For a quiet winter's evening, I'd like to highlight a great piece of journalism by CBC's consumer investigative show Marketplace called "Cure or Con?" on homeopathy. Despite the obligatory Cavuto-mark in the title, the piece asks all the right questions and doesn't shy from objectively letting viewers know that homeopathy is sheer quackery without any empirical, rational or even theoretical basis for any effect beyond the placebo one.
I really love the "tip sheet" they posted for anyone considering using it:
1. Check with your doctor or medical professional before choosing homeopathic treatment for any serious condition.
2. Do not delay medical treatment for cancer or any other potentially fatal disease in favour of homeopathic therapies.
3. If you choose to use a homeopathic vaccination program, be aware that there is no strong scientific literature that suggests you or your child will be protected from serious diseases.
Highlights of the 22 min show include a group of skeptics doing the James Randi thing and consuming entire bottles of homeopathic sleeping pills, a mother who has "vaccinated" her child against polio and other serious diseases using homeopathic vaccines and of course a lab test of homeopathic pills showing them to be nothing but sugar. Homeopathy survives because most of us don't care, and the few people who believe in it lobby for it aggressively, but it's dangerous and people (especially children) die because they take sugar pills instead of real medicine. The homeopathic industry waged an online campaign to counter Marketplace for taking them on, so I'm happy to counter them and highlight solid journalism with worldwide relevance. Watch it here.
I used to laugh at stuff like this as a relic of a bygone era of unmoored irrationality, but clearly those days can return, if they ever really left. In an era of scam mortgages, scam credit cards, a scam stock-market I guess a scam-medicine industry is also to be expected.
It's said that politics creates strange bedfellows. I was reminded how true this can be when I traveled to D.C. in recent weeks to figure out why several advocacy groups and legislators with histories of advocating for minority interests are lining up with big telecom companies in opposition to the FCC's efforts to pass "Net Neutrality" rules.
Net Neutrality is the principle that prevents Internet Service Providers from controlling what kind of content or applications you can access online. It sounds wonky, but for Black and other communities, an open Internet offers a transformative opportunity to truly control our own voice and image, while reaching the largest number of people possible. This dynamic is one major reason why Barack Obama was elected president and why organizations like ColorOfChange.org exist.
So I was troubled to learn that several Congressional Black Caucus members were among 72 Democrats to write the FCC last fall questioning the need for Net Neutrality rules. I was further troubled that a number of our nation's leading civil rights groups had also taken positions questioning or against Net Neutrality, using arguments that were in step with those of the big phone and cable companies like AT&T and Comcast, which are determined to water down any new FCC rules.
Most unsettling about their position is the argument that maintaining Net Neutrality could widen the digital divide.
First, let's be clear: the problem of the broadband digital divide is real. Already, getting a job, accessing services, managing one's medical care-just to mention a few examples-are all facilitated online. Those who aren't connected face a huge disadvantage in so many aspects of our society. Broadband access is a big problem -- but that doesn't mean it has anything to do with Net Neutrality.
Yet some in the civil rights community will tell you differently. They claim that if broadband providers can earn greater profits by charging content providers for access to the Internet "fast lane," then they will lower prices to underserved areas. In other words, if Comcast - which already earns 80 percent profit margins on its broadband services - can increase its profits under a system without Net Neutrality, then they'll all of a sudden invest in our communities. You don't have to be a historian or economist to know that this type of trickle-down economics never works and has always failed communities of color.
The CBC's premier investigative program, The Fifth Estate was allowed to film a documentary at Insite, the safe injection site in Vancouver's poverty-ridden lower east side.
It is a compassionate examination of the facility, its staff and the lives of three regular patrons. They made an interesting (and commendable) choice not to interview any experts, pundits or politicians for this program (other than 2 employees of the site). I highly recommend watching, including the extra interviews of the five main subjects.
