One of Time magazine's star columnists blew up over a seemingly minor incident several weeks ago. Personal animus can't explain the outburst, but internal turmoil certainly could.
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
Much the same can be said for the Afghanistan escalation, long-term social investment spending, torture and detainment policies, the new defense budget, the value of post-partisanship, the degree of progressivism in Obama administration appointments, and much more. The debate within progressive circles we are experiencing over these issues is primarily based on a question of trust, and only to a lesser extent on analysis, research and facts. It is a debate with which almost anyone who consumes progressive media is familiar: give President Obama a chance, aka trust the Obama administration and stop criticizing it, versus make him do it, aka President Obama's administration will only pursue a progressive policy direction if it is forced to do so by popular pressure. Within progressive circles, these attitudes are demonstrative of either a fundamental trust or distrust of the intentions of the Obama administration.
The more I've followed the back-and-forth on this, the less actual disagreement about the facts I think I'm hearing. What the critics are saying is that Geithner's plan couldn't possibly recapitalize the banks in an adequate way unless it was implemented as a horrible giveaways. What the defenders are saying is that if you implement the plan the correct way, it will be a helpful step toward resolving the situation at a time when it's difficult to imagine the congress appropriating the volume of extra funds necessary to full resolve the issue.
Ultimately, these two points aren't in conflict with one another. They're different interpretations of the situation that are based on different assumptions about the competence and good will of the people involved. If you assume that the key policymakers are smart people doing their best, then you're going to line up with Spence. You'll predict a degree of success from the Geithner Plan followed by the need for additional action. And you'll be concerned that over-the-top criticism of Geithner and the Treasury Team is going to undermine the political support that will be needed for further action. But if you assume that the key policymakers are inept, or unduly under the sway of big finance, you'll see that a sound implementation of the Geithner Plan wouldn't generate the needed volume of money, so the plan "must" be for a large giveaway.
There is very little to disagree with here. One might take issue with policymakers being "smart" or not as relevant, since very smart people can also be under the sway of big finance and / or not generally have the public interest at heart. Still, overall, given the intra-progressive arguments of the last five months, and also the incompatibility of "expert" predictions on the outcome of various policies, it is difficult not to conclude that one's degree of trust in the Obama administration specifically, and the leaders of our powerful financial, media, cultural and political institutions more generally, is the fundamental source of disagreement about the efficacy of many of the policies that are being implemented in response to the many crises the country, and the world, must face.
Given all of this, perhaps we should step back from debating the future efficacy of policies for a moment, and instead have a discussion about why or why not progressives should trust the Obama administration. Such a debate is important not just in terms of theoretical orientation, but also in whether or not it is best for progressive activists to spend their time primarily supporting, or pressuring, the Obama administration.
It probably comes as no surprise to Open Left readers that I place myself in the "distrust." Or, at least "more distrust than trust" camp, as obviously there are degrees of trust and mistrust. (For example, I clearly trust the Obama administration more than I trust the Bush administration or John McCain. There are degrees of everything.) As such, in the extended entry, I provide the case for distrust. Since I am well aware that this is not a one-sided issue, I am eager for comments to supply counter-arguments for the "trust" camp. Tomorrow, I will work to compile such arguments, and offer up an article that serves as a rebuttal to this one: "the Case for Trust."
For now, I will start things off in the extended entry by providing the case for distrust, and a largely pressure oriented activist stance.
Today, the Obama truth is revealed. Change has come in the form of familiarity. Some American's are embarrassed. Others embrace what, when presented by the previous Administration, they rejected. Apathy helps most Americans to avoid a sense of shame. It was announced; Obama defends Bush-era secrets. This Administration has gone further to establish government sovereignty. As a nation, the Obama White House tells citizens, our country will be better protected if details about the surveillance program are considered "Top Secret - Sensitive Compartmented Information."
There is a widespread theory that Obama is using symbolic gestures, such as having Rick Warren as a featured speaker at the inauguration the "symbolism" of keeping Robert Gates as Sectary of Defense, in order to provide himself political cover for passing left-wing legislation. So, conservatives get symbols, such as the person managing the largest federal department of all, but progressives will get policy. According to this theory, progressives who are upset with Obama over one thing or another are childishly upset over symbols, and ignoring the progressive reality of the governing to come.
