Cross-posted from AlterNet and the Huffington Post.
There's a debate shaping up in progressive circles about what the Tea Party movement means for the future of the nation. Are they just a bunch of disgruntled, disorganized kooks who are best dealt with by ignoring them? Or does the rise of this movement pose a threat to recent progressive gains, and to the nation as a whole?
As a journalist who has covered the right for more than 15 years, I see a profound threat in the rise of the Tea Party movement. To examine it through the prism of today's kookiness and disorganization is to look at a snapshot of where the movement is now, not where it might be in a year or two. A recent Gallup poll reported that 37 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of the Tea Party movement -- a percentage that equals the number those who self-identified as independents (which is not to say that all independents regard the movement favorably). That's what prompted me to write a comprehensive piece of analysis for AlterNet that makes the case for taking the Tea Party movement seriously.
There are thoughtful progressives who see things differently. Kevin Drum of Mother Jonessees the movement's relatively small number of supporters (18 percent of the general public, according to last month's New York Times/CBS News poll) as evidence of an outsized level of attention he believes it has received from the media, and Richard Kim of The Nationwonders aloud how a movement fraught with the most ridiculous of conspiracy theories could ever make its way into the mainstream.
Then there is an unthoughtful progressive who, apparently, simply wishes to distort the work of another journalist in order to make the case for his own moral superiority, as syndicated columnist David Sirota did on OpenLeft on Wednesday (and cross-posted on the Huffington Post). Sirota, after attributing my work to a different publication than the one in which it appeared (since corrected), blockquoted three sentences from my 5,000 word piece to accuse me of "deifying white privilege," all the while refusing to name me as the author of the piece.
Early last month, I wrote about David Sirota being up for a permanent editorial spot at the Rochester (NY) Democrat & Chronicle, the staid center-right paper where I went to school and often fought with. Many of you e-mailed to say you left a comment on the ed page and e-mailed the editor asking for him to get the position.
Via The Albany Project, it turns out David got the spot! Here's ed page editor James Lawrence:
For the past couple of months, we've been occasionally running David Sirota's syndicated columns on the Editorial Page. Readers have responded favorably with letters, phone calls and emails. They like what he has to say and the way he says it.
As a result, we're adding Sirota to our stable of regular columnists. Sirota, as anyone knows who reads him, is a progressive who isn't shy about telling readers exactly what he thinks. He currently appears in newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Idaho Statesman and the Denver Post, with a combined circulation of more than 1.3 million.
We believe Sirota will be a strong addition to our diverse selection of columnists who appear daily on the Editorial Page.
Let me know what you think: Jlawrenc@democratandchronicle.com
I just dropped James a line saying thanks and happy holidays. And congrats to our own David. This is how we'll grow progressive media.
One of the most fundamental truisms of politics and policy is that old saying about democracy requiring eternal vigilance. In a political system like ours dominated by big money and the lobbyists that money hires, that is especially true, even in years when Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House.
Beyond the raw power and connections of big business lobbyists, two of the biggest reasons we s till have to worry about this even with Democrats in control are that (a) a lot of these things are done behind the scenes, out of the public spotlight, while other big issues are being intensely debated; and (b) the free market ideology that has come to dominate even in a lot of Democratic circles.
Three huge examples of major backsliding on economic issues have come to light over the last couple of weeks brought on by this combination of lobbyist influence, free market economic theory, and the ability to quietly push for things in the dead of night while health care is taking most of the media's- and the progressive movement- attention. Any of these issues would be easy to win on if the media covered them and/or the progressive movement focused their fire on them, but with health care taking up so much bandwidth, it's harder to fight these things.
This is more of a sports metaphor, but h/t to Jerry Sullivan, one of my favorite Buffalo News writers, for the title
Some items of note around the country today:
I just got an e-mail from Rep. Eric Massa with the ominous title "An Important Announcement About The 2010 Election", with the text:
The Founding Fathers designed the House of Representative as the People's House, and as such the citizens of this great Nation have the duty to elect their member of Congress every two years. While people sometimes get sick of campaigns, this cycle of frequent elections gives the people the best and most immediate tool possible to hold their member of Congress accountable and make their voices heard.
Accountability is a value that I hold near and dear, and it is with this spirit of service that I write you today.
On Saturday, 10/10 at 10:00 am, I will be making a formal announcement about the 2010 election. I would like to invite all of you, friends of old and new, to join me at Centerway Square in Corning NY on this morning.
