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After the Revolt

Robert Borosage — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:11:04 -0400

The fix was in. The leadership of both parties in Congress, both major presidential candidates, media poobahs, financial statesmen from Warren Buffett to Bob Rubin, all weighing in to support giving Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson a $700 billion revolving fund to bail out Wall Street.

And then Americans said, “stuff it.” The bill was incredibly unpopular. Calls against were running as high as 200 to 1, with venom. With Americans struggling—their salaries not keeping up with the cost of gas and health care, their homes losing value, their savings exhausted, their credit cards maxed out, foreclosures and bankruptcies on the rise—giving the Treasury Secretary, the former head of Goldman Sachs, $700 billion to try to bail out his friends on Wall Street was a very hard sell.

Congress can’t walk away. Something must be done. We need a real plan:
• to get the economy going
• for financial reconstruction
• to staunch the housing hemorrhaging.

So in the House, the vote counters went to work. In both parties, to the extent possible, members in contested districts were to be given permission to vote against the bill. Those in safe districts were expected to vote for it. Leadership labored to assemble a bare bipartisan majority to pass it. But that increased the influence of progressives on the left and conservatives on the right who had relatively safe seats. Members of the Progressive Caucus split 50-50, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi produced the 150 votes she promised. Conservatives, eager to distance themselves from Bush, revolting against House Minority Leader John Boehner’s leadership and hoping to blame Democrats for the mess, bailed out on the bailout in large numbers. Pelosi wisely decided not to try to force it through with Democratic votes only.

But Congress can’t walk away. Something must be done. The markets were already indicating the Paulson plan was inadequate. Conservatives are truly out to lunch. Their plan featured suspending capital gains taxes (as if investors would then rush to put their money in the banks’ toxic paper), and further deregulation, letting banks hide the current value of their assets by suspending mark-to-market rules. That actually made it into the final bill, but it hardly would increase confidence in Wall Street. Rather than making further compromises with the conservatives who simply don’t get it, Democrats should put forth a plan that is far bolder and that deals with the real problems.

1. We need a real plan to get the economy going.

The Paulson plan had a big price tag, but wasn’t likely to work. It was, as Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz noted, essentially a version of the trickle-down economics that got us into this mess. Bail out the guys at the top and the benefits will trickle down to the rest of us.

The financial crisis comes from the collapse of an $8 trillion housing bubble. Banks—and many homeowners—made a lot of bad bets on the assumption that housing prices would always go up. The shadow banking system—including the off-balance sheet entities set up by the commercial banks—borrowed massively to make those bets. They invented exotic securities and over the counter, unregulated credit swaps and the like to add layers and layers to the house of cards.

Now it’s collapsed. The real economy is in trouble. Consumers have lost trillions in home equity and are tightening their belts. We are headed into what is likely to be a long and severe downturn. Defaults on mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and other consumer debt are rising. Banks and investment houses have no idea what the value of the paper they own is, much less the condition of other banks. Financial markets are close to freezing up.

So Paulson asked for the authority to bail them out—to buy some of the toxic paper, not all of it by any means—to “restore confidence” and create a market price for the stuff. Good luck with that.

In fact, the downturn in the real economy is more likely to send the pain upward. We already have rising unemployment; declining consumption; collapsed construction and decimated manufacturing sectors; sinking retail; and financially strapped states and localities about to make deep cuts in health care and construction, and lay off police, teachers and other public workers.

So what does the administration do? The president says it is “premature” to have a serious stimulus plan to get the real economy going. The Democratic leadership offers up a token, $50 billion stimulus. The Republicans in the Senate wage a filibuster to kill it.

Worse, by authorizing $700 billion for the bank bailout, Congress would set up those who will argue that we have no money left to stimulate the real economy.

Instead progressives should demand a real—$200 billion or more—stimulus that invests in new energy, extends unemployment benefits, aids states and localities to avoid debilitating cuts, rebuilds our crumbling infrastructure and puts people to work.

2. We need a plan for financial reconstruction.

Second, the Paulson plan itself simply does not go far enough to deal with the reality that Wall Street needs to be purged of insolvent firms, excess capacity, and that imprudent lenders and investors have to take their losses. Paulson is looking to restore confidence by buying some of the banks’ toxic paper. He could well end up with a Halloween plan, pumping blood into the living dead.

