 years ago when he introduced his readers to a charismatic young state Senator named Barack Obama who was making a bid for a U.S. Senate seat. Next Tuesday is the Democratic primary that will determine who will represent the 5th CD. There are a whole slew of acceptable better-than-run-of-the-mill candidates-- and then there's Tom Geoghegan, the author, labor lawyer and activist Meyerson focuses on today.

[T]his candidate has a lot in common with Obama. Both are Harvard Law grads. Both have authored notable books. Both worked on behalf of unemployed steelworkers: Obama as a community organizer, this candidate as a lawyer who won 2,500 of them their pensions after their employer refused to pay up. And both have politically problematic names... A wry, heterodox liberal intellectual with a lifelong passion for American workers, Geoghegan first burst on to the literary and political scene with a great, slightly crazed ode to Chicago-- in the best tradition of Hecht, Algren and Bellow-- that ran in the New Republic in the 1980s and then with his 1991 book Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has since written four other books, some on the shambles that is the American legal system. He's became the go-to lawyer for Chicagoans who've lost their jobs through discrimination or who've been denied the pay they've earned. And now, he's the congressional candidate who supports single-payer health care, expanding Social Security to compensate for the decimation of private pensions, and government investment to rebuild our offshored manufacturing sector.

...There are, by actual count, a gazillion candidates for Emanuel's old seat on Tuesday's ballot, including a number of conventionally liberal pols, some of whom would probably make fine members of Congress. But Congress has no shortage of conventionally liberal or conventionally conservative pols. Of streetwise political intellectuals who've devoted themselves to a career of economic justice it has none.

I'm not predicting that Geoghegan will make quite the splash in world affairs that my earlier Chicago endorsee has made. I'm not even predicting that he'll win. But while the nation is going through its first real systemic economic crisis since the Depression, a guy who can knowledgeably compare public works programs clear back to the Jefferson administration and who can sniff out a bankers' relief program a mile away seems to me exactly what Congress needs.

Meyerson follows endorsements in the last couple of days by three of Chicago's legendary progressive reformer elders, Abner Mikva, Dr. Quentin Young, and Leon Despres, and from one of Tom's former opponents, Marty Oberman. Many in the Inside the Beltway Establishment have other favorite candidates. Predictably Emily's List endorsed a woman, basically their only criteria for endorsement these days. And some of the labor unions we've grown to trust came out for those who have scratched their backs in the grubby world of backroom politics. DFA, The Nation, Progressive Democrats of America, the American Nurses Association, the Greater Chicago Caucus, the Teamsters and Steelworkers unions and a long list of progressive writers from Katha Pollitt and David Sirota to Thomas Frank. Garry Wills, Don Rose and James Fallows have come out for Tom.

Ken first introduced DWT readers to Tom back in September, 2007, when few imagined he would one day get a chance at cleaning up a congressional seat held by corruptionists Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel. We endorsed him on January 7 and added him to our ActBlue page. Today, the first 25 people who donate at least $25 to Tom's campaign at that page will receive a thank you in the form of the brilliant new double CD, Quixotic by Matt Keating.


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UPDATE: RAHM'S HOUSE

In case you were considering voting for Sara Feingenholtz, you won't be the only one. This picture is Rahm Emanuel's home and that sign is for the tepid, well-behaved Sara, who, if she gets into Congress, will never bother anyone and never make a commotion-- just the way Emanuel likes 'em.

How you can help send Tom Geoghegan to Congress, filling (ha ha!) Master Rahm's old seat

by Ken

Howie has been keeping DWT readers up to date on the campaign of Tom Geoghegan, the political theorists' and activists' political theorist and activist, in the crowded Democratic field in the March 3 special election in IL-05, the House district represented by Master Rahm Emanuel until he quit to become White House chief of staff. Most recently, accompanying a clip in which Tom explains why he's running for Congress, Howie wrote about this "innovative and dynamic leader who can craft and push forward a worthwhile message for a progressive Democratic Party and a progressive America. Watch him -- and imagine that he's the one on TV instead of . . . Ben Nelson."

We don't often do this, but I don't see any reason not to simply pass on this communication from the ever-energetic Kathy of the Geoghegan campaign describing three things -- beside giving money! -- those of us who live outside the district can do to help:

Even if you're not in Chicago, there are three things you could do that would be a huge help to the campaign (other than giving money, that is, which of course is always welcome).

The first thing is very simple: vote for Tom in this Democracy for America poll:
http://tinyurl.com/b8tn9s

You don't have to be a member of DFA to vote. And btw, the reason it's important is that it's not just a beauty contest. If Tom comes out on top in this poll, DFA will put out the call to their progressive network to do whatever they can to support Tom -- including giving money and sending out volunteers for phone banking, canvassing, and our GOTV effort. Their support could make a big, big difference in this election.

If you want to vote for Tom in the poll, please make sure to do it now. The poll will close on Monday at midnight.

The second thing you can do is virtual phone banking. It's incredibly simple -- just sign up on this page:
http://tinyurl.com/awt6my
And you'll be sent a script and login information which will give you access to voter info.

The third thing you can do is send an email to friends of yours who either support Tom, or could be persuaded to do so, and ask them to vote for Tom in the poll, and let them know about the virtual phone bank.

