This appalling story of a woman MoveOn activist in KY being grabbed, pushed down to the cement, and having her head kicked by a Rand Paul supporter, as terrible as it is, only becomes the latest in a long line of political violence in the past few years. From relatively isolated incidents to ones even more violent and troubling, there's a growing pattern here, and as someone who reveres American democracy, I find it quite frightening. Here's just a few examples from the current era:
Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller hires a group tied to a paramilitary militia to do security for him, and his paratroopers assault and handcuff a citizen journalist just trying to get a question answered.
a bullet is shot through Rep. Grijalva's campaign office window, and obscene threats are delivered to his ofc as well.
Rep. Perriello's gas line to his house was cut.
Republican congressional candidate Allen West using a motorcycle gang known for violent criminal activity for security, and then gang members actually harassed and bullied a Democratic staffer trying to videotape a public event.
Vandalism and assassination threats occur at offices of Congressional members during the health care fight.
a doctor who performs abortions in KS is brutally murdered while coming out of his church on a Sunday morning.
a guard at the Holocaust Museum is murdered by an anti-Semitic racist stoked by listening to Limbaugh and Beck.
a lunatic also stirred up by Glenn Beck shows about the Tides Foundation is stopped on his way to murder people at the Tides office in San Francisco.
These are just the actual acts of violence. In the meantime, we have people coming to town hall meetings and Presidential rallies with assault weapons, Republican Senate candidates talking openly of having to use "Second Amendment means" in case regular politics doesn't work, Republican Governors (both Rick Perry and Sarah Palin) meeting with secessionist groups with ties to racist leaders. Rand Paul's wimpy statement about civility is only the latest in Republicans' utter unwillingness to clearly condemn violent acts or rhetoric on the part of way too many of their supporters.
The sad thing is that all this violent talk and action, along with the cowardly acceptance of it by the political party benefiting, is a terrible reliving of American history too many times over. When lynchings and church bombings and the brutal murders and beatings of civil rights activists were going on in the South during the civil rights movement era, politicians in the South rarely said a word to condemn or even restrain their citizens. When an abolitionist Senator, Charles Sumner, was caned by a Senator Preston Brooks from South Carolina, he was cheered and congratulated throughout the South. When the staff at abortion clinics have been murdered several times over the years, "pro-life" politicians have fallen strangely silent way too often.
If Republican politicians don't strongly condemn the thuggery of way too many of their followers, they share in the blame. When they ratchet up their own rhetoric, and talk about second amendment solutions and the President being friends with terrorists, they share in the blame. Democracy is premised on us being able to freely and vigorously debate the issues, and on those who win elections governing the way they believe, but our entire democracy is at risk if violence becomes just another standard operating procedure and isn't swiftly and strongly condemned. Republicans who welcome paramilitary militia members and people with ties to violent racist organizations do so at not only their own peril, but our entire way of government.
Tax day has brought us a nice crop of correctives to rightwing tax delusions--at least in the blogosphere. But what about the deeper background assumption that regulation is bad and "free market" economics is not just good, but, natural and what God intended?
Well, God's already weighed in pretty clearly what with that whole camel & the eye of the needle thing, at least from where I sit. Get rich in this life, burn for eternity in the next. It's the ultimate short-term investment strategy, I guess.
But as for natural, well, there's nothing more natural for human beings than making stuff up that didn't exist in nature before. Markets are one such thing. And market regulations are another. And, historically, you can't really have one without the other. Markets are made by regulating behavior, starting with the creation of special times and places when people got together to barter and trade--and later, once money was created (another regulating activity) to buy and sell.
So that leaves us with good. And a quick look at the Wikipedia page listing US recessions makes it perfectly clear just how chaotic and uncertain our economy was before the New Deal financial regulations were put into place. I condensed Wikipedia's information, and did some sub-totalling to make things clearer. Wikipedia divides this history into three large time periods. Although the first was dominated by the Federalist's central bank, and the second was largely a private affair under relatively loose and diverse state regulation, recessions were quite commonplace in both of them, as can be seen by direct inspection or by looking at the summary figures showing that the US spent more than 40% of the time in recession during these idyllic pre-New Deal periods:
[Note: the times in this period are mostly approximate and the total months are about 10% to0 high as a result, but there's no reason to think that there's a bias in the figures. The figures are more exact in the next period--on the flip--and the percentage of time in recession is only slightly different, slightly higher in fact.]
I take history very seriously, have studied it closely, and I am not given to hyperbole (as awful as George W. Bush was, for example, I still hesitate to join the many historians who call him the worst President ever, because James Buchanan was truly horrendous). But with Teddy Kennedy, I don't think there is much debate.
There were other Senators who served a very long time and have many notable achievements to their credit. There were others whose oratory and personality dominated the Senate chamber for awhile. There were others who were held in great esteem by their Senate colleagues. There were others who became a recognizable face as a representative of Senate traditions and honor. But no one in all of America's great history combined all of these things with getting more tangible things that mattered accomplished for the American people.
On issue after issue, Ted Kennedy was at the center of the debate, and he delivered one great piece of legislation after another to all of us. There was not a single significant issue that he didn't play an important role on in the past 45 years.