What we need, as Alex Pollock and John Makin, both of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, argue, is a Reconstruction Finance Corporation that has the power to take over financial firms, sort out the solvent from the insolvent, close down some, merge others, and back those that are solvent. Sweden provides, as many have shown, a good example of how this can be done—with remarkably little cost to the taxpayer.

3. We must staunch the housing hemorrhaging.

Finally, more direct steps should be made to help forestall foreclosures and insure that housing prices don’t simply collapse. The Paulson bill did instruct the Treasury Department to take steps to renegotiate mortgages on the paper that the government purchases. But with many of the mortgages sliced and diced into securities, Treasury will still have difficulty getting much done. And the bill, in a testament to Wall Street’s clout, omits the fairest way to sort out the victims from the bounders: empowering bankruptcy courts to renegotiate mortgages to keep deserving homeowners in their homes and reduce the flood of foreclosures across the country.

The turmoil in Europe and the decline in the markets are being read as warning signs that delay will be costly. And Congress is likely to try to pass a version of the defeated bailout bill with cosmetic changes once more, lipstick on pigs being in vogue. But, in fact, the Paulson plan deserved to fail. It exemplifies the philosophy that got us in this mess—the assumption, as Sen. Barack Obama noted, “ if we give more and more to those with the most, prosperity will trickle down to everyone else,” while ignoring the reality that the pain is shooting up.

We need real investment to kick-start the economy. We need an independent agency with greater power to take over and sort out the financial community. And we need greater focus on staunching the hemorrhaging of housing values on Main Street, not the value of securitized exotica in Wall Street’s basements. Let’s start with a bold plan that can work and negotiate from there.

The Deal That Blew Up

Robert Borosage — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:49:45 -0400

The following is the text of the "agreement on principles" that blew up yesterday at the White House, as House Republican leader John Boehner blindsided negotiators by saying Republicans wouldn't support the deal. Sen. John McCain who had arranged the photo op refused to state where he stood.

The text —like Treasury Secretary Paulson's original proposal — is breathtaking in its brevity. They are talking, after all, about authorization to spend $700 billion (or more since it is a revolving fund).

Meanwhile the financial crisis grows worse: failure of Washington Mutual was largest bank failure in history.

The annotations are mine. For more discussion, go here

September 25, 2008, 4:26 pm

Text of Lawmakers' Agreement on Principles

Congressional Republicans and Democrats came to an agreement on principles for the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program that they will take into final negotiations with the White House. It includes sections on taxpayer protections, oversight and transparency, homeownership preservation and funding authority. -Phil Izzo

The full text follows:

Agreement on Principles

1. Taxpayer Protection

a. Requires Treasury Secretary to set standards to prevent excessive or inappropriate executive compensation for participating companies

This is basically a sop for public outrage, designed to insure Wall Street nabobs don't pay themselves millions in bonuses after running their firms into the ditch. Frankly, they'd be smart to volunteer to work for a dollar for the first year; there will be infinite ways to pocket big rewards if their firms are rescued from their follies.

b. To minimize risk to the American taxpayer, requires that any transaction include equity sharing

This is vital addition to Paulson plan. It would give taxpayers an equity stake in the banks that are saved, so that if they prosper, taxpayers, who have taken on their toxic paper that now has no market, have a chance at sharing in the upside. .

c. Requires most profits to be used to reduce the national debt

This is sop to the conservative Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who are posturing on the rising deficit. Fact is Congress should be spending a lot more money getting the economy going - investing in new energy and conservation, rebuilding roads and sewers, modernizing our electric grid and transport system to put people to work. If the recession continues to deepen, the cost of bailing out the banks will soar.