One of Tom's supporters, Matt Filipowicz, who's a blogger and political cartoonist, created a nifty little video about phone banking for Tom, which we've posted on our website, here:
http://tinyurl.com/a9no73

If you write to other folks about phone banking for Tom, you might want to include it in your email.

Obama's Got A Good Rap But No Stomach For Battle; We Need Democrats With Both

Yesterday Peter Daou was at HuffPo discussing why it seems as though conservative Republicans retook the House and Senate and McCain's crusade for 4 more years of the Bush agenda was triumphant. "Things have changed" he assures us. "But the dynamics and tensions of the past decade remain firmly in play: right-wing noise machine (albeit denuded) versus progressive activists, old-school pundits and politicians versus online powerhouses, netroots versus DLC, frustrated outsiders versus back-scratching insiders, partisanship versus bi/post-partisanship, media versus bloggers, and so on. This isn't entirely surprising: political mechanisms change, human nature doesn't.

The assumption that the new presidency would transform the political process, usher in an era of unprecedented citizen empowerment and decimate the old conventional wisdom-making machinery, has been undermined by the reality of entrenched power structures, deep-seated rivalries, die-hard habits and Beltway business as usual.

..Obama's Internet savvy cannot overcome the CW Machine. The grassroots infrastructure his campaign built may be able to influence some of the commentary, alter portions of the debate and mitigate some of the effects, but overall, the CW Machine, composed of myriad online and offline components, will grind away and do its business, larger than any one candidate, leader, party or movement.

Ultimately, the grand political battle in the coming years will be the same as it's always been: a contest over the shaping and reshaping of public perceptions-- both with respect to politics and policy. For Democrats, taking comfort in Obama's online successes during the campaign is a losing bet: in recent days, Republicans have demonstrated that despite being in the minority and clearly behind in the Internet game, it's possible for the CW Machine to work in their favor.

If hindering the Democratic agenda by exploiting missteps is a core mission for Republicans, Democrats would do well to note how effectively Republicans have done just that in the nascent days of the Obama presidency and how unpredictably the CW Machine has operated (or how predictably for those who are less sanguine about the fungibility of a web-fueled grassroots campaign).

Perhaps the best strategy in light of all this is simply to govern based on solid Democratic principles and let the results-- and history-- trump the CW Machine.

At roughly the same time Daou was figuring this out, ThinkProgress was counting heads-- literally. They were counting talking heads... on TV. Who was speaking about the Stimulus Package and influencing the conventional wisdom? It should surprise no one to read that "Republican members of Congress outnumbered their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of 2 to 1.

And even when I see Democrats on TV, half the time they're the Democrats who don't understand the issues or can't express themselves or who agree with the Republicans or want to split the difference. We need more Democrats like Donna Edwards (D-MD), Alan Grayson (D-FL), Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Phil Hare (D-IL), Jared Polis (D-CO), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Eric Massa (D-NY) on TV making the progressive case. They know what they're talking about and feel it in their gut. I can't show you a video-- because there isn't one-- but read what Massa e-mailed to his constituents yesterday about the Stimulus Package:

The fact that we've just seen 598,000 jobs cut in the month of January is unacceptable. Our recession is deepening and we need real action right now. If passed, the economic stimulus package would create and protect 3-4 million jobs, lower taxes for working Americans and creates a new standard of transparency and accountability in the process.
 
Our friends, neighbors, and families are suffering because of 8 years of failed economic policies from the Bush administration. I was elected to help the people of Western New York and that's why I voted to pass the economic stimulus package.
 
If this bill is signed into law, it's been projected by the Governor's office that nearly $400 million will be spent right here in New York's 29th Congressional District. This money will be used to rebuild our roads and schools, keep teachers in the classroom, and create good jobs right here in Western New York. We need to take direct action to slow the recession and lower our unemployment figures before this recession deepens.
 
I call on the Senate to put partisan politics aside and pass the economic stimulus package so we can start strengthening our economy.

And then there's the race for the Illinois congressional seat that was given up by Rahm Emanuel. There are some decent enough Democrats running, but only one, Tom Geoghegan, is an innovative and dynamic leader who can craft and push forward a worthwhile message for a progressive Democratic Party and a progressive America. Watch him-- and imagine that he's the one on TV instead of... Ben Nelson. There's no way that Tom Geoghegan would ever agree to cut out a million and a quarter jobs from the Stimulus Package just so he could run around pounding his chest and saying "Me Bipartisan" the way Nelson just did.

Tom Geoghagen Does What No Other Democrats Seem Able To Do-- He Explains What The Employee Free Choice Act Really Is

Yesterday I got to hear author and congressional candidate Tom Geoghegan speak live. Robert Greenwald and the folks at BraveNewFilms hosted a blogger get-together for the progressive candidate running in Illinois' 5th CD. I knew he was already a good candidate from his writing and from trusted friends in Chicago; that's why we endorsed him and added him to our ActBlue page. But seeing him live... it's like the difference from hearing a band's recorded songs and seeing a live concert.