Members said [Emanuel] had a phenomenal knowledge of their districts, and he kept up to date well after the campaign ended. Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) said one of his supporters wrote a letter to the editor of a small paper in his district, complaining about his vote on a rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Walz mentioned the letter to the editor to Emanuel on the floor and was stunned by his response.
"You mean the one about how you should caucus with the Republicans?" Emanuel shot back. "That's a good letter. Makes you look bipartisan."
In this case, Rahm Emanuel's thought it was a positive development that actual congressional votes on actual reprehensible legislation that actually passed into law stirred up public, left-wing anger toward the minority of Democrats who supported that law, as it made those Democrats look more bi-partisan.
This throws a lot of cold water on the notion that the only things conservatives have coming toward them are symbols, while progressives will receive actual legislation. In the above case, conservative legislation was viewed as a posiitve in that it created more "symbolic" gestures that would make Democrats appear more favorable to Republicans. The legislation itself wasn't even as important as the symbols. Emanuel could have said something like "don't worry, you did the right thing," or "don't worry, you voted your conscience." Instead, he pointed to the progressive anger that arose from actual votes on actual legislation as a positive for those Democrats on the receiving end of that anger.
This might be an isolated incident, and play out differently over the next few years, but it throws a lot of cold water on the notion that conservatives are only getting symbols, while progressives will get legislation. If you find yourself on the left, be prepared, at least from Rahm Emanuel, for a direct, consistent, even strenuous, effort to piss you off. That is part of Rahm Emanuel's strategy. And remember, btw, that Emanuel is one of the examples of a liberal appointment under Obama.
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.
While it seems that the Obama White House is a mixed bag, it looks like pressure from progressive groups will have an easier time penetrating the halls of power. It turns out Rahm was a strong bulwark against outside activism.
But it wasn't just staff. Members said he had a phenomenal knowledge of their districts, and he kept up to date well after the campaign ended. Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) said one of his supporters wrote a letter to the editor of a small paper in his district, complaining about his vote on a rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
With today's plunge in the stock market, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has now fallen 42 percent over the last year. Just how bad is that?
It's nearly as bad as one terrible 12-month period from late 1973 to late 1974. Other than that, it's the worst decline since 1932.
These historical comparisons are best done in real - that is, inflation-adjusted - terms, so that's what we will use from here. In real terms, the decline since Oct. 9, 2007, has been about 45 percent. From the end of September 1973 to the end of September 1974, the S.&P. 500 dropped 48 percent.(...)
The worst 12-month period happened between June 1931 and June 1932, when the stocks fell 62 percent. (Mr. Shiller's data is monthly, so there was probably a 365-day period that was slightly worse than this.)
Given that this was published yesterday, we have probably blown past 1973-1974, trailing only 1931-1932. And there is reason to believe that it will continue to fall.
The SF Chronicle reports on corporate lobbyists taking advantage of a loophole in rules preventing them from throwing lavish parties to "honor"House lawmakers, which exempts parties for groups of Members.
Prominent, a Sunday evening bash thrown by ATT for the "Blue Dogs" to thank them for the FISA amnesty.
Congress, pledging to clean up Washington's culture of corruption, approved a rule last year to end the practice of lobbyists or their clients throwing lavish events honoring lawmakers at the parties' national conventions.
But the House ethics committee opened a huge loophole in the rule by issuing guidelines in December saying it was fine for lobbyists or their employers to throw parties for a group of House members - just not for a single lawmaker...
...AT&T is among the sponsors of a party celebrating the conservative House Blue Dog Democrats on Sunday night.
Perfect spot for the first appearance of my "STOP GOVERNMENT SPYING" banner.
Although Barack Obama remains a slight favorite in this election, his position is more vulnerable than at any point since the primaries concluded, and he no longer appears to have a built-in strength in the electoral college that we had attributed to him before.
From Obama's highpoint on June 19th, there are two turns downward and one flat period. The first downward tilt is on June 19th, when his ascent turned into a descent, and the second was on July 31st, where his descent accelerated. During mid to late July, Obama's lead flattened out before taking another downturn.
This is the worst defense of nepotism I've ever seen. Some Beltway insider named Charlie Brown is mad that Glenn Greenwald is criticizing his friend, Mort Halperin, a legendary civil libertarian turned architect of the FISA compromise, as well as the father of DC journalist Mark Halperin. It starts with a quote from Glenn noting that the Halperin family is intertwined in policy and journalistic circles.