It has been my honor and privilege to serve the families of this region and I hope to see you on Saturday in my hometown of Corning.
I called Massa's comm people for comment, and they declined to do so initially. Will update if warranted.
I don't like the sound of it, though. Massa knows it's a tough district (he lost his first race in 2006, which I worked on for a bit, and it's my grandpa's district), so perhaps it's just to prime the pump for a big crowd for his re-election announcement. I can't imagine he's running for higher office- certainly not Gov or Senator, and I don't really see him in something like a primary for comptroller or AG (or even qualified). The worst possibility is that he's not running again, something that would really disappoint me. I've been a huge fan of Massa's, particularly on his pushing for the House health care bill to be more progressive, and on his very strategic ways of talking about health care to constituents. He spent 45 minutes with a group of us NYers at Netroots Nation talking about that, and also hit some nails on the head when speaking at panels, too.
But one term and done would really piss me off, considering how hard the district is and how hard many of us worked for him, and that many of you contributed close to $1 million overall on ActBlue- including several thousand for standing firm on a public option. I hope he stays.
At the polar opposite of one term and done, former four-term Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is running again. I asked former Iowa political operative Mike Lux for comment, to which he replied "I thought we got rid of that m*****f*****."
Last night, the defense authorization bill with the LGBT hate crimes amendment beat a motion to recommit (an effort by the Republicans to strip out the amendment), 178-234. Those are solid numbers, in addition to the fact that the Senate version already has it in by amendment. So we should be all set. HRC reports the conference report should be voted on in both houses by the end of next week before going to Obama's desk. We're close to the first major legislative achievement for LGBT rights in this term.
Glenn Greenwald has a fantastic piece documenting how Anne Kornblut violates the WaPo's own rules by using anonymous sourcing sixteen different times in one piece on the Obama Admin's national security policies, and journalistic ethics in general, as well as some on national security issues.
Yesterday, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009, which would legalize marriage equality in the District, was introduced with much fanfare and 10/13 councilmembers co-introducing it. If you're looking for legislative and process details going forward, I wrote a piece last week on it here, and my friend Michael Crawford of DC for Marriage also has a piece today.
If you live in California, there are two LGBT bills before the Governor- one that would recognize Harvey Milk Day (which he's vetoed before, prior to the movie I believe) and one that would clarify that same-sex couples married out-of-state before Prop. 8 are recognized in CA, and that couples married after Prop 8 are entitled to the same rights. I know a lot of LGBT couples who marry in other states and have talked about moving to California one day- this would ensure they are entitled to marriage recognition. Equality California has phone numbers here of your local office- call Arnold and tell him to sign the bills.
Robert Harding at TAP reports the Rochester D&C is running another column by David Sirota, his latest on Afghanistan, which is a great sign. I wrote a bit last week on the D&C, a staid, center-right newspaper with far too many right-wingers on the ed page and a center-right ed board in a solidly Dem city with some hubs of progressivism. They're considering adding David permanently to the ed page. Take a second and drop an e-mail to Editorial Page Editor James Lawrence at jlawrenc@democratandchronicle.com and tell him that you want to see David Sirota's column made permanent.
I was delighted to read recently at The Albany Project that not only is David Sirota's column being printed in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle (the city's biggest newspaper), but he's being considered for a regular op-ed slot.
A little personal background on me, I attended the University of Rochester from 2002-2006, during which time I interacted with the D&C quite a fair amount. We worked with on them when organizing against the start of the Iraq war, organizing to pressure the U of R administration to bar ROTC recruiters from campus before the Supreme Court decision, organizing in favor of same-sex marriage. The editorial board is wholly right-leaning, and even many of the staff writers are not very independent, and very dismissive of anything progressive. Like the op-ed page in the Buffalo News (my hometown paper), there are far more George Wills and Kathleen Parkers printed on a daily basis than Paul Krugmans.
And if you'd like to see David's column improve your own staid, center-right newspaper, he left some instructions for doing so in a recent post at OpenLeft:
The column relies on grassroots support -- and because of that support, it is getting wider and wider circulation (a big thank you to all who have helped with that). So if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.
But first, by way of background...last week, David Sirota wrote:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the first time yesterday suggested she may be backing off her support of the public option...When "asked if inclusion of a public option was a non-negotiable demand - as her previous statements had indicated, Pelosi ruled out any non-negotiable positions," according to CNN.