Now, don't get me wrong; Tom isn't some kind of charismatic superstar like Mick Jagger or Billy Jo Armstrong or Barack Obama. He kind of intellectual and professorial and rumpled. This being Hollywood and all, a fabulous Oscar nominee came running up and said we needed to fix him up before we filmed him. OK, OK... it is kind of show-biz, in a very sick and unfortunate way. And I got Digby to straighten his tie and stuff like that while Robert got him to take off the tweedy sports jacket and John Amato made him feel at home. But all that's the surface stuff-- on which elections may ride; what floored everyone about Tom was what he had to say. His analysis of the state of the nation is so radical that I don't think I've ever heard anyone running for office even bring up the topics he talked about. Well... Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, and Donna Edwards do. Tom was talking about how the banksters' systemic usury has undermined our entire economic system.

Katha Pollitt called him "the next Paul Wellstone" in The Nation and Thomas Frank wrote that he's a "true reformer" in the Wall Street Journal. This morning Don Rose endorsed his candidacy in the Chicago Sun-Times. Rose lays open the seamy underbelly of Chicago ward politics-- the politics that brought this district 3 extremely corrupt congressmen in a row: Dan Rostenkowski, Rod Blagojevich and, worst of all, Rahm Emanuel. It's something you rarely read about in Chicago. And Rose tore apart the other top candidates:

The district's power emanates from the most odiously connected elements of the Machine, lodged in the western wards and suburbs, where the line between crime and politics is often diffuse.

The big boss is state Sen. Jim DeLeo, indicted in the "Greylord" court bribery scandal, who got a hung jury in his trial then pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

Then comes 36th Ward alderman/committeeman William J.P. Banks, sometimes accused of ties to the old First Ward-- a euphemism. He chairs the powerful City Council Zoning Committee.

William's brother, lawyer Sam Banks, often represents mobsters. Sam's name popped up in the "Family Secrets" trial as a go-between alleged to have carried payoffs to crooked cops. Of course, no one ever saw money change hands.

Sam's son James is a successful zoning lawyer, whose triumphs may be due in part to appearing before his Uncle Bill's committee.

Another fortunate zoning lawyer is candidate John "All in the Family" Fritchey, Sam's son-in-law, who just happens to have the support of most of the west-end committeemen-- though he shudders at the thought of being known as the "Machine Candidate."

State Rep. Fritchey, who also is 32nd Ward committeeman, is one of three leading candidates, along with state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz. A sliver of her district is in the 5th. She is permitted to vote a liberal/feminist line in accord with her constituency, but otherwise requires surgical removal from House Speaker Mike Madigan.

Feigenholtz disappears when key reform votes come up, such as the bill to permit recall of public officials. (Fritchey voted "no.")

The third leading candidate is County Commissioner Mike Quigley, known as a genuine reformer on the County Board. His campaign seems to be based on being more against Board President Todd Stroger than anyone on the planet-- or at least any of the 14 candidates running.

He would be a very good choice except for two factors:

1) We really need to keep him on the County Board.

2) There is a remarkable progressive running with a record of words and deeds that puts him head and shoulders above the rest.

...As a resident, my vote goes to labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan, author of several important books. His law partner is former Ald. Leon M. Despres, a father of progressive reform in Chicago, which speaks volumes in itself.

Recently Geoghegan (pronounced gae-gun) won a huge class-action suit against Advocate Health Care that will, according to the Sun-Times, "result in free or reduced-price care for low-income patients at Advocate hospitals."

That's typical of his successful fights for poor and working people-- translating the ideas of his books into tangible action. His record and economic ideas might just resonate in the working-class parts of the district.

But then, he may be overqualified for Congress.

Last weekend Northside DFA hosted a candidates forum and you can watch all the opening statements here. This morning state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz sent out an e-mail pimping a hit piece on the machine candidate, John Fritchey, who was endorsed by a gaggle of Rahm Emanuel's in-the-pocket unions, like the shameful AFSCME which always asks "How high?" when he tells them to jump. At some point BraveNewFilms will have a full video up of the talk they had with Tom. They just sent me over a clip of John Amato asking Tom the real skinny on the Employee Free Choice Act. I wonder how many of the other candidates could even differentiate between the anti-union media spin and what the bill is really all about.



Please consider donating to Tom's campaign. What we need in Congress are people with big ideas and leadership abilities, not just dependable votes (aka- rubber stamps).

26 Candidates Running For Rahm Emanuel's Old IL-05 Congressional Seat

Filing for the Chicago congressional seat for Illinois' 5th CD, abandoned by Rahm Emanuel, ended yesterday. The election will be held on April 7th and there are 15 Democrats, 6 Republicans and 5 Greens who have tossed their hats into the ring-- 26 candidates. The reality of the race, however, revolves around the March 3 Democratic primary. Both Obama and Emanuel won almost 75% of the vote in the district in November and the district has a PVI of D+18.

Conventional wisdom favors progressives Tom Geoghegan, Sara Feigenholtz, Mike Quigley and John Frichey with Chicago Alderman Patrick O'Connor also expected to take a serious shot at it. Other Democrats expected to get votes from people beyond their immediate families include Justin Oberman, Pete Dagher and Frank Annunzio.

DWT has endorsed Tom Geoghegan, a labor attorney, community activist and brilliant author. Sunday, February 1 the DePaul Democrats, the IVI-IPO, and Northside DFA will host a candidates forum at DePaul University Student Center, Lincoln Park Campus from 1-3 pm.

