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Contemplating the Supremes |
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Wednesday, 19 October 2011 18:51 |
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Degan writes: "There are four whores for the plutocracy who now reside on the Supreme Court (all appointees of either Reagan or the two Bushes). You know who I'm talking about - John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Uncle Thomas. Then there is the 'swing vote', Anthony Kennedy, who far too often sides with the extremists on the far right. Some of them, like uber-brute Scalia, are not unknown for their political activism."
US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. (photo: Getty Images)
Contemplating the Supremes
By Tom Degan, LA Progressive
19 October 11
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
- Louis Brandeis
 ustice Brandeis was a pretty astute guy from everything I've been able to discern. He understood - in a way that five present-day members of the Supreme Court do not - the dangers connected with the concentration wealth. The Democrats have been falling over each other in recent weeks, desperate to come up with reasons why the American people should send President Obama back to the White house next year. Incredibly, they have ignored the most blatantly obvious one. It's time we have a serious discussion regarding the ramifications of a Republican victory in 2012 - and what it would mean for the future of this Republic if even one more right wing extremist is appointed to sit on that court.
First things first: The Roberts Court sucks. I'm not giving away any state secrets by saying this. Corporations are people? Money is free speech? This is the worst collection of guys on that bench (I exclude the women for obvious reasons) since the bunch that gave up Plessy vs. Ferguson - or even the Dred Scott decision of 1856. And I tell you this with no small amount of embarrassment. Incredibly, the Chief Justice who wrote that despicable ruling, Roger Brooke Taney, is an ancestor of mine. I'll be honest with you, this is not a fact we do much bragging about within my family. What an jerk!
There are four whores for the plutocracy who now reside on the Supreme Court (all appointees of either Reagan or the two Bushes). You know who I'm talking about - John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Uncle Thomas. Then there is the "swing vote", Anthony Kennedy, who far too often sides with the extremists on the far right. Some of them, like uber-brute Scalia, are not unknown for their political activism. William O. Douglas was a Roosevelt appointee and the most liberal justice in the history of that court. He served as a judge from 1939 to 1975. After reading in the papers about the latest progressive crusade, he would wistfully tell his clerks, "Oh, if I could only get involved with this one." But he knew that to do so - while it may not have been illegal - it would have been most decidedly unethical.
In his lifetime Judge Douglas was also viewed as the most controversial Supreme Court justice in history. There was even an attempt made to impeach him that was led by then Congressman Gerald R. Ford. Say what you wand about the guy, he had class.
And then there is the justice who is in a class by himself: Uncle Thomas. My knowledge of the history of the Supreme Court is not quite as detailed as I would like it to be (I'm working on that). But from what I do know, Clarence Thomas is the most overtly corrupt member of that body in its two hundred-plus-year history. He has been caught red-handed receiving certain "gifts" from certain billionaires seeking influence. I imagine influencing Clarence Thomas is not that difficult a thing to do. In addition to that, he has so many close ties with with conservative groups and causes that it is difficult to catalog them all.
His wife Ginny makes her living and her name as an advocate for a group called "Liberty Central". Her half-witted hubby can always be counted on to vote on cases - no matter how insignificant - in a matter that appeases the Mrs. In an article from almost a year ago that appeared on the Huffington Post, Jacob Heilbrunn perceptively wrote:
"For the other members of the Court, however, it must be painful to watch the shenanigans of his wife, who is either witless or gratuitously nasty, or, more likely, both, tarnish the institution, which is already becoming dangerously politicized by its right-wing members, who appear to shrink at nothing when it comes to engaging in judicial activism, as long as it fits their own political predilections."
If I were a Democrat in Congress, I'd be working overtime to get the wheels in motion that would lead to impeachment proceedings bought against Clarence Thomas. He's not only an embarrassment to the judicial branch of our government, he's as contemptible as a person who does not molest small children in his spare time can be. There is a link at the bottom of this piece that details my feelings about Uncle Thomas.
If the next president is a Republican and is able to make one or (God forbid) more appointments to that court, it will ultimately lead to the end of democracy in America. Does that sound a tad paranoid on my part? Maybe it is. Let's all vote Republican next year and see what happens.
