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FOCUS | Social Darwinism or a Decent Society |
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Wednesday, 04 April 2012 13:40 |
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Reich writes: "We are likely to hear a lot more about social Darwinism in the months ahead. It was the conservative creed during the late 19th century ..."
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
Social Darwinism or a Decent Society
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
04 April 12
 he returns aren't all in yet on today's Republican primaries but President Obama didn't wait. He kicked off his 2012 campaign against Mitt Romney with a hard-hitting speech centered on the House Republicans' budget plan - which Romney has enthusiastically endorsed.
That plan, by the way, is the most radical reverse-Robin Hood proposal propounded by any political party in modern America. It would save millionaires at least $150,000 a year in taxes while gutting Medicaid, Medicare, Food Stamps, transportation, child nutrition, college aid, and almost everything else average and lower-income Americans depend on.
Here's what the President had to say about it:
Disguised as a deficit reduction ... it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism.
We are likely to hear a lot more about social Darwinism in the months ahead. It was the conservative creed during the late 19th century - legitimizing a politics in which the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of money on legislators' desks, and justifying an economy in which sweat shops were common, urban slums festered, and a significant portion of America was impoverished.
Social Darwinism encapsulated the idea of survival of the fittest (a phrase Charles Darwin never actually used) as applied to societies as a whole. Its chief apostle in America was Yale Professor William Graham Sumner.
Here's what Sumner had to say in his social-Darwinian classic "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other" (1883):
Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: Liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.
Could there be a better summary of what today's regressive Republicans believe?
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 "The Work of Nations," "Locked in the Cabinet," "Supercapitalism" and his latest book, "AFTERSHOCK: The Next Economy and America's Future." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.
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The Age of Obama: What Went Wrong |
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Tuesday, 03 April 2012 17:38 |
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Jones writes: "But the main problem was that the movement itself was naive and enamored enough that it wanted to be absorbed and directed. Instead of marching on Washington, many of us longed to get marching orders from Washington. We so much wanted to be a part of something beautiful that we forgot how ugly and difficult political change can be."
When President Obama took office progressives were filled with hope. Van Jones looks at what went wrong. (photo: Getty Images)
The Age of Obama: What Went Wrong
By Van Jones, YES! Magazine
03 April 12
Van Jones reflects on his time in - and out of - the White House.
he 2008 campaign was a campfire around which millions gathered. But after the election, it was nobody's job or role to tend that campfire. The White House was focused on the minutiae of passing legislation, not on the magic of leading a movement. Obama For America did the best that it could, but the mass gatherings, the idealism, the expanded notions of American identity, the growing sense of a new national community, all of that disappeared.
It goes without saying that clear thinking and imaginative problem solving are easier in hindsight, away from the battlefield. I was in the White House for six months of 2009, and I was outside of it afterward. I had some of the above insights at the time, but many did not come to me in the middle of the drama and action. Most are the product of deeper reflection, which I was able to do only from a distance.
Nonetheless, the exercise of trying to sort out what might have been and trying to understand why nobody was able to make those things happen in real time has informed this book and shaped my arguments going forward.
Let me speak personally: looking back, I do not think those of us who believed in the agenda of change had to get beaten as badly as we were, after Obama was sworn in. We did not have to leave millions of once-inspired people feeling lost, deceived, and abandoned. We did not have to let our movement die down to the level that it did.
The simple truth is this: we overestimated our achievement in 2008, and we underestimated our opponents in 2009.
We did not lose because the backlashers got so loud. We lost because the rest of us got so quiet. Too many of us treated Obama's inauguration as some kind of finish line, when we should have seen it as just the starting line. Too many of us sat down at the very moment when we should have stood up.
Among those who stayed active, too many of us (myself included) were in the suites when we should have been in the streets. Many "repositioned" our grassroots organizations to be "at the table" in order to "work with the administration." Some of us (like me) took roles in the government. For a while at least, many were so enthralled with the idea of being a part of history that we forgot the courage, sacrifices, and risks that are sometimes required to make history.
That is hard, scary, and thankless work. It requires a willingness to walk with a White House when possible-and to walk boldly ahead of that same White House, when necessary. A few leaders were willing to play that role from the very beginning, but many more were not. Too many activists reverted to acting like either die-hard or disappointed fans of the president, not fighters for the people.