Last week Tom Geoghegan showed what kind of a congressman he is likely to be when he responded to Bush's request for the release of the second half of the $700 billion TARP funds. He's calling to three conditions to be met before the funds are released:

• Give priority-- directly if possible-- to help people keep their homes.
• Get public interest representatives or directors on bank boards in all of the banks receiving money.
• Penalize any bank that has been hoarding money from the first bailout.

I hope everyone who wants strong proponents of America's working families will contribute to Tom's campaign. You can do it through ActBlue here. As an incentive for some I spoke with an old friend, Scott McLean, who has made a very generous offer to Geoghegan donors. Scott buys large collections of records and CDs. He's especially interested in rock, soul, vintage country, personality and original shows. He pays high prices and has been in business for 30 years. He's agreed to donate between 10 and 20% (20% for collections he pays over $1,000 for) to Tom's campaign. In other words, sell him your record collection and wind up with, say $2,000-- and he will donate another $400 to Tom's campaign. Contact Scott at jaideeone@yahoo.com and tell him DownWithTyranny sent you. If you don't have a record collection to sell, please consider even a $5 or $10 contribution to Tom's campaign.

High Priced Republican Party Propaganda Campaign Seeks To Undermine Workers' Free Choice

America's working families turned out in droves last November. Eight years of economic and fiscal policies designed to pauperize them and redistribute wealth upwards was more than enough and even Obama's hint of "hope" was better than McCain's iron clad guarantee of four more years of the Bush economic miracle. Unions worked harder to turn out their people, and non-union working people, than they have in decades. And it showed, not just in Obama's 365-173 landslide victory over McCain, including in dependable GOP strongholds like Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana and Colorado, but in a Democratic landslide in House and Senate races, with Democrats winning GOP-held Senate seats in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia, Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Alaska and New Mexico, while the closest any Republican came to winning a Democratic held seat was in Louisiana, where ex-Democrat John Kennedy managed to garner 46%. Other than in New Jersey no other Republican challenger busted 40%! The House was also a disaster for the party that had authored the misery of working families as Republican incumbents fell in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and even Idaho. Unions were active-- financially and on the ground in every race.

Patriotism? Of course... but self-interested self defense as well. The Bush Regime and its allies in Congress have been chipping away at workers' rights as well as their livelihood. The Labor Movement itself was under threat from the Republicans. Workers and the congressional representatives who care about their well being came up with several pieces of legislation to shore up the labor movement, the strongest of which is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which passed in the House last year and was supported by every single Democrat in the Senate, even reactionaries like Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, Max Baucus, etc. The Republicans managed to filibuster it to death and labor helped replace 8 Republican union-haters who filibustered EFCA-- Ted Stevens (AK), Pete Domenici (NM), Norm Coleman (MN), Gordon Smith (OR), Wayne Allard (CO), John Warner (VA), John Sununu (NH), Elizabeth Dole (NC)-- with EFCA supporters.

Big Business interests-- the greed and selfishness end of the Republican coalition-- has been panic-stricken since then, putting all their energy and resources into stopping the Employee Free Choice Act. The Republicans will sell out the anti-abortion faction, the xenophobes, the racists, the religious fanatics... any part of their coalition except Big Business. In the end, for any right wing party, it's all about the Benjamins. Always. The rest is just a means to that end. And making it easier for unions to organize is the last thing on God's earth Big Business, and especially WalMart, is going to accept-- and they don't care if 78% of Americans favor it or not. Their propaganda machine is hard at work trying to persuade Americans that they represent the best interests of workers, not workers themselves. No one's buying that line, at least not north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Today's CongressDaily emphasized that unions "don't intend to allow passage of other employment legislation-- like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which extends the statute of limitations on pay discrimination claims and passed the House last week-- to free Democrats of their obligation." Good Democrats don't want to be "free of their obligation;" they want to do what's right for the working families of the country. And then there are the Blue Dogs and other proto-Republican reactionaries in the Democratic caucus.

"Many candidates across this country ran on [EFCA], and we expect them to vote for it," said Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union and chairwoman of the union political federation Change to Win. SEIU and Change to Win spent more than $80 million on the election, and Burger has said she expects the Obama administration to make card check law within the first 100 days.

But the bill, which eliminates a company's ability to demand a secret ballot election to form a union, would spark a "firestorm" in the business community, said Randel Johnson, vice president of labor policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "They need bipartisanship for the economic stimulus and a debate over EFCA right now would make that almost impossible," he said.

Democratic leaders said they were not putting off card check to avoid a fight. "Passage of the economic stimulus is our top priority. We will work with Republicans, labor, and all other stakeholders to that end," said Stephen Krupin, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Reid. "Sen. Reid remains a strong supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act."

Still, Congress has not set a timetable for considering card check-- Krupin said it would come up "in due time"-- and labor leaders will expect action once work on the stimulus has finished. "I expect it to be done in an expeditious way," Burger said.

The AFL-CIO's [Bill] Samuel said he anticipates Congress will take it up by spring. "We haven't said you've got to do [EFCA] in the stimulus, in the first weeks of the new Congress. This jobs bill, this stimulus package is really important to us, too," he said.