2. Oversight and Transparency

a. Treasury Secretary is prohibited from acting in an arbitrary or capricious manner or in any way that is inconsistent with existing law

A sharp contrast to Paulson's plan which called for total discretion, with no judicial review

b. Establishes strong oversight board with cease and desist authority

This is vital - particularly if the board includes not simply financial gray beards, but independent representatives of workers and consumers. They can keep Paulson from being too generous with taxpayer money to his former colleagues on Wall Street.

c. Requires program transparency and public accountability through regular, detailed reports to Congress disclosing exercise of the Treasury Secretary's authority

d. Establishes an independent Inspector General to monitor the use of the Treasury Secretary's authority

e. Requires GAO audits to ensure proper use of funds, appropriate internal controls, and to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse

3. Homeownership Preservation

a. Maximize and coordinate efforts to modify mortgages for homeowners at risk of foreclosure

b. Requires loan modifications for mortgages owned or controlled by the Federal Government

c. Directs a percentage of future profits to the Affordable Housing Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund to meet America's housing needs

This "requires" modifications on mortgages that are picked up in the bailout. What is missing is the logical authority to allow bankruptcy courts to work out mortgages. It is bizarre that Paulson, Wall Street and Republicans have decided to oppose what would be the most logical way to work out bad mortgages - a hearing officer on a case by case basis deciding the best way to proceed.

4. Funding Authority

a. Treasury Secretary's request for $700 billion is authorized, with $250 billion available immediately and an additional $100 billion released upon his or her certification that funds are needed

b. final $350 billion is subject to a Congressional joint resolution of disapproval

This is designed a bit to limit the initial price of the package, and a bit to keep Paulson from spending it all in the few months before Democrats hope they have their own Treasury Secretary.

What's missing here:

1. Sensible Regulation: There are no requirements for re-regulating the banking system, no listing of no-brainer reforms, like extending limits on capital and leverage to the shadow banking system. A bailout that rescues Wall Street without re-regulation is a fool's errand. If the bankers think their losses are covered and no limits are put on their gambles, they will soon be taking even greater risks. Paulson wants bailout now and regulation later. But when Wall Street is back on its feet, its lobby will fight relentlessly against regulation.

2. Help for the Real Economy: It is simply perverse that the president argues we need $700 billion tomorrow to save the banks but that it is "pre-mature" to have another stimulus program for the real economy. Layoffs are accelerating. States and localities are about to cut back on police, health care, schools, construction projects. We should be investing major sums -- $250 billion or more - now in the real economy, to put people back to work. If the recession worsens, the balance sheet of banks will worsen, as more people default on credit card, auto and consumer loans.

3. Power for bankruptcy courts to work out mortgages (as noted above)

Condemned to Repeat It: When Our National Memory Fails

Sara Robinson — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:34:44 -0400

Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Santayana's warning is now such a persistent cliche only because it's so painfully true.

Where have we seen this kind of meltdown before? Oh, yeah, right—we've got those family snapshots of our grandparents waving at the camera from the edge of this very same vertiginous wealth-eating abyss in 1929, as their family fortunes whirled out of sight through the yawning hole at their feet. And, as Kevin Phillips has told us more than once, the path to that chasm was well-worn even then. The Spaniards forged the trail to this dark place in the 16th century. The Dutch sacrificed their last shot at being a world power here in the 17th. And the Brits dropped by and flung their empire into this same pit in the early 20th.

In fact, it turns out that this is where the road has ended up every single time a major empire has turned the keys to its common wealth over to private financiers for the past 500 years. It turns out that the Great Depression was not a one-off —it was part of a long-understood pattern. It turns out that, contrary to conservative cant, the rules of economics do not change and history does not end.

It does, however, rhyme. And a lot of that has to do with the fragility of human memory.

Given the clear lessons of history, just what possessed us to believe the Masters of the Universe back there in the 1980s when they swore they were taking us out to some new and exciting frontier, the place where history ended and the normal laws of economic gravity no longer applied? (And why didn't it occur to us at some point along the way that that's pretty much the precise definition of an abyss?) Why is this terrain suddenly so familiar, and the trajectory of our coming fall only now so bitterly predictable?

Forgetting, as it turns out, has a lot to answer for as a driver of history. In the short run, fear, denial, and time can all create debilitating cultural bit rot, bringing on almost total amnesia within the span of just a few years. (How many of us got burned in the tech bubble, but played the housing market anyway?) In the longer run, people have this annoying habit of dying -- and taking history's lessons to the grave with them. Which means that, by and by, there's nobody left who can share their personal memories of How We Got Here, or What Happened The Last Time We Did this. More often than not, the day we learn our lessons is the day we start forgetting them.

