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FOCUS | Ponderings on the New Politics of Extremism |
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Sunday, 17 June 2012 11:48 |
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Reich writes: "The American right is moving further right, and pulling the Republican Party with it. It's fueled by economic fears combined with racism, anti-immigrant nativism, and southern white evangelical Christians."
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
Ponderings on the New Politics of Extremism
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
17 June 12
 ack from several days in Washington. The city still has all the disadvantages of being a one-industry town, with almost everyone working for the government or lobbying the government or reporting on the government or trying to influence the government or litigating on behalf of or against the government. It's like LA and the entertainment industry, or downtown New York and finance. Everyone is in the same bubble, and every conversation sounds vaguely similar.
The only difference this time is Washington feels under siege, as if marauding bands are closing in on it. Unlike Europe, America doesn't have feudal traditions that in the last century spun into fascism and communism. Our right and left are much closer to the center than are Europe's. But the American right - whose roots are found in Jeffersonian libertarianism and the Jacksonian alliance of small southern farmers and northern white workers - is moving further right, and pulling the Republican Party with it. It's fueled by economic fears combined with racism, anti-immigrant nativism, and southern white evangelical Christians.
The puzzle is why Wall Street and corporate America are going along with it when their interests are so different. The new Republican right is anti-Wall Street and protectionist. It doesn't want to expand immigration. It distrusts big business and opposes the sorts of special tax cuts, subsidies, and big government contracts that big business has thrived on. The Obama administration has been far better to corporate America and Wall Street than the new Republican right would ever be.
I don't get it, but the alliance between the energies of the new right and the money of big corporations and Wall Street is formidable, and in this early summer of our discontent Washington can already sense the barbarians at the gates.
Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including "Locked in the Cabinet," "Reason," "Supercapitalism," "Aftershock," and his latest e-book, "Beyond Outrage." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.
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How Tea Partiers Diss the Framers |
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Sunday, 17 June 2012 10:03 |
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Parry writes: "The Framers of the US Constitution never looked smarter than when the American system of a strong central government is compared to the European Union model, a loose federation staggered by disunity. But the Tea Partiers want a state's rights structure more like Europe's."
Illustration, the signing of the US Constitution. (photo: GenealogyOfConsent.WordPress.com)
How Tea Partiers Diss the Framers
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
17 June 12
 he chaos that is engulfing Europe, where 17 countries share a common currency (the euro) but lack a unified fiscal policy, underscores again the wisdom of America's Framers, who cast aside a states-rights-oriented system in favor of a strong central government, which ironically is now what the Tea Partiers want to dismantle.
The Tea Partiers, with their intense hatred of the federal "guv-mint" and their love of states' rights, fail to appreciate what the Framers actually achieved in 1787 and why they did it. If the Tea Partiers could think clearly, they might look at the crisis in Europe and come away with a deeper appreciation of Washington, both the capital and the Founder.
American unity, contrasted with Europe's disunity, also has helped keep U.S. borrowing rates low by again distinguishing the U.S. dollar as the world's preeminent currency. Some countries and cartels were thinking about switching to the euro, but now have rethought that idea. Foreign capital is surging into U.S. bond markets. The dollar again is king.
Though the Framers of the U.S. Constitution couldn't have anticipated this valuable gift that they passed down to their posterity, their insights into the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation - and the audacious decision by George Washington, James Madison and others to scrap that initial governing structure in 1787 - have served the nation well.
The Articles of Confederation, which governed the United States from 1777 to 1787, emphasized the independence and sovereignty of the 13 original states. Because of that, the young nation lacked a common currency and states could renege on promised financial commitments to the weak central authority.
General Washington, in particular, despised this system because it often left his troops without desperately needed supplies and contributed to near mutinies. After the Revolutionary War ended, Washington also observed how the divisions among the 13 states slowed the country's economic development and invited commercial incursions by European powers.
So, when Madison, as a Virginia legislator, tried to amend the Articles of Confederation to give Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, Washington lent his strong support:
"The proposition in my opinion is so self evident that I confess I am at a loss to discover wherein lies the weight of the objection to the measure. We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of a general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending it to be."
However, Madison's amendment was rejected, leading him to an even more radical idea - seeking a convention ostensibly to consider a series of amendments to the Articles but to which he brought an entirely new governing structure. Once the delegates got to Philadelphia, the doors were closed to the public and the Federalists proposed scrapping the Articles entirely.
Ditching the Articles
After a hot summer of debate and compromise, the new Constitution stripped out all language about the independence and sovereignty of the states and made federal law supreme. The Constitution gave the central government the power to print currency and inserted Madison's commerce idea, granting Congress broad - indeed unlimited - powers to regulate interstate commerce.