But the bill's opponents are lining up top Republican firepower, and the rhetoric coming from them has been fiery. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called the legislation "dangerous" and "terrible" at confirmation hearings last week for Obama's Labor Secretary-designate, Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., crusaded against it during the last Congress even after a Republican filibuster killed the bill.

The Chamber helped form a group called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, which ran TV ads opposing the card-check bill during the election and plans to step up pressure going forward. Groups with names like the "Workforce Fairness Institute," the "Coalition for a Democratic Workplace" and the "Center for Union Facts" are taking out ads in Capitol Hill newspapers and deploying top PR talent.

"It's quite clear that this is a political minefield for the Obama administration and the last thing they want right out of the gate is a firefight with business. I think it's smart of them to not bring it up early," said Mark McKinnon, a spokesman for the Workforce Fairness Institute.

McKinnon was a top adviser for President Bush and worked for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during his primary fight for the Republican presidential nomination. Republican strategist Barbara Comstock, who worked for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney during the primary season, is working for the same group. The Center for Union Facts is backed by top Republican lobbyist Rick Berman.

It is difficult to determine who is funding such groups if operatives aren't registered to lobby Congress on the bill. Companies most likely to be affected by the law are service-oriented workplaces that aren't unionized-- large firms like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, for example, as well as hospitals and other healthcare workers. Automakers, which are heavily unionized, have less to lose.

Today we heard from two winning Blue America-backed candidates, Eric Massa (D-NY) and Alan Grayson (D-FL), who were also supported by working families and unions against Republican incumbents Randy Kuhl and Ric Keller. Both are strong supporters of working families and their aspirations. Congressman Grayson told me that he can't understand the Right's preoccupation with a "secret" ballot. "My ballots are never secret, and I'm OK with that. If ballots in Congress were secret, then every K Street lobbyist would be unemployed... Corporate bosses intimidate would-be union members every day of the week, right out in the open. And they want us to believe that open voting is going to mean intimidation by unions? Come on, get real. Let's say that 80% of employees sign union cards. Can someone please explain to me why they shouldn't be union members?"

Congressman Massa sent out a newsletter to his upstate New York constituents, after a speech he gave at a UAW convention in Syracuse, where he announced that he had signed on as a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act. "This critical legislation is not anti-business, it is pro-American, period," said Congressman Massa. "The American Labor movement represents, and in fact is, the only remaining force left to help move our country in a new direction toward fair trade and away from destructive open door free trade. I stand, proudly, with my fellow Americans to support the transformation of the domestic automobile industry into the 21st century and I reject the outrageously false attacks that claim living wages, pension security, access to quality affordable health care, safety and dignity in the workplace, are somehow un-American."

Massa went on to explain that the 21st century American labor movement is about a partnership between American business at all levels and American workers. He stated clearly that we need to stop fighting each other and start fighting for each other. "The competitors who will destroy us economically are not our fellow Americans," stated Congressman Massa. "Rather they are foreign interests who fund the elections of some partisan politicians and then reap the benefits of lowering the quality of life here in the United States."
 
"I will never surrender my constitutional mandate to stand with those fellow Americans who have no voice and I believe that Toyota, Honda, BMW, and the other foreign corporations who are taking our capital overseas, both human and financial, have a loud enough and well funded enough voice."
 
"The Employee Free Choice Act is the most important labor bill in 70 years and I think we've waited long enough," said Congressman Massa. "We need to raise the bar for all American workers, and the Employee Free Choice Act will help us do just that. A few days ago it was announced that we now have an unemployment rate of 7.2%. The fact of the matter is that our failed free trade agreements are the root of the problem, and we must address this. As we watch the domestic auto industry struggle due to unfair foreign competition, it's obvious that the problem isn't worker's wages, it's our failed free trade agreements."
 
Addressing the UAW audience, Rep. Massa asked, "How many of you make $74 per hour right now?" The audience's answer was silence. "Opponents of organized labor like Senator Corker and Senator Shelby want to make up false 'facts' and 'statistics' like this to try and break the union, but we won't let that happen. These same critics also say that the Employee Free Choice Act will abrogate the ability of workers to have a secret ballot, but we know this is false. I believe it is now time to level the playing field, overcome employer intimidation, and work with business hand in hand to defend what generations of Americans have put in place-- the American Dream."

If we had more Representatives like Alan Grayson and Eric Massa, we wouldn't be dicking around with Big Business' Chamber of Commerce and Republican Party shills now. The Employee Free Choice Act would be law and no one would be trying to coax reactionary "Democrats" like Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln to keep their word. It's more than symbolic that the next member elected to Congress is likely to be one of the strongest advocates for working families in the country, labor attorney Tom Geoghegan, who is running for the Chicago seat that has been abandoned by Rahm Emanuel. When Tom announced his candidacy last week he wrote at HuffPo that he "will have a single minded focus on the economic security to working Americans, that's why I so strongly support the Employee Free Choice Act and other changes in our labor laws. And that's why I support policies that will reduce the debt of working Americans. Overall, the plan I am setting out here will help make our country more competitive." What we need in Congress are principled and thoughtful leaders, not slimy hacks who make self-serving deals and go along to get along. The Democratic Party-- and indeed, the United States of America-- needs more Tom Geoghegans and less Mark Pryors and Blanche Lincolns.