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The Need for a Progressive Alternative |
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Tuesday, 18 October 2011 10:40 |
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Robert Reich writes: "This is where the inchoate Occupy Wall Street movement could come in. What's needed isn't just big ideas. It's people fulminating for them - making enough of a ruckus that the ideas can't be ignored. They become part of the debate because the public demands it."
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
The Need for a Progressive Alternative
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
18 October 11
The meagerness of the Republican debates, the smallness of the president's solutions, and the need for a Progressive alternative.
 epublicans are debating again tomorrow night. And once again, Americans will hear the standard regressive litany: government is bad, Medicare and Medicaid should be cut, "Obamacare" is killing the economy, undocumented immigrants are taking our jobs, the military should get more money, taxes should be lowered on corporations and the rich, and regulations should be gutted.
Four years ago the most widely-watched TV debate among Republican aspirants attracted 3.2 million viewers. This year it's almost twice that number. And for every viewer assume a multiplier effect as he or she shares what's heard with friends and family.
Americans are listening more intently this time around because they're hurting and they want answers. But the answers they're getting from Republican candidates - tripping over themselves trying to appeal to hard-core regressives - are the wrong ones.
The correct ones aren't being aired.
That's partly because there's no primary contest in the Democratic party. So Republicans automatically get loads of free broadcast time to air their regressive nonsense while the Democrats get none.
But even if the President had equal time, the debate about what to do about the crisis would still be frighteningly narrow.
That's because the President's answers don't nearly match up to the magnitude of the crisis.
Without bold alternatives, Americans desperate for big solutions are attracted to bold crackpot ideas like Herman Cain's "9-9-9" proposal, which would raise taxes on the poor and cut them for the rich.
This is where the inchoate Occupy Wall Street movement could come in. What's needed isn't just big ideas. It's people fulminating for them - making enough of a ruckus that the ideas can't be ignored. They become part of the debate because the public demands it.
The biggest thing the President has proposed is a plan to create 2 million jobs. But that's not nearly big enough. Today, 14 million Americans are out of work, and 11 million more are working part-time who'd rather be working full time.
The nation needs a real jobs plan, one of sufficient size and scope to do the job - including a WPA and a Civilian Conservation Corps, to put the millions of long-term unemployed and young unemployed to work rebuilding America.
I'm not criticizing the President. Without energized, mobilized, and organized progressives, even the best people in Washington can't overcome the monied interests.
For example, America's long-term debt needs to be addressed, but not the way the President is doing it. He wants to lop $4 trillion off the budget over the next ten years. This almost certainly means sacrificing education, job training, food stamps, and everything else now listed in the so-called "non-defense discretionary" budget, as well as cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.
What about halving the military budget instead? It doubled after 9/11, and military contractors are intent on keeping it in the stratosphere. So is Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Result: Defense cuts this size won't be on the table unless progressives vociferously demand it.
And what about really raising taxes on the rich to finance what the nation should be doing to create a world-class workforce with world-class wages?
Here again, the President's proposal is paltry compared to what should be done. He wants to raise taxes on the rich by ending the Bush tax cut for incomes over $250,000 and limiting certain deductions.
Yet income and wealth are now more concentrated than they've been in 70 years. The top 1 percent gets over 20 percent of total income and holds over 35 percent of national wealth; the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans put together.
Meanwhile, effective tax rates on the rich are lower than they've been in three decades.
We need to push for higher marginal taxes on the top, and more brackets. Incomes of more than $5 million should be subject to a 70 percent rate. (The top marginal rate was never below 70 percent between 1940 and 1980.) And these rates should apply to all income regardless of source, including capital gains.
This would allow for a bigger Earned Income Tax Credit (that is, a wage subsidy) for lower-income workers. And lower taxes on middle-income workers.
There should be a 2 percent annual surtax on all fortunes over $7 million. This would only hit the richest half a percent of Americans at the very top of the heap. And would yield $70 billion a year - enough to improve our schools and make college affordable to everyone.
And a tax on financial transactions. Even a tiny one of one-half of one percent would generate $200 billion a year. That's enough to make a major contribution toward early childhood education for every American toddler.
The President's healthcare law is a good start but it's not the solution, either. We need Medicare for all. Medicare has lower administrative costs than private insurers. And it has the bargaining heft to reduce drug and hospital costs as well as shift the system from fee-for-services to payments for healthy outcomes.