This announcement came just hours before Steve Elmendorf, a registered UnitedHealth lobbyist and the head of UnitedHealth's lobbying firm Elmendorf Strategies, blasted [a Pelosi fundraising event] invitation throughout Washington, D.C.
[The event is this Tuesday at Elmendorf's house in DC, 2301 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 6:30pm.]
For anyone following the public option debate recently, Pelosi has been right up there with Anthony Weiner in terms of smartly drawing lines in the sand and asserting leverage on behalf of the public option.
Her statements that a House bill must have a public option were a great equal-and-opposite reaction to the Senate's (wrong, weak) assertion that a public option can't pass that chamber.
So, I'll admit, I was quite disappointed when Pelosi said, "This is about a goal. It's not about provisions" on the day in question. But Pelosi seems to have walked that back -- later asserting, "I fully support the public option. The public option will be in the bill that passes the House."
If the fundraiser hadn't come up, I'd call it a day and say "Hip hip hooray" for Pelosi. But some progressives will inevitably have an unsettling feeling in their stomach when hearing about the lobbyist event.
So, I contacted the DCCC and offered to help set the record straight. If it turns out that Pelosi would not be accepting health or insurance industry money at this event, I'd be up for helping to make sure progressive knew that.
Well, here's the official statement I got from Brandon English at the DCCC:
Speaker Pelosi's steadfast support of the public option is clear. This event is being hosted by an individual and United Health Care has not contributed to it.
I know Brandon -- and wanted to give him a chance to clarify. So I wrote:
fyi...I was trying to help, if it was true that no health/insurance money would be coming in at the event...obviously that would make a lot of folks rest easy.
But the statement below will pretty much beg the question: Are any health or insurance industry lobbyists giving money at this event? (Of course a corporation that cannot legally give money is not giving money...)
I got a note back confirming that the statement was authorized to be from him, but not amending the statement.
But when it comes to the public option, there are a whole lot of truly bad actors out there -- and Pelosi is not one of them.
Yet...this fundraiser and the DCCC statement do irk, right? So, what do you think should be done? Anything? Nothing? I'm very curious about what folks have to say.
Following Obama's speech, Mike wrote a diary praising it (Hitting The Jackpot), while David wrote a diary underscoring its deficits ("Reviewing President Rahm Emanuel's Health Care Speech"). I immediately thought that both had a point. Obama had given progressives reason to hope-but only because progressives had finally gotten aggressive and drawn a line in the sand. And David had pointed what Mike was overlooking, and just how little reason there was to let up. That's what I thought Wednesday night.
By now, it's clearly back to business-as-usual, squeezing the progressive to get back into line. But in the process, an inconvenient truth was let out of the bag: Obama's speech placating the liberals was a big hit with the public. Sure, some of it was because he smacked down some big rightwing lies. But if liberalism was really so terribly unpopular, what with us being a "center-right nation" and all, then the gains Obama made by debunking rightwing lies should have been undercut by his liberal moves-not just supporting the public option, but also praising Ted Kennedy.
In short, once again, Obama has inadvertently exposed the profound disconnect between conservative Versailles and progressive America. Unfortunately Obama is on the wrong side of that divide, despite sporadic rhetorical forays to the contrary.
A closer look at the speech and Mike and David's take on it on the flip.
If we want our economy to be strong and stable, we have to start thinking about it as a product of community-not a get rich quick scheme. As unemployment escalates and the housing crisis deepens, ordinary people are feeling the economic pinch. In the meantime, corporate executives and shareholders are coasting above the storm. If we want to tear down the useless casino that is Wall Street, our wealthiest citizens will have to pitch in when times get tough.
Salon carries an excellent three-part email exchange between Simon Johnson, former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund, and John Talbott, a reformed Goldman Sachs investment banker. Taken together, the emails constitute a thorough, in-depth analysis of the causes of the economic crisis, needed reforms and political hurdles to making policy changes. Johnson's basic argument is as frightening as it is accurate: Bankers line our elected representatives' pocketbooks, convincing them to re-write regulations that made big bonuses for bankers and a catastrophe for everyone else.
Some of Talbott's most interesting observations concern Wall Street's epic transformaiton. Over the past three decades, our financial sector has morphed from a kind of economic rebar to a wrecking ball. Once upon a time, the financial industry provided loansto businesses and entrepreneurs and funded constructive enterprises. Today, almost all of this activity has been replaced by hedge fund speculation. As a result of excessive deregulation, a wild array of complex transactions called derivatives have developed on Wall Street. Many derivatives, including the credit default swaps that brought down AIG, are intended to provide insurance against losses.