Please consider a donation to Tom's grassroots campaign at our Blue America page. Even $5 and $10 contributions add up and have helped us elect stalwart defenders of working families, from Donna Edwards (D-MD), John Hall (D-NY), Tom Perriello (D-VA), Bruce Braley (D-IA), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Larry Kissell (D-NC), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Jim Himes (D-CT), Mark Schauer (D-MI), and Gary Peters (D-MI) to the aforementioned Alan Grayson and Eric Massa, as well as the new Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

One of the reasons Tom Geoghegan is so beloved of Illinois working people is for the books he has written to help further their cause, particularly his classic, Which Side Are You On?. Here's a version of the song of the same name, originally written by Florence Reece in 1931, performed here by Natalie Merchant:

Daley Machine Hasn't Come Up With An Emanuel Placeholder... Yet

I've been talking with most of the Democrats running for Chicago's 5th district congressional seat, which has been vacated by Rahm Emanuel. The seat, a classic "rotten borough," has been a real home of corruption and its representatives just got worse and worse over the years, from Dan Rostenkowski to Rod Blagojevich to Rahm Emanuel. Since there is literally no Democrat in American politics as bad as Emanuel, the district is definately about to turn around. The Daley Machine, though, still wants a shot at installing a hack of their own. And this week one of the candidates informed me there would be a meeting, a slate-making session-- of leaders of the "regulars" (as opposed to reformers) to pick a candidate for the March 3rd primary.

It took place at 10:30 this morning at Zam Zam Banquet Hall on N. Oak Park Ave. and was chaired by state Senator James DeLeo, the district's representative on the party's state central committee. My source explained that it was expected that they would try anointing either state Rep. John Fritchey or, worse yet, Alderman Patrick O'Connor. Fritchey came closest by none of the 5 candidates who applied for the endorsement got the 50% + one vote need, guaranteeing an open primary.

There are three progressives in the race, anti-machine County Commissioner Mike Quigley, state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz and DWT-endorsed Tom Geoghegan. None of the progressives went to the slate-making session.

When Emanuel was first elected in 2002, patronage armies loyal to Mayor Richard Daley campaigned for Emanuel to replace Rod Blagojevich, the 5th District congressman who became governor. Those campaign armies dissolved after a federal investigation into City Hall hiring fraud led to the corruption conviction of Daley's longtime patronage chief Robert Sorich in 2006.

Daley said this week he had not endorsed any candidate and was unlikely to pick a favorite ahead of the primary vote.

Geoghegan would actually be as stellar a representative as his predecessors were abysmal. He's not just a decent enough progressive who will vote well, he's a thoughtful and innovative leader who could help, along with like-minded grassroots Reps like Donna Edwards, Linda Sanchez and Alan Grayson, spark a much-needed renaissance for progressive ideas in Congress. Please consider even a small donation to his campaign through our ActBlue page.

Help Replace Rahm Emanuel With Tom Geoghegan... For A Better America

Yesterday Chicago attorney, activist and author Tom Geoghegan (pronounced gay-gun) announced his intention to run for Congress from IL-05, his home district, a seat being vacated by Rahm Emanuel. When I spoke with him last week he told me he intended to make his announcement online and that he did, at Daily Kos. Tom's the first grassroots/netroots candidate of 2009 and it's more than a little ironic that this iconic leader of Chicago progressives is running for a seat that is opening up because the most Establishment and corporate-oriented of Democrats is moving on. I recommend reading the whole Kos diary at the link above, but he starts with a clear explanation of who he is and why he's running:

As a Chicago lawyer for thirty years, I have fought for working people in the Fifth District and throughout the city. I have represented unions as well as people with no unions to protect them. In plant closings I have helped them recover health and pension benefits. I obtained health care for the uninsured. I've been pressing the State of Illinois to crack down on payday lenders.

In my life as a lawyer I have lived out a commitment to one cause above all-- to bring economic security to working Americans, in our District, in our country. That’s the same commitment I will bring to Congress.

There may well be other decent candidates for Emanuel's old seat, even "progressives," but Tom is the choice of so many Chicago activists because he isn't just a dependable liberal vote. He's a man with ideas and he's a proven leader. He's not the kind of person who's going off to Washington to become another Inside-the-Beltway asshole who looses touch with America and starts speaking a new language only Inside-the-Beltway assholes speak. I've always said, Democratic and Republican Insiders have more in common with each other than they do with real Americans regardless of political persuasion. Tom Geoghegan isn't some starry-eyed hick whose going to be swept off his feet by the trappings of congressional power. He's already accomplished more in his life than most committee chairmen ever will.

On April 7th there'll be a general election to pick the next congressman from IL-05. But in a district where the PVI is D+18 and where even a nominal Democrat like Rahm Emanuel was re-elected with 74%, the real election is on March 3, the date of the Democratic primary. In a district that has had one disastrous representative after another-- Rostenkowski, Blagojevich, Emanuel, each either in jail or destined to wind up in one-- it would be refreshing to wind up at the very top of the food chain for a change.

There's palpable excitement about Tom's announcement, not just in Chicago, but across the nation. Joe Trippi:

Today, Tom Geoghegan announced he will run for Congress in the Fifth District of Illinois. Tom is a real hero to the progressive community and this special election is a great opportunity to bring progressive change to Washington. I’m very excited that Tom has decided to run, please take a moment and visit his website to learn more.