The President's financial reforms are also a beginning but they're way too weak to stop Wall Street depredations. (At this moment, for example, no one even knows the exposure of Wall Street banks to European banks and, through them, Europe's debt crisis.)
We need to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act and break up the biggest banks.
The President has talked about fixing Social Security by raising the retirement age. But the best way to ensure the program's long-term solvency is to lift the ceiling on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes (now $106,800.) Yet this, too, is off the table.
Workers also need more bargaining power. The ratio of corporate profits to wages is now higher than it's been since before the Great Depression. Workers should be able to form unions through a simple up-or-down vote, without delay.
None of this is possible without strong and consistent pressure from the progressive side. Regressives are setting the agenda.
The President isn't even talking about the environment any more. Yet climate change is a reality, and our survival depends on reducing carbon emissions.
We should tax carbon-based fuels, and divide the revenues equally among all Americans. It's the best way to get us to switch to non-carbon fuels, and stimulate research and development of them. And by dividing the revenues, the typical American would come out ahead even though some prices would increase.
Finally, we need public financing of elections and strict limits on so-called "independent" expenditures. Corporations should have to get the approval of every shareholder before spending corporate funds - the shareholders' money - on politics.
I have no idea whether the Occupiers will morph into the kind of progressive force necessary to put these ideas into play. But if Americans stand together and demand real reform, we can have a real national debate in 2012.
Tomorrow's Republican debate may attract lots of viewers. It need not capture their minds.
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 Evangelical Rejection of Reason |
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Tuesday, 18 October 2011 10:32 |
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Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens write: "The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, 'The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.' But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced."
Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks to the first general session of the 2010 Republican Party of Texas Convention in Dallas. (photo: LM Otero/AP)
The Evangelical Rejection of Reason
By Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens, The New York Times
18 October 11
 he Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons, a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians.
The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.
Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation. Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary.
Fundamentalism appeals to evangelicals who have become convinced that their country has been overrun by a vast secular conspiracy; denial is the simplest and most attractive response to change. They have been scarred by the elimination of prayer in schools; the removal of nativity scenes from public places; the increasing legitimacy of abortion and homosexuality; the persistence of pornography and drug abuse; and acceptance of other religions and of atheism.
In response, many evangelicals created what amounts to a "parallel culture," nurtured by church, Sunday school, summer camps and colleges, as well as publishing houses, broadcasting networks, music festivals and counseling groups. Among evangelical leaders, Ken Ham, David Barton and James C. Dobson have been particularly effective orchestrators - and beneficiaries - of this subculture.
Mr. Ham built his organization, Answers in Genesis, on the premise that biblical truth trumps all other knowledge. His Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Ky., contrasts "God's Word," timeless and eternal, with the fleeting notions of "human reason." This is how he knows that the earth is 10,000 years old, that humans and dinosaurs lived together, and that women are subordinate to men. Evangelicals who disagree, like Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, are excoriated on the group's Web site. (In a recent blog post, Mr. Ham called us "wolves" in sheep's clothing, masquerading as Christians while secretly trying to destroy faith in the Bible.)
Mr. Barton heads an organization called WallBuilders, dedicated to the proposition that the founders were evangelicals who intended America to be a Christian nation. He has emerged as a highly influential Republican leader, a favorite of Mr. Perry, Mrs. Bachmann and members of the Tea Party. Though his education consists of a B.A. in religious education from Oral Roberts University and his scholarly blunders have drawn criticism from evangelical historians like John Fea, Mr. Barton has seen his version of history reflected in everything from the Republican Party platform to the social science curriculum in Texas.
Mr. Dobson, through his group Focus on the Family, has insisted for decades that homosexuality is a choice and that gay people could "pray away" their unnatural and sinful orientation. A defender of spanking children and of traditional roles for the sexes, he has accused the American Psychological Association, which in 2000 disavowed reparative therapy to "cure" homosexuality, of caving in to gay pressure.
Charismatic leaders like these project a winsome personal testimony as brothers in Christ. Their audiences number in the tens of millions. They pepper their presentations with so many Bible verses that their messages appear to be straight out of Scripture; to many, they seem like prophets, anointed by God.