It saddens me beyond words that he passed before seeing health care reform finally get passed, as it had become the great passion of his life. I hope we can finally get it done for him now.
I wanted to weigh in on this whole left flank for Obama issue (the idea that Obama needs a strong progressive movement pushing him from the left to get things done), because I think getting it right is probably the single most important thing in creating transformative change. Let me start by talking for a bit about my personal situation, because I think it has lessons from the broader issue.
I am blessed and cursed by this man-in-the-middle life I've created for myself.
One the one hand, I am a DC insider. I have served inside of five Presidential campaigns, two Presidential transition teams (sadly, the only two in my adult lifetime), and the Clinton White House. On the other hand, I have chosen to spend most of my life outside of government and the Democratic Party, working instead on helping to build progressive infrastructure and issue campaigns. This being connected to both the inside and outside has created some interesting dynamics.
Last week was in some ways fairly typical for me. I had one senior White house official tell me I was positioning myself in a fairly helpful way, and another who people told me was referring to me as an "(expletive deleted), (expletive deleted), (particularly gross and disgusting expletive deleted)." My blog posts prompted some of my responders to say that I was way too pro-Obama, and what could you expect from a DC insider like me, while the same posts caused another friend to e-mail me, worried that I was being too tough on Obama and was endangering my relationship with the White House.
I am sort of used to having at least some of my friends pissed off at me almost all of the time (let alone what my actual enemies- there are a few- think of me). In the Clinton White House, I got yelled at almost daily from people on the outside about (a) all the bad things we had done to progressive causes, and (b) other White House officials who said I was just carrying water for all the lefties outside. My job there was described by people as being the person responsible for having all my friends yell at me.
This personal experience has made me reflect a lot of what an effective left flank is for a Democratic President.
I have been hearing from friends and family members about health care reform a great deal, many of them telling me phrases like "politics is the art of the possible", "half a loaf is better than no loaf at all", "it's time to end the gridlock." While in some contexts I would agree that it's time to compromise, we're not at that point yet on health care.
Today, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, normally one of the more taciturn members of Congress, endorsed that argument.
Meanwhile, Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking Democrat in the House, said he has been reminding his party colleagues that Congress passed multiple, piecemeal civil rights bills in the 1960s and that activists had to put off demands for voting rights until 1965 to win a landmark ban on employment discrimination in 1964.
"LBJ made it very clear a half a loaf is better than no loaf at all," Clyburn said Wednesday. "We should do what can be done immediately and use the time between now and 2013 to figure out how to do the rest."
No, we shouldn't. Major attempts at health care reform comes along only once in a generation- as Ezra Klein pointed out, once every 19.5 years. We're not going to have another major shot at this anytime soon. Folks who are saying we should do what everyone agrees upon now- a ban on discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, a ban on dropping sick people from coverage, a ban on annual caps- and fix it later don't get that. When the horrible Medicare Part D bill was passed in 2003, a give-away to insurance companies and a nightmare for seniors, did Democrats go back and fix it when they took the majority in 2007? What about the 2005 bankruptcy bill, provisions of which that exempted derivatives from regulation helped lead towards the current financial crisis? The Military Commissions Act?
If arguments that the worst abuses under Republicans can be corrected later when Democrats are in charge are completely without basis in evidence, I don't know what makes Jim Clyburn expect that we'll just fix health care reform later, like it's as easy as changing a lightbulb. We'd be banking on not only picking up seats in the 2010 elections, which historically does not happen during a Democratic President's midterm, but we would need to pick up the seats of folks who actually would support a public option in the Senate. As Chris writes, Chris Dodd is already on the ropes, and we may lose Delaware. Who are we banking on for pickups that will actually commit to voting for a public option and hold firm? Mongiardo or Conway in Kentucky? Melancon, a Blue Dog, in Louisiana?
And what happens in between attempts? More people will lose their coverage, the uninsured will go uninsured, and premiums for people like me will continue to go up. Will our institutional allies have as much money and resources to spend on the ground? Will President Obama be as popular, and have as much capital and political favors as he does now? Oh, wait, he's already down to 50% in multiple polls. But I bet Clyburn would have told us with his crystal ball six months ago that his popularity would always remain above 60% for the first year of his term.
There are too many, to quote Rumsfeld, known unknowns in this hypothetical. We have to do it all now and make the Republicans vote against reform that will help their constituents. To do otherwise would be to take a very large gamble at a very large cost.
Because of recent opposition GOP Congressman Randy J. Forbes's new House Resolution 888 (co-sponsored by 23 other members of Congress), which showcases many of the most common American history lies currently in circulation, I thought I'd re-post my following analysis of how such fake history can pave the way for Christian Nationalism. We're well on the way : a 2007 poll from the First Amendment Center showed that 65% of Americans believe the founders intended the US to be a Christian nation and 55% from that poll thought the US Constitution establishes the US as a Christian nation. [NOTE: I've placed the onus on the GOP on the basis of my colleague Chris Rodda's preliminary study of Congressional debates over the last decade. Chris tells me she's found extensively citations of history lies by Republicans but only one, so far, by a Democrat.]
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