David Dayen:

This is a serious leader, committed to improving the lives of working people through policy. It's the epitome of what you would want in a public servant. Plus, he'd drive conservatives crazy.

Digby:

If you want to know what a real progressive candidate looks like, this is the guy.

Kathy G from The G Spot:

I can't tell you how utterly thrilled and delighted I am by this development. Because there is nobody-- nobody-- whom I'd rather see holding elected office in America than Tom Geoghegan. For some years now, I've had the pleasure and the privilege of being Tom's friend. He's one of the most brilliant people I've ever met, and also one of the kindest. A passionate progressive from the top of his bald spot down to the tips of his toenails, Tom has spent a lifetime tirelessly fighting on behalf of underdogs and the dispossessed-- steelworkers being cheated out of their pensions, say; or stressed out single mothers being harassed by predatory lenders; or union reformers trying to run a clean election in their corrupt local.

Rick Hertzberg, whose story in the New Yorker is entitled Chicago's Chance To Redeem Itself Has Arrived:

The political news from the Windy City has not been especially uplifting of late, but here’s a bulletin that promises change you can believe in: as of today, Tom Geoghegan is running for Congress!

If you're a fan of someone who has already proven himself a tough and unrelenting fighter for progressive ideals, from single payer health care to the unfettered rights of workers to unionize to livable pensions for retired workers comparable to the rest of the industrialized world's, please join me in donating to Tom's campaign. In fact, I have a little proposition for you.

Many people are preparing to celebrate the end of the hideous and destructive Bush Regime and the reactionary stranglehold on political power in our country. (If you're a progressive you might be almost as happy seeing Rahm Emanuel leaving Congress.) An outfit in L.A. has created a party box to help with the celebrations, the Georgie Is Outta Here Party In A Box. This video explains what's in the box:

So you get 10 paper plates, 10 paper cups, 8 party hats, 16 napkins, 10 latex balloons, 1 table cloth, 1 Pin the Tail on the Ass’s Ass decorative poster, 1 Georgie’s Desk with To Do Lists decorative poster, and 1 product one sheet all packaged in a branded “Georgie Is Outta Here!” box. DownWithTyranny has 10 of 'em and we want to give them away-- NOW! Everyone who donates to Tom's campaign today (here) is entered in a drawing and 10 people get the Party Box mailed to them. (Minimum donation is $25 and the maximum is $2,300.)


UPDATE: EVEN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL IS SINGING TOM'S PRAISES!

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but today's Wall Street Journal features a guest editorial by brilliant progressive author Thomas Frank praising Tom to the skies. Excerpt:

Now that conservative orthodoxy has collapsed in a heap of complex derivatives, I can't help but think what a refreshing dose of plain-spoken Midwestern reality Mr. Geoghegan could bring to the nation as a whole.

To begin with, Mr. Geoghegan thinks big while Democrats in Washington tend to think small, proposing a stimulus package here and better oversight there. The government's goal, as he explained it to me a few days ago, should not merely be "to pump up demand again." It should be to enact sweeping, structural change, "to get in a position where we're not bleeding jobs out of the country."

For the view that working people have no business with retirement and health care in the lean, mean, inevitable future, Mr. Geoghegan has a certain contempt. He wants to increase Social Security payments to make up for the destruction of private pension plans and expand Medicare with the goal of arriving, eventually, at single-payer health care. The $700 billion bank bailout, he says, proves that such expenses can be borne. What's more, they're necessary.

"Economic security is not only compatible with being competitive globally," he tells me; "it's crucial to it." Until we shift the burden of pensions and health care from companies to government we will continue to endure "debacles like General Motors" and so many others.

Rahm Emanuel Resigns

Tom Geoghegan

I doubt Emanuel made a deal with Obama guaranteeing him a pardon for whatever crimes he commits before he took the chief of staff job. I have a feeling, though, that it was understood. Emanuel resigns from Congress today, and that body will be infinitely better off without him. As I never tire of pointing out, he is the Democratic doppelganger of one of the most reviled creatures in contemporary American politics, corrupt GOP party boss Tom DeLay. Like DeLay, Emanuel has been the bridge between Big Business with its K Street and systemic culture of bribery, and his political party. And like DeLay, Emanuel is a puffed-up little twerp and foul-mouthed bully with a good PR machine behind him and an overarching sense of entitlement.

While it's a joy to see him out of the House, of course, his appointment to Obama's innermost circle is probably the sowing of seeds of destruction for the new administration. And many think that this "out of the House" thing isn't all it's cracked up to be, and that he's angling for a seat-holder who will make it easy for him to reclaim his old seat when Obama is done with him.

Emanuel's embarrassingly close political ally, indicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, is now obligated to call a special election within 115 days. But it's really another corrupt Chicago politician who will determine who replaces Emanuel-- the same guy who first guaranteed Emanuel the seat: Mayor Daley. Oddly, the media has been treating this as a normal election and shying away from explaining any of the behind-the-scenes goings-on. There are over a dozen candidates, closer to two dozen, in fact, and it is widely expected that Daley's machine-- in conjunction with Emanuel-- will determine who the "favored" candidate will be.