It isn't a rosy picture, as the three patrons are each shown injecting drugs. One of the three, Shelly Tomic, had been off heroin for three years (but on methadone) and falls off the wagon when she has difficulty obtaining methadone, despite having a prescription. Shelly's case is particularly tragic as she is actually a named plaintiff in the lawsuit which resulted in a court ruling allowing the site to remain open.
More hopefully, Taz Prouting is admitted to the facility's detox program "Onsite" and on her third attempt, makes it through the very painful 11 day period it takes to get through withdrawal. Will she succeed in staying clean? What comes through is the value of the site in at least providing a way out for the most destitute and abandoned members of society. It easily cuts through any nonsense idea that sites like this would encourage drug abuse, as no one who wasn't already an addict could possibly walk into that facility and say "I think I'd like to try this!" An opium den this is not. For some background on the facility from my post last year about it, go here. Also, I'd recommend today's Greenwald who is discussing Portugal's experiment with decriminalization.
In the last diary, I outlined the ongoing collapse of journalism as we know it. My conclusion is that this is a public good, and a highly salutatory one (likely indispensable) for the kind of egalitarian and Just society we want. Since it evidently a market failure without a viable business model, government will need to provide it.
Fortunately, such institutions already exist. In America, PBS and NPR have survived (barely) a long era of government under leaders who really despise them. Now is the time to revive these institutions, and rebuild them for the 21st Century.
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick looks like she's going down in her primary to state Senator Mary Waters. With 62% of precincts remaining, here's the tally.
Mary Waters, 39%
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, 36%
Martha Scott, 25%
This primary challenge was sparked by Kilpatrick's son, the mayor, and his myriad corruption scandals, as well as the ferment in African-American communities caused by Barack Obama's ascendancy. If Waters' lead holds, it is the second major primary challenge in which a CBC member loses in a primary, the first being Donna Edwards.
I don't know that much about Kilpatrick's voting record (she did sign the letter supporting the Fox News-CBC debate), but a quick check of her PAC contributions suggests she definitely gets her share of corporate contributions.
I'll be watching this one. Skeptical Brotha has more on the Kilpatrick dynasty in Detroit.
Below is a letter signed by fourteen members of Congress asking Barney Frank to delay action on a bill cracking down deceptive practices by banks that issuse credit cards. The organizer of this letter is Kansas Democrat Dennis Moore, who has also been the leader against reforming Bankruptcy laws, and you'll recognize most of the others as Blue Dogs: Tim Mahoney, Charlie Wilson, Don Cazayoux, and Ed Perlmutter. And then there are the 'moderate' Republicans like Mike Castle and Chris Shays, as well as a few wingnuts. One of the signers, though, Greg Meeks in New York, is in one of the safest Democratic districts in the country, NY-06, with a +38 Democratic PVI. And unlike the others, he's going to face consequences for his actions.
I have heard that the CBC is 'in mourning' over Al Wynn's loss, and of screaming matches and threats to Donna's supporters. This article from Roll Call on Congressional Black Caucus members and their response to Al Wynn's loss lays it out pretty well.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are seething at the Service Employees International Union for the group's involvement in helping to defeat Rep. Albert Wynn (D-Md.) in a primary last week, the latest manifestation of what some say is a larger problem that exists between the two groups.
Following a closed-door CBC meeting on Wednesday, the day after Wynn's landslide loss to lawyer and community activist Donna Edwards (D), CBC Chairwoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) plans to reach out to SEIU President Andrew Stern and request a meeting to discuss caucus members' concerns.
The caucuses - the Blue Dogs, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the CBC, the New Democrats, and the Progressive Caucus - are first and foremost protection societies. As examples, the House leadership could not even remove William Jefferson or Alan Mollohan off their respective powerful committees after serious allegations of corruption. And so it makes sense that the CBC would get extremely angry and aggressive about Wynn's loss.
Still, the overall sense I get about the response to Donna's victory, and of Al Wynn himself, is that of a tackiness and an antiquated sense of corrupt entitlement. Here's what I mean.