The new federal powers were so sweeping that the Constitution stirred intense opposition from the Anti-Federalists who rallied to block ratification.
Dissidents from Pennsylvania's convention delegation wrote: "We dissent … because the powers vested in Congress by this constitution, must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce from their ruins one consolidated government." [See David Wootton, The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers.]
As resistance to Madison's plan spread - and as states began electing delegates to their ratifying conventions - Madison feared that his constitutional masterwork would go down to defeat or be subjected to a second convention that might remove important federal powers like the Commerce Clause.
So, Madison - with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay - began a series of essays, called the Federalist Papers, to counter the fierce (though generally accurate) attacks by the Anti-Federalists against the Constitution's broad assertion of federal power.
Madison's essays in the Federalist Papers veered from a spirited defense of the new system's advantages to a lawyerly downplaying of how drastic the changes were. In Federalist Paper No. 14, Madison envisioned major construction projects under the powers granted by the Commerce Clause.
"The union will be daily facilitated by new improvements," Madison wrote. "Roads will everywhere be shortened, and kept in better order; accommodations for travelers will be multiplied and meliorated; an interior navigation on our eastern side will be opened throughout, or nearly throughout the whole extent of the Thirteen States.
"The communication between the western and Atlantic districts, and between different parts of each, will be rendered more and more easy by those numerous canals with which the beneficence of nature has intersected our country, and which art finds it so little difficult to connect and complete."
The building of canals, as an argument in support of the Commerce Clause and the Constitution, further reflected the commercial desires of key Founders. In 1785, two years before the Constitutional Convention, George Washington started the Potowmack Company, which began the work of digging canals to extend navigable waterways westward where he and other Founders had invested in Ohio and other undeveloped lands.
Thus, the idea of involving the central government in major economic projects - a government-business partnership to create jobs and profits - was there from the beginning. Madison, Washington and other early American leaders saw the Constitution as creating a dynamic system so the young country could grow and overcome the daunting challenges of its vast territory.
Finessing Opposition
At other points in the Federalist Papers, Madison insisted that - except for the Commerce Clause - most of the other changes simply enhanced pre-existing federal powers rather than creating entirely new ones.
In Federalist Paper No. 45, Madison wrote: "If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy, it will be found that the change which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS."
Madison noted: "The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained."
Today's Tea Partiers often cite Madison's comments in No. 45 to portray him as a fellow traveler, someone who opposed a strong central government. They claim he was really an advocate for states' rights.
But that is simply taking Madison's words out of the context. In No. 45, he was simply trying to finesse his Anti-Federalist opponents. Yet, even in playing down what he was doing in the Constitution, Madison acknowledged that he was beefing up of federal powers.
Indeed, the Constitution flipped the relationship between the states and the central government. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states were supreme; under the Constitution, the federal government was dominant.
Yet, by creating a bogus founding narrative, Tea Partiers and the American Right have confused many Americans about the historical reality. Some of the billions of dollars in right-wing propaganda money have spilled into the pockets of "scholars" who have given a shine to the historical revisionism that transformed Madison and other key Framers into anti-government ideologues.
Whenever these right-wingers discuss the Founders, the narrative jumps from the Declaration of Independence to the U.S. Constitution, skipping over the Articles of Confederation. By ignoring the Articles, they can hide what Madison, Washington and the Framers were doing - ridding the country of a dysfunctional states-rights system.
The Tea Partiers also make a big deal about the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
However, again the Tea Partiers miss the point. The Constitution had already granted broad powers to the federal government, so the Tenth Amendment was just part of the effort to salvage the Constitution's ratification, more a sop to the Anti-Federalists than anything substantive.
Some Tea Partiers have challenged the Affordable Care Act as a violation of the Tenth Amendment, without seeming to understand that the law was passed under one of the Constitution's "enumerated powers," the Commerce Clause, which grants unlimited authority to Congress to regulate interstate commerce.
Founding Pragmatism
But the true wisdom of the Framers may have been their pragmatic recognition that a dynamic central government was essential to make a nation as territorially large and as ethnically diverse as the United States work - even in the 18th Century.
Madison, Washington and the other Federalists understood that their hard-won independence could only succeed if the new nation presented a unified front to the more powerful nations of Europe, which were still eager to divide America and pick off territory in the New World.
Two centuries later, the Framers' vision has been vindicated again by the contrast to what is happening in Europe. Despite heightened hostility toward the U.S. government from the Tea Partiers and other states' rights advocates, the United States still has the capability to address its economic troubles through federal action. Thus, the dollar is not facing the crisis that now confronts the euro.