The conventional wisdom is that Obama went too far to the left to accommodate his liberal base. In my view, the liberal base went too far to the center to accommodate Obama. The conventional wisdom says that Obama relied on Congress too much. I say Obama relied on the people too little, and we tried to rely on him too much. Once it became obvious that he was committed to bipartisanship at all costs, even if it meant chasing an opposition party that was moving further to the right every day, progressives needed to reassess our strategies, defend our own interests, and go our own way. It took us way too long to internalize this lesson- and act upon it.
The independent movement for hope and change, which had been growing since 2003, was a goose that was laying golden eggs. But the bird could not be bossed. Caging it killed it. It died around conference tables in Washington, DC, long before the Tea Party got big enough to kick its carcass down the street.
The administration was naοve and hubristic enough to try to absorb and even direct the popular movement that had helped to elect the president. That was part of the problem. But the main problem was that the movement itself was naοve and enamored enough that it wanted to be absorbed and directed. Instead of marching on Washington, many of us longed to get marching orders from Washington. We so much wanted to be a part of something beautiful that we forgot how ugly and difficult political change can be. Somewhere along the line, a bottom-up, largely decentralized phenomenon found itself trying to function as a subcomponent of a national party apparatus. Despite the best intentions of practically everyone involved, the whole process wound up sucking the soul out of the movement.
As a result, when the backlash came, the hope-and-changers had no independent ground on which to stand and fight back. Grassroots activists had little independent ability to challenge the White House when it was wrong and, therefore, a dwindling capacity to defend it when it was right.
The Obama administration had the wrong theory of the movement, and the movement had the wrong theory of the presidency. In America, change comes when we have two kinds of leaders, not just one. We need a president who is willing to be pushed into doing the right thing, and we need independent leaders and movements that are willing to do the pushing. For a few years, Obama's supporters expected the president to act like a movement leader, rather than a head of state.
The confusion was understandable: As a candidate, Obama performed many of the functions of a movement leader. He gave inspiring speeches, held massive rallies, and stirred our hearts. But when he became president, he could no longer play that role.
The expectation that he would or could arose from a fundamental misreading of U.S. history. After all, as head of state, President Lyndon Johnson did not lead the civil rights movement. That was the job of independent movement leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer. There were moments of conflict and cooperation between Johnson and leaders in the freedom struggle, but the alchemy of political power and people power is what resulted in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
As head of state, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not lead the labor movement. That was the job of independent union leaders. Again, the alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the New Deal. As head of state, Woodrow Wilson did not lead the fight to enfranchise women. That was the role of independent movement leaders, such as suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Ida B. Wells. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in women's right to vote. As head of state, Abraham Lincoln did not lead the abolitionists. That was the job of independent movement leaders Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the emancipation of enslaved Africans. As head of state, Richard Nixon did not lead the environmental movement. That was the job of various environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, and other leaders, like those whom writer Rachel Carson inspired. Once again it was the alchemy of political power and people power that resulted in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The biggest reason for our frustrations and failures is that we have not yet understood that both of these are necessary-and they are distinct. We already have our head of state who arguably is willing to be pushed. We do not yet have a strong enough independent movement to do the pushing. The bulk of this book makes the case for how and why we should build one.
Van Jones, a former contributing editor to YES! Magazine and a former adviser to President Obama, is the co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for bottom-up, people-powered innovations to help fix the US economy. He is also the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and Green for All.
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FOCUS: George W. Bush, Barack Obama's Best Friend |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5903"><span class="small">Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Tuesday, 03 April 2012 12:13 |
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Intro: "The GOP wants to erase George W. Bush's ruinous presidency from the nation's memory, but the Dems shouldn't let it happen. Michael Tomasky on the gift that keeps on giving."
Former President Bush hugs President Obama at his inauguration. (photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom))
George W. Bush, Barack Obama's Best Friend
By Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
03 April 12
The GOP wants to erase George W. Bush's ruinous presidency from the nation's memory, but the Dems shouldn't let it happen. Michael Tomasky on the gift that keeps on giving.
 o George W. Bush, reports Politico, is laying low these days, avoiding the spotlight that shone briefly on his father and his brother Jeb recently as they endorsed Mitt Romney's candidacy. This whole subject of the post-Bush GOP and its relationship to No. 43 is pretty fascinating. Like a crazy, drunk uncle shooting an epileptic dog because he has fleas, the current GOP shuns him for all the wrong reasons. Since the GOP will presumably spend the next few months trying to pretend the man never existed, Democrats ought to remind people that he did. In fact, the Democratic Party should spend the next 20 years talking about Bush, turning him into the new Jimmy Carter and making the memory of those eight squalid years quadrennially fresh to everyone with living memory of them for as long as is humanly possible.