But in fact their rejection of knowledge amounts to what the evangelical historian Mark A. Noll, in his 1994 book, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind," described as an "intellectual disaster." He called on evangelicals to repent for their neglect of the mind, decrying the abandonment of the intellectual heritage of the Protestant Reformation. "The scandal of the evangelical mind," he wrote, "is that there is not much of an evangelical mind."
There are signs of change. Within the evangelical world, tensions have emerged between those who deny secular knowledge, and those who have kept up with it and integrated it with their faith. Almost all evangelical colleges employ faculty members with degrees from major research universities - a conduit for knowledge from the larger world. We find students arriving on campus tired of the culture-war approach to faith in which they were raised, and more interested in promoting social justice than opposing gay marriage.
Scholars like Dr. Collins and Mr. Noll, and publications like Books & Culture, Sojourners and The Christian Century, offer an alternative to the self-anointed leaders. They recognize that the Bible does not condemn evolution and says next to nothing about gay marriage. They understand that Christian theology can incorporate Darwin's insights and flourish in a pluralistic society.
Americans have always trusted in God, and even today atheism is little more than a quiet voice on the margins. Faith, working calmly in the lives of Americans from George Washington to Barack Obama, has motivated some of America's finest moments. But when the faith of so many Americans becomes an occasion to embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas, we must not be afraid to speak out, even if it means criticizing fellow Christians.
Karl W. Giberson is a former professor of physics, and Randall J. Stephens is an associate professor of history, both at Eastern Nazarene College. They are the authors of "The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age."
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Why OWS Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right |
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Monday, 17 October 2011 17:28 |
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Matt Taibbi writes: "All of which is a roundabout way of saying one thing: beware of provocateurs on both sides of the aisle. This movement is going to attract many Breitbarts, of both the left and right variety. They're going to try to identify fake leaders, draw phony battle lines, and then herd everybody back into the same left-right cage matches of old. Whenever that happens, we just have to remember not to fall for the trap. When someone says this or that person speaks for OWS, don't believe it. This thing is bigger than one or two or a few people, and it isn't part of the same old story."
Matt Taibbi at Skylight Studio in New York, 10/27/10. (photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
Why OWS Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
17 October 11
 was surprised, amused and annoyed all at once when I found out yesterday that some moron-provocateur linked to notorious right-wing cybergoon Andrew Breitbart had infiltrated
a series of private e-mail lists – including one that I have been participating in – and was using them to run an exposé on the supposed behind-the-scenes marionetting of the OWS movement by the liberal media.
According to various web reports, what happened was that a private "cyber-security researcher" named Thomas Ryan somehow accessed a series of email threads between various individuals and dumped them all on BigGovernment.com, Breitbart's site. Gawker is also reporting that Ryan forwarded some of these emails to the FBI and the NYPD.
I have no idea whether those email exchanges are the same as the ones I was involved with. But what is clear is that some private email exchanges between myself and a number of other people – mostly financial journalists and activists who know each other from having covered the crisis from the same angle in the last three years, people like Barry Ritholz, Dylan Ratigan, former regulator William Black, Glenn Greenwald and myself – ended up being made public.
There is nothing terribly interesting in any of these exchanges. Most all of the things written were things all of us ended up saying publicly in our various media forums. In my case, what I wrote was almost an exact copy of my Rolling Stone article last week, suggesting a list of demands for the movement. I said I thought having demands was a good idea and listed a few things I thought demonstrators could focus on. Others disagreed, and there was a friendly back-and-forth.
So I was amazed to wake up this morning and find that various right-wing sites had used these exchanges to build a story about a conspiracy of left-wing journalists. "Busted. Emails Show Liberal Media & Far Left Cranks Conspired With #OWS Protesters to Craft Message," wrote one.
Breitbart's site, BigGovernment.com, went further, saying that the Occupy Washington D.C. movement is "working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement."
The list, the site wrote, include:
...well known names such as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi [sic] who both are actively participating; involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear.
Aside from the appalling fact of these assholes stealing private emails and bragging about it in public, the whole story is completely absurd. None of the people on the list, as far as I know, are actually organizers of OWS - I know I'm not one, anyway.