According to conventional wisdom expressed in yesterday's Hill article linked above, three candidates more progressive than Emanuel have emerged as front runners: state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley and former Transportation Security Administration official Justin Oberman. Other candidates include Alexander Victor Forys, whose main qualification seems to be that he's Polish and would dilute support for old Emanuel foe Nancy Kaszak, who isn't saying whether or not she's jumping into the race (and I asked several times), progressive fave Tom Geoghegan (author of Which Side Are You On?), Professor Charles Wheelan, Reichel Matthew, Joey Vartanian, Israel Vasquez, Cary Capparelli, Debra Mell, Jan Donatelli.

The Chicago political establishment and their pet media puppets from across the ideological spectrum seem to be playing down all the intrigue and trying to make the process very matter of fact.

Not long after Emanuel announced that he was taking the job, there were reports that he would want the seat back after serving in the White House for two years. Emanuel firmly denies that, but it shaped the early field.

Since then, the maneuvering has been notable for the lack of endorsements and shows of force from outside influences. No one has emerged as a labor candidate in one of the most labor-friendly districts in Illinois. Emanuel and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley have not endorsed and observers do not expect them to.

We'll see. (Meanwhile, Geoghegan contributions are being accepted through ActBlue.)

The bad news: Just 3 percent of our eligible voters have the power "to stop almost anything" in the Senate. The good news: We can work around this.

"Using Census figures, Geoghegan discovers that the 11 percent of Americans living in the least populated states have enough Senate votes--41--to sustain a filibuster. Yes, 89 percent of the population may support a policy, but 11 percent of the population has the senators to block that policy's enactment. . . .

"Lawmakers trying to keep their jobs only need support from a majority of those who turn out to vote. In those 21 least populated states with filibuster power, that majority is typically about 7 million voters, based on turnout data. That's just 3 percent of America's total voting-age population wielding enough Senate representation to stop almost anything."
--David Sirota, in his latest syndicated column, "Tyranny of the Tiny Minority"

It would be nice, for once, to have some good news about our electoral process.

No, I don't have any good news. However, short of that, maybe we can settle for the occasional bit of new news. Taken by itself, it's just one more piece of bad news, of course, but just maybe, by increasing our understanding of our electoral process, it can enable us to find some creative ways around it.

"Wondering why Congress rarely passes anything the public wants?" David Sirota asks in his new column. "Then grab Thomas Geoghegan's 1999 memoir, The Secret Lives of Citizens."

As Geoghegan [right] notes, in the 100-member Senate, just 41 "no" votes kills most legislation with a filibuster. You might think that if 41 percent of our representatives oppose a bill, maybe it should die. After all, civics class taught us that the Senate is supposed to protect the voice of a significant minority.

But here is what civics class didn't teach: With each state getting two senators regardless of population, 41 percent of the Senate often represents not a significant minority, but an infinitesimal one.

Using Census figures, Geoghegan discovers that the 11 percent of Americans living in the least populated states have enough Senate votes--41--to sustain a filibuster. Yes, 89 percent of the population may support a policy, but 11 percent of the population has the senators to block that policy's enactment. When you go further than Geoghegan and consider the election-focused mindset of politicians, you see the situation is even more absurd.

Lawmakers trying to keep their jobs only need support from a majority of those who turn out to vote. In those 21 least populated states with filibuster power, that majority is typically about 7 million voters, based on turnout data. That's just 3 percent of America's total voting-age population wielding enough Senate representation to stop almost anything.

To see how this works, consider what followed a July CBS News/New York Times poll that found 69 percent of Americans support Congress either enacting a timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq or defunding the war completely. When the Senate voted on timetable legislation that month, 47 senators voted "no"--enough to filibuster.

Should we be surprised that a policy supported by more than two thirds of America drew opposition from almost half of the Senate? No, not when we consider the math.

I can't say I ever thought of it that way.

Of course, once you have thought of it that way, it's hard not to be even more tummy-numbingly discouraged than before you thought of it that way. You have some new appreciation for what we're up against, but you're not apt to break out the champagne for that.

Our David is less easily discouraged, of course, which is why I encourage everyone to read his presentation. He's already come up with two ways of making this knowledge work for progressives.

First, he looks for someplace other than Congress to work for change:

In the Karl Rove age of base politics, this Senate setup means that most domestic reforms will not come from D.C., no matter which party controls Congress or the presidency. Change will come instead from the arenas that are more democratic and have no filibuster: state legislatures.

This isn't wishful thinking. As energy, universal health care and consumer protection initiatives face Senate filibusters, legislatures are acting. For instance, California already passed one of the planet's most far-reaching clean energy mandates and may soon enact a universal health care plan. North Carolina passed predatory lending laws that are setting national standards. Such examples could fill a phone book.

Then, he sketches "a new strategy making the Senate's drawbacks the campaign's strength":

Specifically, Senate Democrats whine about not having 60 votes to pass Iraq-related legislation. They pretend they are innocent bystanders with no means to act, and some anti-war groups give the charade credence by echoing these excuses. Yet, if properly pressured, those Democrats might be able to muster 41 votes to stop war funding bills.

Well, it's a start. And I guess it beats just plain whining, 24/7.
.