Bush, Politico notes, "is in a self-imposed political exile." Perhaps predictably, Ari Fleischer pops up to note that that's a lowdown dirty shame because Bush "kept us safe" through a perilous time and oversaw a booming economy in between two recessions. These claims aren't even worth spitting out one's cornflakes over, let alone rebutting. But merely as a point of information, people should know that the economy didn't exactly boom from 2002 to 2008, except of course for the 1 percent of the population the policies were designed to aid. Bush's job-growth record was the worst of any president going back to the Depression. The table you can see here goes back to Truman. Obviously, Roosevelt grew jobs at a fairly significant rate, since unemployment under him went from 24 percent to essentially zero during the height of the war. So you have to go back, I'd suppose, to Herbert Hoover to find someone who did worse than Bush's .01 percent growth in jobs per year.
Yes, Obama's jobs record is worse - for now. But at least in Obama's case you have a guy who really did come into office at the start of a major recession, the worst in 80 years. Since the recession eased and ended, nearly 3.3 million jobs have been added - meaning that if he has a second term, he will in all likelihood leave Dubya eating some of that famous Texas dust. In any case, Americans still pin the shattered economy on Bush. A poll released only last week from CNN showed 56 percent blame Bush, while just 29 percent finger Obama.
The fact that we're still clawing our way out of the darkness that Bush set upon us is the reason he is still relevant. Recently, Romney made him even more so, by insisting to an audience that it was Bush and Hank Paulson who actually saved the country from a depression. Beyond that, Romney's campaign staff and advisers are so full of Bush people - on political strategy, the economy, foreign policy, and other areas - that one former Bush speechwriter (who is not on the Romney bus) has called it "a restoration of the Bush establishment."
And yet, even as Romney makes those moves, which only about 2 percent of the population will know about, the party will obviously try to distance itself from Bush publicly. What in the world are they going to do with him at the convention? Ex-presidents are supposed to get nice speaking gigs. Will Bush? To say what? That we must let the free market work, the way it worked on his watch in September 2008? That we must be vigilant against the terrorists, the way he was while Osama bin Laden was living a few heaves of a baseball away from a Pakistani officer-training facility? That we must protect the homeland, as he did in New Orleans? It's hard to imagine what kind of speech he could deliver. It wouldn't be shocking if Bush is reduced (if he would accept) to some ceremonial function, some transparent and treacly soft-focus attempt to fool Latinos, since Bush was among that small handful of Republicans known not to actively hate brown people.
Democrats really need to keep Bush in the frame here. And Dick Cheney. I know everyone says "but elections are about the future." Well, maybe. But the Bush years were so uniquely bad, so plainly and emphatically horrible on so many fronts for such a vast majority of citizens, that to fail to mention the era would just be missing a free whack. It would be the equivalent of someone trying to slag Halle Berry without mentioning Catwoman. Very often, people - especially Democratic people - overthink politics and worry too much about how people are going to react. But this one is simple. Bush really just stank up the joint for eight years. Mention him, and the pundit class might bray about it, but most people will react by thinking: Yeah, that guy really just stank up the joint for eight years.
I often wonder about what Bush himself thinks. Does he know, deep down, what a failure he was? He must. We all tell ourselves stories that try to put a good face on things. And any president or governor can come up with a list of good deeds accomplished, so maybe he leans on those, waiting patiently for the day when, because people's memories are short and because some rich Texas buddies undoubtedly stand ready to pour millions into a PR-rehabilitation campaign when they sense the time is right, he can reemerge in the public eye, smirk intact, smiting Democrats like in the good old days of 2002. Democrats must make sure that that rehabilitation never, ever happens.
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Park Slope Co-op's Israel Boycott Vote Pits Human Rights Against Hummus |
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Friday, 30 March 2012 09:52 |
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Intro: "It was an evening that confirmed stereotypes and resisted categorization: more than 1,600 members of Brooklyn's Park Slope Food Coop, one of the oldest and largest co-operative markets in the US, gathered last night to vote on whether to hold a referendum on banning goods from Israel."
Shoppers bag their groceries at the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn. (photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
Park Slope Co-op's Israel Boycott Vote Pits Human Rights Against Hummus
By Brian Braiker, Guardian UK
30 March 12
 t was an evening that confirmed stereotypes and resisted categorisation: more than 1,600 members of Brooklyn's Park Slope Food Coop, one of the oldest and largest co-operative markets in the US, gathered last night to vote on whether to hold a referendum on banning goods from Israel.