The 17 nations using the euro and the 27 nations in the larger European Union are caught in a monetary trap attributable to the fact that the member countries have followed different economic strategies based on their own sovereignties. Only very limited powers have been ceded to federal authorities in Brussels - and a unified budgetary policy is not one of them.
Thus, Europe has been forced to confront its fiscal crisis in an ad hoc manner, insisting that countries like Greece - that have demonstrated fiscal irresponsibility by spending beyond their means and failing to collect taxes efficiently - must adopt severe austerity measures. But the austerity has only made the economic crisis worse.
Even in the face of this emergency, the European Union has been hobbled by a crippling dissension among its members, leaving effective countermeasures out of reach for the Continent. Some European leaders have warned that only two options remain: greater unity or the eventual splintering of the euro zone, with Greece possibly the first to go.
Though the unity course might make the most sense, it inevitably will encounter historic issues of national sovereignty. Unlike the American states in 1787, which had only recently come into existence as sovereign entities and which had recently banded together to fight a war for independence, many European states have existed as national entities for centuries; they speak different languages; and they have often warred against each other.
In other words, as hard as it was for Madison and Washington to persuade the 13 original states to surrender sovereignty and independence to the central government, it is sure to be an even harder sell among Europeans. Nevertheless, as long as Europe operates within a loose federalism, it will be at a disadvantage to the United States.
Structurally, at least, the U.S. system allows for the kind of unified action that will be needed to build a stronger recovery and confront future problems. The American dilemma, which forced a credit downgrade last summer, is the extreme partisanship and hard-line ideology of the current Republican Party and the Tea Party.
The Tea Partiers continue to advocate a looser union of the United States, restricting the federal government mostly to national security and leaving pretty much everything else to the states, local governments and "the market."
In other words, the Tea Partiers are dissing the constitutional vision of the Framers - the likes of Madison and Washington - who understood that a strong central government was necessary for a strong country.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, "Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush," was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, "Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq" and "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'" are also available there.
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Criminalizing an Entire Generation of Black and Latino Men |
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Sunday, 17 June 2012 09:55 |
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Powell writes: "New York City has a serious problem. Its problem is how it treats Black and Latino males."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks to the media during a news conference. (photo: Reuters)
Criminalizing an Entire Generation of Black and Latino Men
By Kevin Powell, AlterNet
17 June 12
Instead of curtailing gun violence in the inner city, stop-and-frisk has only succeeded in marginalizing young males of color.
 ew York City has a serious problem. Its problem is how it treats black and Latino males - especially black and Latino males of the hiphop era. You have to wonder if the city actually wants us here. If so, why did the New York Police Department, in 2011, stop, question and frisk a record-breaking 684,330 black and Latino males, with 41 percent of those stop-and-frisks being youth between the ages of 14 and 24?
To understand this total of 684,330 - an increase of 14 percent from the 2010 figure - think of it like this: The number of black and Latino males detained by the NYPD in 2011 is more people than the total populations of North Dakota (672,591), Vermont (625,741), Wyoming (563,626), or America's capital, Washington, DC (601,723). Taken together, these detainees would constitute America's 19th largest city, nestled between Detroit, Michigan (717,777) and El Paso, Texas (649,121).
Of those stopped last year, 92 percent were male and 87 percent were African American or Latino. In essence, we are demonizing and criminalizing an entire generation of black and Latino teen boys and young men - many of them already mired in poverty, sub-par schools, and limited employment possibilities - for the rest of their lives. And before they even know what hit them. This is not just a New York problem. This is an American epidemic, a national crisis, where it has become acceptable for local police forces to view black and Latino males in inner cities as menaces to society, first, and as citizens, maybe.
Take the case of Kenton, a young man in his early 20s, freshly arrived in New York City a few years back, and living in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Like many black and Latino males in our great metropolis, Kenton is woefully undereducated, and consequently, underemployed. But he is a good young man, the nephew of a close friend of mine. In between odd jobs, Kenton would sit on the stoop when it was warm outside, taking in his very new environment. He does not use nor sell drugs, is not engaged in any criminal activity whatsoever. He is simply a young black man in America, and apparently, for some police officers, that is a crime in and of itself.