In fact, I was surprised by the entire characterization of this list as being some kind of official wing of OWS. I thought it was just a bunch of emails from friends of mine, talking about what advice we would give protesters, if any of them asked, which in my case anyway they definitely did not.
This whole episode to me underscores an unpleasant development for OWS. There is going to be a fusillade of attempts from many different corners to force these demonstrations into the liberal-conservative blue-red narrative.
This will be an effort to transform OWS from a populist and wholly non-partisan protest against bailouts, theft, insider trading, self-dealing, regulatory capture and the market-perverting effect of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks into something a little more familiar and less threatening, i.e. a captive "liberal" uprising that the right will use to whip up support and the Democrats will try to turn into electoral energy for 2012.
Tactically, what we'll see here will be a) people firmly on the traditional Democratic side claiming to speak for OWS, and b) people on the right-Republican side attempting to portray OWS as a puppet of well-known liberals and other Democratic interests.
On the Democratic side, we've already seen a lot of this behavior, particularly in the last week or so. Glenn Greenwald wrote about this a lot last week, talking about how Obama has already made it clear that he is "on the same side as the Wall Street protesters" and that the Democratic Party, through the DCCC (its House fundraising arm), has jumped into the fray by circulating a petition seeking 100,000 party supporters to affirm that “I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”(I wonder how firmly the DCCC was standing with OWS sentiment back when it was pushing for the bailouts and the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act).
We've similarly heard about MoveOn.org jumping into the demonstrations and attempting, seemingly, to assume leadership roles in the movement.
All of this is the flip side of the coin that has people like Breitbart trying to frame OWS as a socialist uprising and a liberal media conspiracy. The aim here is to redraw the protests along familiar battle lines.
The Rush Limbaughs of the world are very comfortable with a narrative that has Noam Chomsky, MoveOn and Barack Obama on one side, and the Tea Party and Republican leaders on the other. The rest of the traditional media won't mind that narrative either, if it can get enough "facts" to back it up. They know how to do that story and most of our political media is based upon that Crossfire paradigm of left-vs-right commentary shows and NFL Today-style team-vs-team campaign reporting.
What nobody is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page, railing against incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington. The reality is that Occupy Wall Street and the millions of middle Americans who make up the Tea Party are natural allies and should be on the same page about most of the key issues, and that's a story our media won't want to or know how to handle.
Take, for instance, the matter of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks, which people like me and Barry Ritholz have focused on as something that could be a key issue for OWS. These gigantic institutions have put millions of ordinary people out of their homes thanks to a massive fraud scheme for which they were not punished, owing to their enormous influence with government and their capture of the regulators.
This is an issue for the traditional "left" because it's a classic instance of overweening corporate power - but it's an issue for the traditional "right" because these same institutions are also the biggest welfare bums of all time, de facto wards of the state who sucked trillions of dollars of public treasure from the pockets of patriotic taxpayers from coast to coast.
Both traditional constituencies want these companies off the public teat and back swimming on their own in the cruel seas of the free market, where they will inevitably be drowned in their corruption and greed, if they don't reform immediately. This is a major implicit complaint of the OWS protests and it should absolutely strike a nerve with Tea Partiers, many of whom were talking about some of the same things when they burst onto the scene a few years ago.
The banks know this. They know they have no "natural" constituency among voters, which is why they spend such fantastic amounts of energy courting the mainstream press and such huge sums lobbying politicians on both sides of the aisle.
The only way the Goldmans and Citis and Bank of Americas can survive is if they can suck up popular political support indirectly, either by latching onto such vague right-populist concepts as "limited government" and "free-market capitalism" (ironic, because none of them would survive ten minutes without the federal government's bailouts and other protections) or, alternatively, by presenting themselves as society's bulwark against communism, lefty extremism, Noam Chomsky, etc.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying one thing: beware of provocateurs on both sides of the aisle. This movement is going to attract many Breitbarts, of both the left and right variety. They're going to try to identify fake leaders, draw phony battle lines, and then herd everybody back into the same left-right cage matches of old. Whenever that happens, we just have to remember not to fall for the trap. When someone says this or that person speaks for OWS, don't believe it. This thing is bigger than one or two or a few people, and it isn't part of the same old story.
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