But this readily available "insurance" has removed any sense of risk from the minds of U.S. financiers. All kinds of casino experiments have come in play over the last several years because traders could insure any bet, however crazy, against losses. The whole point of a financial sector is to make sure that good ideas get funding. Instead, we've guaranteed that risky ideas gets funding, even when the idea is socially destructive and financially unsound, like, say, subprime lending.
As David Sirota emphasizes in Truthdig, this financial recklessness has only deepened existing economic inequality. The wealthiest 1% of U.S. citizens have the greatest share of the nation's income since 1929, the onset year of the Great Depression. That's not just a coincidence. When economic inequality is out of control, the economy itself becomes unstable. If everybody is broke, no one has enough to buy the stuff that makes the economy go-round.
There's a paradox buried in all the instability. Even though outrageous inequality is bad for business, it's not necessarily bad for businessmen (Yes, businessmen. Women are still largely excluded from the top tier of corporate decision-making). When the whole economy pays the price for executive excess, the executives themselves don't actually take the hit. Even when elites lose their jobs, they stay rich. When people who depend on their paychecks for survival get the axe, it's a life-altering, often devastating, experience.
There's something we can do about this, Sirota notes. We need to treat the rich like members of a community, rather than an isolated special interest whose demands must be balanced against other special interests. When a community needs to pay for something, the people who can afford to pay pony up. We have real problems right now. There's nothing wrong with taxing the wealthy to fund them.
But why worry? The bailout is working, and banks on the mend, right? Maybe not so much. The Real News explains how bank profits don't always equal economic progress. Wells Fargo just booked a massive second-quarter profit, but the numbers are largely divorced from any economically useful activity.
Foreclosures are soaring, and bank lending is way down. Even though the banks are booking big profits, they aren't putting much money into the economy. How is this possible? Well, banking basically involves two steps. First, the bank borrows money at a low interest rate. Then, it makes a loan at a higher interest rate. The difference is the profit. Right now financing costs for banks are next to nothing, thanks to a host of government programs. Even if you don't make many loans, it's hard to lose money when you can borrow it for free.
As Steve Benen emphasizes for The Washington Monthly, using the stock market as as measure of economic vitality has proven pretty silly over the past few years. Back in February, just about every conservative pundit was screaming that the decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was purely a result of President Barack Obama's economic policies.
Obama's economic record is not perfect. He has continued the Bush administration's bank bailouts, and his stimulus package wasn't nearly big enough to fight this recession. But some of Obama's reform ideas have been very good, and he actually got a stimulus package through a very reluctant Congress. Now that the Dow is back on the ascent, are any of those conservative talking heads cheering Obama's proposal to create a new financial regulator focused on protecting consumers? Well, no. As it turns out, the stock market is pretty fickle. Its daily and weekly movements can rarely be attributed to individual economic policies. The things that make stocks advance don't necessarily create new jobs.
That new consumer regulator is by far the best part of Obama's financial regulatory overhaul. Harvard Professor and bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren explains why in this video, available at AlterNet. They've also published a piece I wrote on the bank lobby's insane assault on the plan.
But even if the entire crazy bailout actually does work, the solution won't last without other major economic reforms. In The Progressive, Naomi Klein argues that the surreal boom-and-bust cycle of U.S. capitalism is an awful lot like a Sarah Palin fairy tale, a world in which the most outrageous structural imbalances never result in problems for ordinary people because a new dose of market magic swoops in at the last minute to save the day.
"What Palin was saying is what is built into the very DNA of capitalism: the idea that the world has no limits. She was saying that there is no such thing as consequences, or real-world deficits. Because there will always be another frontier, another Alaska, another bubble. Just move on and discover it. Tomorrow will never come," Klein writes.
If we want to get away from this predatory cycle, we have to give ordinary citizens more influence over the legislative process. As Talbott noted in Salon, that means demanding our due.
Big and bold. That's Mike Lux's recipe for sweeping transformative change. That's the way for progressives to achieve a Big Change Moment, as Lux calls it in his new book, "The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be." Lux likens progressive ideals to American ideals, and calls for progressives to pressure cautious Democrats hesitant to spend political capital.