The Jena 6 protests, which were some of the largest protests around civil rights in years, were organized by ColorOfChange.org. Because of its success, the group has been attacked by DJ Michael Baisden, who accused the group of taking money meant for the Jena 6. Baisden has been forced to apologize, as Howard Witt reported.
Only one national civil rights group, Color of Change, has fully disclosed how the $212,000 it collected for the Jena 6 via a massive Internet campaign has been distributed. The grassroots group, which has nearly 400,000 members, has posted images of cancelled checks and other signed documents on its website showing that all but $1,230 was paid out in October in roughly equal amounts to attorneys for the Jena youths.
You can see all this information here. What I find fascinating is how the group outdid the NAACP. Here's Jill Tubman:
NAACP: 500,000 members, almost $20,000 raised for Jena 6, 0% of funds disbursed to families and lawyers to date
Color of Change: 400,000 members, over $200,000 raised for Jena 6, 100% of funds disbursed to date
Color of Change raised about $10k of the money that went to Donna Edwards last week, and began working on the CBC with the fight against the Fox News/CBC Institute debate. This is a very important group, because it is serving as a bridge for African-American activists who have not had a way to involve themselves in the political process. It serves as a Moveon-style organization, working among black radio, black blogs, and political elites.
ColorofChange and its dynamic director James Rucker has arrived as a serious force in progressive politics.
We're up to 832 donors and $31,858 for Donna since yesterday. Sweet.
ColorOfChange.org, the group behind much of the Jena 6 protests, has gone out with an email supporting Donna Edwards. ColorOfChange.org has gone up against the CBC most recently when the group led the protest against the CBC-Fox News debate. Al Wynn, of course, was one of 24 signers of a letter encouraging the Presidential candidates to debate on Fox News.
Greg Meeks was one of many potential candidates to replace Hillary Clinton if she wins the Presidency. It seems rather unlikely at this point, though.
The audit report of Meeks' campaign shows that he spent $6,230 on a personal trainer, who charged $45 per hour. Meeks' campaign told the commission 'that the personal trainer was necessary to alleviate stress brought on by the candidate's duties.'
Federal law states that candidates may not pay for "dues, fees and other payments to a health club or recreational facility" out of their campaign accounts.
The FEC's audit report also concluded that Meeks did not keep proper records for $9,812 in vehicle expenses that were considered 'personal expenses of the candidate.' Another $916 in questionable charges made to a credit card, auditors found, were for an 'airline ticket, lodging, clothing and cell phone accessories.'"
You might remember Greg Meeks from such pieces of legislation as the COPE Act eviscerating net neutrality, the Bankruptcy Bill, CAFTA. NY-06 is a majority minority district in Queens, and Meeks is a member of the New Democrats, the CBC, and the Democratic Leadership Council. He is also the sixth worst member of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to the CBC Monitor's latest report card.
This proud record of accomplishment would stress any fine candidate out, and require regular personal trainers paid illegally out of campaign funds.
Joining the Reserve Officer Training Corps was once an attractive choice for people with few options growing up in impoverished, predominantly black East Baltimore. That has all changed, largely because of the war in Iraq.
"Now, it is like, no way," said Cornelius McMurray, who does outreach with a local church and says the young black people he works with view life in Baltimore as enough of a war. "It is a continuous fight waking up and walking the streets every day."
In the Bronx, Adeyefa Finch says he simply walks past the recruiters who, seeking out minority members along Fordham Road, make the case that the military can help with college financing and job placement after they serve. "I'm not really into going overseas with guns and fighting other people's wars," said Mr. Finch, 18, headed to college this fall to study accounting.
That kind of rejection of military service as an option of young blacks throughout the country has resulted in a sharp drop in black recruitment figures since the war began. Defense Department reports show that the share of blacks among active-duty recruits declined to 13 percent in 2006 from 20 percent in 2001, the last year before the invasion of Iraq began to seem inevitable...