Almost immediately after his arrival in the ‘hood Kenton was repeatedly stopped and frisked by New York police officers. He was patted down in his building corridor, on his building's stoop, and on the sidewalk. Baffled, Kenton would ask the officers, in his faint Trinidad accent, what was going on. Then what has happened to countless black and Latino males, including me when I was a much younger man, happened to Kenton: he was beaten by members of the New York Police Department. To add insult to injury, he was charged with resisting arrest (I've experienced that one, too), and found himself in a jail cell at Rikers Island. His leg was badly hurt by the vicious act of police brutality and he walked with a cane and limp for several months, as he shuffled back and forth to court in an attempt to clear his name and record.
I wish this story was an isolated incident, something that rarely happens in our New York City, in our America. Tragically, it is not. We know that those 684,330 street stops in 2011 represent a more than 600 percent increase since Mayor Bloomberg's first year in office, when officers conducted 97,000 stops. In fact, more than 4 million people have been stopped under this administration's watch.
The official line from Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is that stop-and-frisk is necessary to halt the out-of-control violence in New York's roughest neighborhoods. Well, I live and work as a community leader across the five boroughs, including in my home borough of Brooklyn, and I can tell you, without hesitation, that violence in New York City is higher than ever, whether the violence is being reported or not. Stop-and-frisk has done little to curtail that; instead, it has succeeded in marginalizing yet another generation of young males of color, while habitually contributing to the bad feelings between the black and Latino communities and the New York Police Department.
Statistics reveal that nine out of 10 individuals who are stopped and frisked are never ticketed or arrested. Though by law, police must have "reasonable suspicion" that a target is carrying a weapon in order to frisk them, no gun is retrieved in over 90 percent of the stops. The proportion of gun seizures to stops has fallen significantly - only 780 guns were confiscated last year, not much more than the 604 guns seized in 2003, when officers made 160,851 stops.
That is why it was so shocking and disrespectful for Mayor Bloomberg to show up, this past Sunday, at the First Baptist Full Gospel Church in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn (one of New York City's poorest and most underdeveloped communities) to defend the city's policy of stop-and-frisk. Shocking because the numbers do not lie and it was a week before the massive anti-stop-and-frisk silent march scheduled for this Sunday, Father's Day, organized by a multicultural army of labor leaders, civil rights organizations, elected officials, and many others.
True to his form as an elite businessman who has always been out of touch with the masses of people in New York, the mayor stood before the congregation with an aloofness that has become his trademark. First he referenced Dr. King's historic "I Have a Dream" speech and suggested that gun violence remained a barrier to racial equality in America.
No, Mr. Mayor. Wrong. As a product of the American ghetto the mayor clearly knows nothing about, I feel qualified to tell you that horrific public schools, limited employment opportunities, underdevelopment and gentrification, and the greed of those who prey on the misery and ignorance of poor communities in our nation are the real barriers to racial and economic equality. Guns and gun violence are merely a symptom of a larger problem: a pervasive sense of utter hopelessness, desperation, rage, and, yes, life-long pain caused by our circumstances.
But then Mayor Bloomberg took things a step further and announced that stop-and-frisk would not end. "I believe the practice needs to be mended, not ended," he said, sampling President Bill Clinton's words from a 1995 speech about affirmative action.
I will not say that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a racist. I do not know the man and do not know what is in his heart. What I will say is that it was incredibly arrogant for him to stand in the heart of "black Brooklyn," in a black church on a Sunday, no less, and toss into black churchgoers' faces Dr. King's words, and then justify a practice that is not only inhumane, but also racist in its application.
There is no doubt that many of our people have had enough. This Sunday, Father's Day, we expect over 50,000 people to show up for the silent march to call an end to New York City's stop-and-frisk policy. The tactic of the silent march was first used in 1917, on the heels of World War I, when black soldiers who had fought gallantly for America returned home and were attacked by white Americans, just because. The NAACP organized this first silent march to draw attention to race riots that tore through communities nationwide, and to build mass opposition to lynchings.
Here we are, nearly 100 years later, in an America with its first black president and the kind of racial progress we could not have imagined 100 years ago. Indeed, what is so beautiful and powerful about this Sunday's silent march in protest of stop-and-frisk is the fact that it has been put together by a progressive, multicultural coalition – groups and individuals who have united to say "Enough" to how we treat certain people in our society.
I have been deeply moved by white allies who've sent email after email, pledging their solidarity in this cause. This is not a black issue, or a Latino issue, or a male issue or a hiphop issue, it is a human issue. And until all of us mobilize - as sisters and brothers, as a people concerned about the dignity and humanity of each and every one of us - out-of-touch leaders like Mayor Michael Bloomberg will continue to believe they can defend ugly practices like stop-and-frisk.