It's absolutely true that a certain amount of forgetting is good for our mental health. If we're going to grow up, make progress, endure tough times, and adapt to new situations, then we need to be able to make mistakes, let go of the pain, take the lessons, and move on. We all depend on quite a bit of selective forgetting just to get through the day. Staying too closely tied to the past can condemn us to repeat it, too.

But forgetting becomes a curse when we lose the important lessons from the past that we rely on to stay out of future trouble. And that's where we are now. Forty years after the Depression, half the country no longer had a first-hand memory of it -- and much of the other half was in denial, and actively trying to forget it. (As long as people remembered Coolidge and Hoover, Reagan could have never been elected.) Now, eighty years on, there's simply nobody left who remembers the last time America took its family vacation on the edge of this crater. So we're all back here again, lining up with our toes on the edge, peering down for our own horrific first-hand view of the all-consuming black void.

Fighting Forgetting

History is civilization's way of fighting forgetting, which is why advanced civilizations down the centuries have been universally obsessed with it. We genuinely hope that if we can inscribe the lessons of the past vividly enough in our children's memories, later generations will be more likely to repeat the good choices, and sidestep the bad ones. Getting them to take these stories to heart is understood to be a matter of cultural survival, and the key to peace, prosperity, and progress. If we fail to convey the lessons well, we put the future of the culture at risk.

Over the millennia, there's no pedagogical trick that hasn't been tried. Cultures have embedded these not-to-be-forgotten lessons into their art, drama, music, architecture, and literature; celebrated them in their festivals; and re-enacted them in their religions. They used every possible sensory channel to help their children not only see, but feel for themselves, what it was like to be there. We tell our children stories not just to entertain them or bond them to the culture; but also to prepare them for the future by imprinting their imaginations with everything we want them to know about our past.

Unfortunately, though, there are limits to how much we can convey. We write books, build schools, drag our kids through museums and monuments—but too often, when the moment comes, that abstract knowledge of the past isn't as fearsomely compelling as the visceral demands of whatever situation they find themselves right now. "This time is different," they tell themselves. "The old rules don't apply. Besides, we have to respond this way -- we don't have any other choice." And thus history repeats, sometimes nearly word for word.

Certainly those of us on the progressive side knew all the way back on Reagan's first day in office that this could only end badly. A lot of us were the children and grandchildren of people who lives were shaped by the scars they took away from America's last disastrous love affair with conservative economic nostrums. A lot of them devoted their lives to helping us avoid the same fate. For some of us, the warnings took.

But for most of us, they didn't. The great mass of Americans aren't that familiar with history; and even some who did know the story didn't see the connections when the patterns started repeating. The country made its decisions accordingly, enthusiastically re-embracing financial theories that had been soundly discredited by the Great Depression. ("Oh, but that was a long time ago. It's a different world now," they blithely assured us. If forgetting has a motto, that may be it.)

And so here we are: condemned to repeat it.

Learning to Remember

Humanity does learn historical lessons over time, and progress does get made. It took centuries for people to recognize democracy as preferable to monarchy, for example; or to arrive at a widespread international consensus that slavery is wrong. But it's a slow and painful process, and progress can take generations.

It's interesting to note that when people have begun to argue against unquestioned cultural institutions like monarchy, slavery, or torture, their most successful arguments have usually been the ones that expose the institution itself as inherently rotten. People began to understand that, as a matter of universal truth, monarchies inevitably became tyrannies; that slavery invariably degraded both the owned and the owner; and torture always led to an overall brutalization of the entire society. Once people understood that the evil of these institutions wasn't merely situational -- but rather, systemic and inevitable -- they were able to put them aside for good, and build something healthier in their place.

We now have the accumulated evidence to make that same kind of argument about the systemic corruption inherent in conservative economic policies. We've tried it their way—over and over and over, in many countries and many eras, under many different names and promoted by many different people. And every single time, it has led those countries to unsustainable inequalities, political oligarchies, and complete and utter economic ruin. It's not the work of " a few bad apples" or something that "nobody could forsee" or just a a rare instance of things going sideways. These outcomes are what the conservative economic system is designed from the ground up to produce. It cannot deliver anything else.