In a recent CBS News telephone poll, 83 percent of the blacks surveyed said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq; only 14 percent said it had done the right thing in taking military action. Whites, by contrast, were closely divided: 48 percent said military action had been right, and 46 percent said the United States should have stayed out. The poll was conducted Aug. 8-12 with 1,214 adults nationwide and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The poll numbers show up in the daily hardships of recruiters trained by Sgt. First Class Abdul-Malik Muhammad, based in Birmingham, Ala. "With blacks, there is not really a great support for the war," Sergeant Muhammad said, recalling one prospective recruit who was told by his parents that they would sever all ties with him if he enlisted.
My read on this is that there's a deep sense of betrayal within the African-American community that parallels what's going on in the activist base of the party in general. I took a glance at the drops in polling support for a variety of Democrats over the past month or two, and the drop is concentrated among liberals and African-Americans. At the same time, there's a deep sense of frustration with current black leadership centered in two areas. One, many opinion leaders in the hip hop community are deeply embittered by the civil rights generation of leaders and media stars like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Oprah that chide Hip Hop culture without speaking to the real concern in their music, communities, and expression. And two, the middle class emerging black activist class is furious with failures of the political leadership, represented both by the political leaders themselves and institutions like the NAACP and the Urban League that aren't capturing the newer generation. There's obviously overlap here, and I'm probably simplifying these trends dramatically.
It's still interesting, though, how this parallels what's going on with the new progressive movement on the blogs. We're part of a newer irony-infused culture, and we're constantly told by our progressive elders that we're too angry, controversial, or informal. We don't relate to traditional liberal institutions like unions or mass membership organizations like the ACLU, and our leaders tend to disappoint us on a regular basis. Permeating all of this is Iraq and the breakdown of trust in Republican governance. Anyway, I don't have tremendous insight here, but there are a lot of opportunities and I figured I'd point out that there's ferment all over the place.
Yesterday, I tested out the idea that what we are dealing with in Congress is a nominally Democratic majority but an effective Republican working majority. I mostly pinned this on the Blue Dog swing bloc and a conservative Senate, but there are other important factors at work. The conversation was really amazing, and punctured some holes in my piece.
The fact is, things have changed quite a bit. I'm friendly with a lawyer in a major executive branch agency, and she told me that the investigations going on by Congress are allowing her to do her job. Steve Novick, candidate for Senate in Oregon (who is really quite terrific), told me the same thing about friends he has in the Federal bureaucracy. Governance itself is getting better, or at least has stopped getting worse. So Blue Dogs are not Republicans.
There are other weaknesses in what I wrote, and the commenters pointed them out. In particular, this comment by Paul Rosenberg is I think accurate, as he argues that we are facing a conservative but not right-wing Blue Dog/DLC bloc combined with an anti-progressive elite consensus in the form of a hostile media establishment, a hostile think tank and academic structure, a hostile regulatory structure, a hostile set of cultural leaders and a set of old world economic incentives for elites.
I'm going to revise my earlier title, and argue that while we don't have a Republican working majority, we do have a conservative working majority to contend with. Most of the strategic problems I highlighted in the original piece remain, with the additional need to attack and/or subvert elite structures. The irony, or perhaps the not entirely-coincidental pattern of the Open Left, is that we're all at once going after the right-wing, their Blue Dog enablers, and the elite structures that love them.
I'm going to echo Jane's comments about diversity and supplement them with my own observations. It's not enough to say that diversity is important. The political blogosphere is political, which means you have to discuss politics, and you have to do it with specifics.
If you want to discuss diversity, you have to talk about African-American politics, including problems at the NAACP and newer vital organizations like the Ella Baker Center and ColorofChange.org. You have to talk primaries. That's why I covered Donna Edwards and Al Wynn last cycle, and it's why I talk about the CBC and corrupt black billionaires like Robert Johnson. And not to play the 'why isn't everyone working on my pet issue', but doesn't it seem strange that Robert Johnson's push to use race to justify light taxes on his investment funds - after he did the same thing on the estate tax - gets no play anywhere except on a blog written by a Jewish liberal? I don't mean to whine but, to be selfish, I want a lot more discussion of ethnic politics on the blogs so I can read about it. I find the specifics really interesting. And the specifics - whether AIPAC is supporting Artur Davis in Alabama or was involved in beating Cynthia McKinney - are not just important but critical for progressives.