Several people have emailed to complain - correctly - that I was remiss in failing to note that Mort Halperin is the father of the incomparablyexecrable Mark Halperin, formerly of ABC News and now of Time. My apologies for the oversight. If there is any system more nepotistic and incestuous than our Beltway political and media institutions, I don't know what it is.
So Greenwald would have us believe that the father should be held accountable for the supposed sins of the son, and vice versa, and that Mark Halperin's success is based entirely on his "famous" father. I don't know Mark Halperin. I have no idea how he got his first job in Washington. But I'm guessing that his subsequent success just might be based on his own achievements and not because of his dad.
I suppose it's possible that Mark Halperin just randomly succeeded as a famous insider DC journalist who constantly appears on television because of his close connections to various political elites, but I'm going to guess that it might have had something to do with his famous insider father, Mort Halperin, and Mort's close connections to various elites.
Can you believe that congressional primaries are still happening across the country? They are. And wouldn't it help to know a primary candidate's position on FISA and other Constitutional issues prior to voting?
The Get FISA Right group is finding out the answers, using a questionnaire developed on our wiki. The survey includes a section on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 followed by a section on Constitutional Rights. Challengers are scored on a curve with a grading method discussed in our web forum. Incumbents are graded on the vote they made in the House and Senate when the flawed bill was passed. Those who voted Nay get an A, while those who voted Yea get an F.
Today, I went on the record in a Washington Post piece about the Obama campaign, mostly because a lot of other people can't and because the Obama campaign seems completely and utterly uninterested in feedback (it changed briefly for a few weeks, but they seem to be back in their bunker). The commercials are boring and stale, the messaging towards McCain's attacks just isn't sharp, labor blew a bunch of money in the primary, and they've defunded the additional groups that could really go after McCain for his own corruption. The Republicans might actually be able to outspend Obama, with outside groups and the RNC added in to the total. Moreover, and this I did not expect, mainstream journalists are getting angry with the Obama campaign, because they are getting complaints from the leadership of the campaign even as they aggressively fact-checked McCain's latest salvo of ads. Now I want the traditional media destroyed, but they actually have done a good job proving McCain's ads false this past week (which is what Obama's people wanted). Of course, having the media participate in a liberal-wide hissy-fit was exactly what the McCain campaign sought, so I don't know exactly what the game plan is here.
Regardless, here's what I said in the paper.
"It literally is the same old Democratic, consultant-driven politics," said Matt Stoller, a Democratic political consultant and blogger. "It's the same attempt not to tell a story about the country and the other guy, but to prove you're right, like an academic debating seminar."
The Obama campaign is heavily resistant to feedback, and more than that, it is angrily dismissive of the concerns of the people who voted for Obama over Clinton in the primary. Here's Plouffe.
"We have a game plan and a strategy, and we're going to continue to execute it. We're not going to be terribly worried about people playing armchair quarterback," Plouffe said. "By November 4, there are character dimensions to John McCain that are going to be clear."
The draft of the Democratic party platform is out. Does the section entitled "Reclaiming Our Constitution and Our Liberties" go far enough? How does it compare with Get FISA Right's proposals?
One of the most significant opportunities we have over the next few years is fixing the broken market for Democratic primaries, where incumbents can take primary voters for granted because there is no way for primary challengers to get a foothold in competing with them, even if those incumbents are out of step with the district. This has produced a culture of sludge-like caution and utterly disgusting unaccountability on Capitol Hill among party elites on both sides. Walmart is now giving more to Democrats than Republicans. Walmart.
The disgusting cretins in DC are the ones who are going to block Obama's most progressive reforms, they are the ones who threw Wes Clark under the bus for speaking the truth, they are the ones who backed Nikki Tinker's antisemitic bullshit, they are the ones who insist on boring milquetoast corporate-friendly ads, and the ones that preach caution when Alan Grayson says we need to throw war profiteers in jail. They are the ones who are targeted with this effort, through the most democratic means possible, helping primary challenges and advertising to soften up corrupt incumbents like Steny Hoyer, the architect of much of the nonsense on Capitol Hill. Some of you reading right now are going to work on these primary campaigns, and some of you will even run, and win. We are building a different kind of politics, where there's real accountability in the political system, which there hasn't been for decades. It's time to end this charade.