I'm not talking about President Obama specifically. As Lux wrote here yesterday, Obama has taken tremendous strides to get past the hurdles of centrist cabinet picks and stay on the progressive track. You could hear calls for a Big Change Moment in Obama's congressional address last week, and you can see audacious ambition in his economic recovery bill and budget. While Lux is right when he says we shouldn't hesitate to disagree with the President on everything from the banking crisis to the war in Afghanistan--particularly when Obama respects plurality of opinion--this ought to go double (or I guess increase exponentially depending on your math skills) for every Democrat in Washington right now.
Continuing with our series of major announcements on Open Left, this morning I am very excited to welcome David Sirota as Open Left's new full-time blogger. David will be joining me as the second regular weekday blogger, as Matt Stoller is now working in the House of Representatives, solving the rootsgap.
Matt can never be replaced-and we will always await his return--but David will be a force in his own right. As the author of two books, as a nationally syndicated columnist, as a regular presence on a number of blogs, as a freelance writer and as an editor for In These Times, David's accomplishments as a writer are impressive (and enviable). But beyond his accomplishments as a writer, it is what he writes, and the passion with which he writers it, that makes him such a good fit for Open Left. David has consistently, forcefully, and insightfully advocated for a broad, populist, progressive shift away from our aristocratic, top-down, right-wing, corporatist institutional structures. It isn't a stretch to say that his vision is what Open Left is all about.
So, welcome aboard David! It is an great honor to have you with us. I forsee great things for our community in the coming months and years, and this is a big step in that direction.
I read with some interest the mean things that Markos said about Ralph Nader, arguably the greatest journalist who has ever lived. I voted for Barack Obama but with eyes wide open. I think he'll be better and more sensible than the Republicans in power. But we really need to take a deeper look at our loyalty to the democratic party and the democratic party only if we're really serious about things like the rule of law applying to everyone or even getting out of wars that would be more honestly defined as crimes. In short: if you really want to put the fear of god into Democrats, then you need to start supporting third party candidates. This crazy idea that we just keep giving them more money no matter how horribly they treat us simply isn't beginning to fly anymore.
This award is great news for all of us who care about progressive media. David's career as a writer is really taking off in a big way, with recognition like this and his new book selling so well. He thoroughly deserves the kudos, too, he is a kickass writer. Congrats, David.
The single man most responsible for the fiscal wreckage that is our budget, other than Bush himself, is up to his old tricks. I'm talking about Max Baucus.
A little bit about the 2001 tax fight before I get to the main point. In the heat of the fight over the massively irresponsible Bush tax cut, Tom Daschle in a much under-reported and under-appreciated speech to the Senate Democratic caucus told his colleagues that the only way to have power with Bush in the White House and Republicans controlling the House and Senate was to hang together and have each others backs. If we stay together, Daschle said, Bush will be forced to come to the table on this and every other bill.
Baucus, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, promptly went out and cut a deal with the Bush White House, giving them virtually everything they wanted. It ended any chance the Democrats had to stop Bush on his most important single policy, and set a pattern for a lack of Democratic solidarity against Bush that continues to this day.
Now Baucus is screwing his fellow Democrats again. The Hill has a new article by Alexander Bolton describing how Baucus is helping Gordon Smith, using Smith's language and giving Smith lots of credit on an Iranian sanctions bill. Smith is one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the Senate, and Baucus is delightedly helping him out on a highly questionable bill. That is just pathetic.
Baucus has never been a progressive, spending way too much time sucking up to big corporate interests, as David Sirota has documented many times. But, jeez, Max, at least don't screw over your fellow Democrats politically - again.
So I read The Uprising over Memorial Day weekend, and I have to say it was a really fun and poignant book. It's very different than Sirota's other writing and blogging. He writes with a great deal of what can only be called sympathy for people in difficult situations, like labor organizers in the northwest, shareholder activists using slingshots against Exxon, Montana legislators fighting extremist conservatives, and Minutemen on the border of Mexico. My one criticism is that though there were women in the book, like the kick-ass cursing nun who took a good deal of the lead against Exxon, there weren't that many, and I would have liked to see more about where the girls are.
It didn't 'feel' like a political book, and I went through it in a day. I'm not going to write a long and formal review, just wanted you to know that I really liked it.
... Adding that my guess is that female oriented populism, or as Sirota puts it, 'uprisings', looks and sounds different than male oriented 'uprising'.
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