If you want to discuss diversity, you have to talk about Latino politics. That means Joe Baca and his awful stewardship of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the fight between the male and female members within the CHC. You have to talk about how Latino groups like Southwest Voter failed to bump up registration rates among Hispanics last cycle after the huge immigrants rights marches, and how labor screwed up on immigration.
If you want to discuss why women are so disempowered in our political system, you have to look not only at our cultural roots but at clear examples of problematic organizational structures, such as Emily's List or NARAL.
Like it or not, politics is politics, and specifics are the whole ball game. In Connecticut, I remember who was there with us. It was Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and Danny Glover, and they helped us beat Lieberman in the primary. Maxine Waters is heroic, while Bobby Rush takes millions from AT&T to his charities and Harold Ford Jr is a contributor to Fox News and an employee of the financial service industry.
Politics is about power, and power in America cuts through race and identity. It's a fascinating story to tell, but it has to be told if you want to make any change.
A version of this went up yesterday, but I rewrote a few parts to make it clearer.
Each summer AEI holds a World Forum for chief executives of corporations where attendees are expected to make financial contributions to the think tank. - Rightweb
Ideas do not live in isolation, and how we prioritize them is more important than their strength. And this is where money comes in, because is a statement of priorities. The right has an entire system we like to deride, 'wingnut welfare', but Fox News made $300M last year and will be a cash cow for a long time to come. While Josh Marshall and Dailykos are self-sufficient, probably hitting in the $50k/month range for revenue, there is just no comparison in terms of the capital they can invest in ideas.
This operating disadvantage is true across the board for the new people in politics, as the operatives, organizers, and entrepreneurs are having a tough time building out the institutions that embed our ideas. There is a new economy coming, one based on a smaller republic that uses less carbon and doesn't have bases in 133 countries around the world, one where internet access, health care, and energy is universal. But the vanguard of that new system are only beginning to build their funding streams. In some cases, a lot of the people that make this stuff work are being ground into the dust. I know three people who have died since I started blogging, two of whom did not need to. While the situation may or may not be changing, a political entrepreneur in the internet space basically has four choices right now. One, work for a top-down institution that restricts one's ability to generate useful creative output. Two, consult without authority. Three, operate independently, and without scale. Four, quit. All of these reduce the value of possible creative output.
Interestingly, the most reliable source of money is small dollar donors online. And that makes sense. People who do online politics get online politics, and make it a priority in their lives. When the ask is good, online donors give. I went to Connecticut to blog about the Lamont campaign, but others have gone to Iraq, to cover the Libby trial, to New Hampshire, all over. That's not true with large dollar donors, who are still embedded in the old fossil fuel system of top down control. The record industry is full of wealthy autocratic socially liberal but fiscally nasty Democrats.
The Democracy Alliance had a mission statement to deal with this problem, sort of, though it was not an explicitly ideological group. Large foundations have a similar set of restrictive habits. In fact, since 2005, money for political innovation basically has not come through, except for a small set of organizations that have institutional heft. The pipeline of innovation really slammed shut in 2005. CAP, Media Matters, CREW, Center for Progressive Leadership, Atrios, Dailykos, ColorofChange, TPM, Progressive Majority, Actblue, FDL, Freepress, Yearlykos, Votevets, Progressive States - all of these were created or in process of being formed by 2005. It's undeniable that the progressive movement is stalled. This makes sense. Much of the urgency from Bush created the funding channel, so unless that sense of urgency returns, or unless an alternative argument for investment emerges, we will continue to fumble around, able to make noise but unable to govern.
Even though every frontrunner has refused to participate, the Congressional Black Caucus is continuing with its plan to host a Fox News-sponsored Democratic debate in September. I suppose next they'll be hosting debates with Augusta Golf Club, Denny's and FEMA.
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