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The Democratic Road Not Taken. |
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Saturday, 16 June 2012 15:28 |
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Hart writes: "For more than four decades most Americans identified the Democratic Party with a social contract and safety net, equality of justice and opportunity, and progressive - yes, even liberal - causes. Sometime in the last 30 years the party of progress and change - Emerson's party of hope - became the party of reactionary liberalism."
Former US Senator Gary Hart. (photo: Colbert Report)
The Democratic Road Not Taken.
By Gary Hart, The New York Times
16 June 12
 or more than four decades most Americans identified the Democratic Party with a social contract and safety net, equality of justice and opportunity, and progressive - yes, even liberal - causes. Sometime in the last 30 years the party of progress and change - Emerson’s party of hope - became the party of reactionary liberalism.
This phrase would be an oxymoron were it not for the fact that merely defending social programs, liberal programs, is reactionary. Those programs included Roosevelt’s social safety net, as expanded by Johnson’s Great Society, and the expansion of minority rights and women’s rights after that. They include the framework of environmental laws of the 1960s and ’70s, often supported and occasionally created by what were then moderate Republicans.
But beginning dramatically in the 1970s things changed. Things being: globalization and foreign competition; the decline of the manufacturing base; petroleum-producing nations controlling the price of oil; and the unsustainable costs of cold war military engagements and deployments.
The OPEC oil embargoes of 1974 and 1979 contributed to the combination of stagnation and inflation and to the flattening of household incomes for the first time since the beginning of World War II. Meanwhile, the numbers of people qualifying for assistance under New Deal and Great Society programs increased, as did the overall costs of operating those programs, especially in the area of health care.
The Democratic Party during this period had the opportunity to develop a new economic platform but failed to do so. Having no constructive response to a tide of economic and social revolutions, it clung to the defense of its historic social agenda, which required taxation of working class and middle income people to finance that agenda at a time when their own economic security was endangered. As Todd S. Purdum described this phenomenon recently in Vanity Fair, "the Democrats came across more and more as the crouched consolidators and defenders of past gains." Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein echoed this conclusion in their new book, "It’s Even Worse Than It Looks." The Democrats, they write, "have become the more status-quo oriented, centrist protectors of government."
The Democratic response of triangulation and centrism, essentially splitting the difference between reactionary liberalism and increasingly virulent conservatism, cost the party its identity. A few political figures of my generation, essentially those swept into office by the post-Watergate tidal wave in the mid-1970s, began to fashion an alternative, comprehensive, long-range agenda built around the managed transition of the economic base of the United States from traditional manufacturing to information and communications. In sum, this involved transforming our steel and auto industry into plants that produced high value products at which we could excel; combining a package of tax incentives, advanced scientific research investments, computer education and worker-training programs, information highway acceleration; and developing competitive free trade initiatives (as opposed to the protectionist measures that sought, Canute-like, to hold back the tide of globalization) that would help us maintain a lead in the emerging worlds of science and technology.
The confusion this effort to reposition the Democratic Party caused in the traditional political media of the time is suggested by the fact that within a two- or three-month period I was featured in one magazine as a "neo-liberal" and in another as a "neo-conservative." None of this agenda lent itself to traditional ideological categories.
This economic transformation policy came to be combined in my case with a new foreign policy approach detailed under the label "enlightened engagement" and thereafter with a post-cold-war defense policy based upon carefully detailed military reforms that anticipated the coming transformation of war and the rise of irregular, unconventional conflict. These initiatives were the answer to the clever debate taunt, "where’s the beef?" But they also resisted media insistence on sound-bite compression.
One does not have to agree with the details of these new departures in the three major policy areas of governance - the economy, foreign policy and defense - to admit that they did offer a much more positive response to the revolutions in globalization, information, energy, nationalism, and the transformation of conflict than the "crouched" defense of the status quo and past achievements.
The principal theory of those of my generation who believed every bit as strongly in the social contract and care for the needy as the most ardent New Dealer was that the economic pie must continue to grow to generate the revenues required to finance that contract. To argue that taxes on the working middle class must continue even as incomes contracted is to virtually guarantee a revival of conservatism and anti-government sentiments of the kind that now characterize our politics.
The Democratic Party has not only been the party of hope, the party of compassion and inclusiveness, it has also been the party of innovation. By failing to innovate some 30 years ago, it has permitted itself to lapse into the defensive, if not also reactionary, posture that now plagues it. A well-motivated Democratic president now struggles to move the nation forward against a conservative tide that emerged in the policy vacuum created by Democratic failure to adapt and in a political climate where many people, especially young people, do not know the basic principles of the current Democratic Party or what it stands for.
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