(Direct netroots-to-public-eyeballs messaging. No consultant middlemen. This could be the future of activism--or at least reasonable chunk of it. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Get FISA Right (GFR), the internet based activist group begun on mybarackobama.com to alter Sen. Obama's stance on government surveillance and telecom immunity, has moved on in a big way. After losing the legislative battle on FISA the group faced a challenging decision: disband and look for ways to effect government action on illegal surveillance individually or find new causes to organize members around. The active members knew they had captured lightning in a bottle with their melding of dedication to a cause and mastery of internet based activism. What they decided was to take the fight for rule of law and protecting your constitutional rights forward by empowering you to fund their new television ad.
Though I don't think Obama should have caved on drilling for political reasons, there are two significant differences between his shift on this issue and his shift on FISA. The first difference is that on drilling, when he puts forward the concept of a compromise, it's actually a real compromise. While it opens up some new areas for drilling, it also does the following.
If you're one of the thousands of voters angry over the Democrats' cave on domestic spying and telecom amnesty, a new online grassroots movement is now making it easy to buy a local ad on MSNBC, CNN and several other networks, for less money than you'd think.
The Fight FISA on TV! campaign we're doing in partnership with SaysMe.tv got some major momentum when Sarah Lai Stirand's Opposed to Wiretap Amensty? Run a TV Ad for Six Bucks on Wired's Threat Level got picked up by Slashdot. [Credit where credit is due: Jack and Jill Politics was had covered the ad a day earlier. Looks like they're not as popular with Slashdot readers as Wired is. Who would have guessed?] We're over 3,000 views of the two versions of the video on YouTube ([1], [2]), well on the way to our goal of 10,000-20,000 by September 2, and at least dozen ads have been placed already. OK, nobody's plunked down for the four-figure prices for placements like Fox News in New York yet, but SaysMe.tv's going to be introducing the ability for people to pool their contributions for these pricier placements ... I bet we'll get some premium placements by the end of the month.
And although it's less flashy, our work to influence the platform is also going well. jawboneblue's leading the effort to get our language adopted as part of the Netroots platform, where our Get FISA Right plank has now merged with various others into the highest-ranked civil liberties plank. We've also gotten our position, and in many cases our exact language, adopted in the Obama campaign's in-person "listening" meetings in at least five states; Thomas Nephew's "Listening to America" hears "Get FISA Right" on newsrackblog.com is a particularly good writeup. Once again, our timing's perfect: the existence of these new channels for grassroots influence is tailor-made for groups like Get FISA Right, and our members continue to be great at finding effective ways to work with them.
It's interesting reading different people's perspectives on the ad campaign and more generally on Get FISA Right. A few I found particularly thought-provoking:
The Obama campaign is spending $5 million dollars to air ads during the Olympics. Meanwhile, an individual civil liberties geek can pay less than 0.001% of that amount to put a Get FISA Right ad on cable TV.
"We've got more than a million volunteers on my.barackobama.com. They've planned more than 70,000 offline events through the system, made millions of phone calls from home, and formed thousands of grassroots advocacy groups, including one you might have heard about recently."
There's a lot of energy in the Get FISA Right group these days. The getFISAright.net website is the best jumping-off place to find out what's going on, and the Strategy page on the wiki gives a big-picture overview. It's all interesting, it's all timely ... and I'm going to ignore most of it in this post and focus on the "Don't let our Constitution die" video.
A day or two before the July 9 Senate vote, some folks from LA-based startup SaysMe.tv approached us with an intriguing suggestion: would we be interested in working with them to get ads about FISA on cable TV? SaysMe's community-funded ad model, where people can pay for a single placement of ads in various markets, seems a great match for our grassroots style. And the timing's perfect -- it's a great chance to spread the word that while we've lost a battle, the fight to roll back government surveillance and restore the rule of law isn't over yet.
The video came together remarkably quickly; we revised the script collaboratively on the wiki and message board and email and IM, getting input from over 20 people. Cognitive diversity in action: we had lawyers, journalists, techies, ad execs, marketing people, a professional comedian, and plenty of "just plain folks", and virtually every piece of input was valuable.