We cannot word it too strongly now. Free-market economics is one of history's great failures—like monarchy and slavery and torture were failures. Countries that embrace it have invariably degraded themselves, and forfeited their own hopes for peace, democracy, and prosperity. No matter what pretty stories they tell you to justify their behavior, once you give the financiers the keys to your common wealth, you can expect economic collapse as surely as you can expect the sunrise.

This fact needs to be part of our history books, forever, so when somebody suggests this to our grandkids, they recoil as if someone had just blithely suggested reinstituting slavery. It needs to be part of the canon of our great universities and our shared moral code about the role of government. The more our children remember, and the better they remember it, the more freedom they will have to make choices that move them beyond the past, consciously choose a future that is finally and uniquely their own.

Gut Check Time: Will Congress Stand Up To Wall Street?

Robert Borosage — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:42:22 -0400

It's gut check time.

The attempt by Treasury Secretary Paulson to put a gun to the head of Congress and terrify them into forking over a $700 billion blank check to the Bush administration in 48 hours has failed. Now what?

Most Americans would just as soon the Masters of the Universe were allowed to sink in their own folly. They had the party; let them clean up the mess. But, looking at sinking housing values and shaken retirement accounts, most Americans know something has to get done.

Banks and investment houses carry weapons of financial mass destruction. Last week, they looked into the abyss. If nothing is done, the chances for a deep and long depression are very great. So stocks skied around the world when Paulson announced his support for a massive bailout of Wall Street. And stocks and the dollar plummeted, and oil and gold soared when it became clear on Monday that the Congress wouldn't simply salute and go along. Doing nothing is not an option.

Leaders from unions, consumer and citizen groups have weighed in, demanding strict conditions on any bailout. On Monday, Sen. Chris Dodd put forth a draft bill that called for an independent board to run the bailout, required that taxpayers get partial ownership in any firm bailed out, and mandated steps to forestall foreclosures and work out mortgages, helping to keep people in their homes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demands a kickstart for the real economy - extension of unemployment benefits, aid to states and localities, investment in green jobs and basic infrastructure. (But at only $50 billion, a relative pittance for the real economy compared to the sums demanded to rescue Wall Street). Rep. Barney Frank insists on limits on the compensation of executives of any firm that gets bailed out. Together, these conditions begin to make some sense out of a bad fix.

Initially, Bush and Paulson, backed by the slavish Republican leadership in Congress, resisted, calling for the bill to remain "simple and clear." Republican leaders denounced help for homeowners and Main Street as "political" and "partisan" as opposed to bailing out the Master's of the Universe which somehow is an emergency above politics.

But Paulson is a deal maker. As his testimony indicated today, he'll trade nominal oversight and a few bridges for the $700 billion. As someone who made half a billion on Wall Street, however, he's been unbending on limits on pay for his friends, on providing taxpayers with an equity stake in the firms that are helped, and on measures to force work outs of mortgages and a freeze on foreclosures. And he'll resist any detailed measures to regulate Wall Street to insure this doesn't happen again. For all the talk of bipartisan accord, this will be a face off. Democrats will have to stare him down.

With the financial markets reeling, who will blink first? Will the Democratic leadership insist on common sense? Will Paulson be able to panic Congress into folding? Will the financial firm lobbyists now swarming the Capitol like a plague of locusts be able to rent the votes they need?

The decisions will be made over the next few days. If you want to make your voice heard, go here to contact your legislator, or to get more information.

But this staggering bailout - as perilous and costly as it will be -is only a stop gap. Broader lessons need to be drawn; larger and more permanent reforms are needed. One thing should be clear: the conservative era is over. The theology of market fundamentalism has proven to be a false idol once more. As Joseph Stiglitz has argued, the collapse of Wall Street is to the market fundamentalists what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to communism. It's over. The right has proved once more that it cannot be trusted to run the government it scorns. A trillion dollar debacle in Iraq. A trillion dollar bust on Wall Street. Hundreds of billions pocketed by Big Pharma and Big Oil. It is time for a reckoning.

Paulson Feeling The Pressure, Time To Demand "Common Sense"

Bill Scher — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:59:13 -0400

As I write this, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is testifying before the Senate Banking Committee. In his opening statement, he appeared to depart from prepared remarks to respond to statements from Senators calling for independent monitoring of Paulson's actions in any bailout proposal.