Put another way: a members-only grocery store held a vote on whether to hold a vote. In the end, members overwhelmingly voted against holding a referendum, meaning the co-op will not ban the sale of a handful of Israeli goods such as Sabra hummus, vegan marshmallows and a popular drinks carbonation system.
Rather mundane news in itself. But the 39-year-old co-op is a cultural touchstone in Brooklyn: a rich source of affordable organic produce for its 16,300 members, and a rich source of earnest hippies to ridicule for non-members. In recent months, the simmering politics of the Middle East, combined with the simmering seriousness of many co-op members, have fuelled tremendous tension in the community, even leading prominent New York politicians to weigh in on the proposed boycott.
"Why any of this has anything to do with selling food, I don't know," New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference before the vote.
Of course, the food we choose to eat has always had political undertones, from Upton Sinclair's day to Fast Food Nation. (It also didn't hurt publicity that approximately 87% of New York's working journalists live in Park Slope your correspondent, a co-op member in good standing for nearly a decade, included.) The meeting itself was, amazingly, a momentary trending topic on Twitter.
Things got off to a start 45 minutes after the scheduled 7pm kickoff. Hundreds of people were still queuing up outside Brooklyn technical high school, where the meeting was held. "I bet this many people won't come to the 40th anniversary party next year," joked one co-op staffer.
Pamphleteers, protesters and reporters combed the sidewalk, where a diverse queue stretched around the brownstone-lined block. Among them was Jessica Rodriguez, 28, who had come out in support of the boycott. "I feel it's a human rights issue," she said. "Israeli goods are based on the exploitation of Palestinian people."
The boycott she was rooting for is part of an international movement called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which is trying to force the Israeli government to change its policies toward Palestinians.
But many in the audience felt the co-op was no place to hold a foreign policy debate. "I don't approve of all of Israel's policies, but I don't approve of a lot of policies of other countries whose stuff we sell," said a very pregnant Robyn Lazara, pointing to the fact that the co-op sells goods from China, which itself has a complicated relationship with human rights.
Carl Arnold, chair of the board of directors, called the meeting to order with a plea for "no demagoguery. But be as passionate as you want."
There was no shortage of either. The pro-BDS lobby played a video by Palestinian Queers for BDS called It Is Your Business. They made an eloquent appeal to the common humanity of all people, and pointed out that BDS has the support of the bishop Desmond Tutu and Brian Eno.
When the floor was thrown open to the audience, members took turns making comments that ranged from passionate to goofy, from endearing to inflammatory to completely deranged. The crowd was repeatedly told not to clap, but did so anyway. Those who didn't waggled their fingers in a silent Occupy-Wall-Street-style show of solidarity.
Some highlights:
One self-identified Israeli woman said: "It fills my heart with happiness to see two thousand people who want to see peace in Israel and Palestine
But this feels like a call to war." Another man cannily read anti-BDS quotes from Noam Chomsky.
Joe Holtz, a co-op founder and the current general manager, reminded people that the original spirit of the co-op was about togetherness, not political debate. "It's so clear that this is ripping people apart," he said.
Others said that confronting that tension was a necessary challenge. The man who put it most colourfully said: "This doesn't feel good right now, but neither does an enema. We need to clean house." Uhhh
"Belonging to the co-op means belonging to justice. And injustice anywhere is an attack on justice everywhere," said one young woman, who never quite made it clear which way she was leaning. A midwife announced that she had delivered babies on both sides of this argument, and that "peace on earth begins at birth".
In one particularly tense moment, a member's assertion that Israel engages in ethnic cleansing drew irate shouts and hisses from pro-Israel audience members, who were in turn shushed.
One young man announced that he loves hummus so much that he has a CD about it. Also in the musical spirit, one young lady quoted the Beastie Boys, saying she would rather be fighting for her "right to party".
"I would like to thank the BDS people for introducing me to the Israeli products," said one woman, who went on to sing the praises of the vegan marshmallows.
After about two hours of debate, the crowd voted on paper ballots final tally: 1,005 votes against a referendum to 653 in favour and began filing out of the auditorium.
But the general meeting had other items on its agenda. A woman got on stage to present a video on an unrelated topic. "I've never had an audience this big before!" she beamed, as hundreds of people streamed out into the brisk Brooklyn night.
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resident Obama's fruitless three-year search for compromise with the Republicans ended in 