A defensive Paulson suggested last week he wasn't trying to ram through a bill that would give him unfettered power, merely that it would have been "presumptuous" of him to come up with an "oversight system" because that's a congressional matter.

Whether or not you take Paulson's explanation at face value, it's tangible evidence that the growing the public backlash against a $700,000,000,000 blank check is being heard.

Of course, it's standard political tactic to high-ball your initial position, propose something you know is outrageous and will provoke anger, so when you give up a little, it is perceived as some great concession for glorious compromise.

We must not be pawns in such a game. Instead of letting Paulson dictate the debate, we must have a set of common sense principles to guide any legislation and the overall debate.

Today, Institute for America's Future released the second New York Times Op-Ad in the "Debate We Need" series, titled: "Banksters Run Amok."

And also today, Campaign for America's Future is delivering to Congress a "Call for Common Sense," detailing the six core principles that should gird the bailout:

1. Public Oversight. This kind of power can never be centralized in a single individual – much less one who did not even stand for election. Any funds must be controlled by an independent entity, with consumers and workers given seats on its board. Congress should be empowered to name independent monitors and to approve all board members.

2. Protect The Taxpayer. The Treasury bill would have taxpayers buying paper that nobody else wants at prices far above its current value. If a firm wants to auction off its toxic paper to the US Government, taxpayers should get equity in that firm equal to any amount paid in excess of the paper’s value. This will deter profitable firms from using the government as a dumpster for their toxic paper. And it will insure that if the bailout works and the firms become profitable, taxpayers, not simply bankers, benefit from the upside.

3. Curb The Casino. This crisis was caused because sensible regulations of the banking system that worked for dozens of years were dismantled or went unenforced. No bailout can go forward without requiring the necessary regulation to insure this does not happen again. Any institution which receives assistance should agree to come under a microscope going forward in terms of disclosure requirements, and it should have stringent capital requirement imposed upon it.

4. Invest In The Real Economy. Ending the bankers strike is not sufficient to avoid the recession into which we have been driven. Major public investment for investment in new energy and conservation, rebuilding schools and infrastructure, extending unemployment and food stamps, helping states avoid crippling cuts in police and health services – is vital to get the real economy moving and put people back to work. No bailout should proceed without being linked to support for a major public investment plan to get the economy going.

5. Hold CEOs and Boards of Directors Accountable. Wall Street CEOs shouldn’t be pocketing millions while taxpayers are forced to bail them out. Any firm that applies for relief must agree to cancel all stock option programs and CEOs should have stringent limits placed on their compensation until the Company has repaid all taxpayer assistance.

6. Aid The Victims, Not Just The Predators. Both bankers and home owners made foolish bets that home prices would keep rising. Many homeowners, however, were misled by predatory lenders into taking mortgages that they didn’t understand and couldn’t afford. It would be simply obscene to help the predators and not those that they preyed upon. No bail out of the banks should take place without measures to help people in trouble stay in their homes. Explicit provisions should ensure use of the full array of financial and legal tools available to the government to stop foreclosures and restructure home mortgage loans for ordinary Americans. Where workouts are not feasible, people should be allowed to stay in their homes as renters.

As you can see, independent monitoring of any bailout activity is only one part of what's required to pick up the deregulated, derailed economy and get it back on track.

This isn't Paulson's money, or Bush's money, or Wall Street's money. It's our taxpayer money that being asked for, and in America, there is not supposed to be taxation without representation. So, Bush and Paulson don't set the terms of this debate. We do.

And we've got the Bush administration on its heels. So keep pushing.

Time For The G-Word

Bill Scher — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:21:57 -0400

To spark a debate worthy of a great nation in trouble, The Institute for America's Future "Op-Ad" series launches today in the New York Times. The first installment is here, on "Reviving the American Dream."

Since the last seven years have seen corporate profits soaring but wages not keeping pace with inflation, the Op-Ad calls for a "new social contract" -- Make it easier for workers to organize. Guarantee decent wages, pensions, health care, vacation and sick leave. Establish "full employment" as "the central target of our economic policies, with government acting, when necessary, as employer of last resort."

All of that involves having our government get off the sidelines, where conservatism has left it, and back on the field -- setting and enforcing rules of the road, and picking up the slack where the private sector falls short.

Uttering the government G-word has been taboo in our debate for a long time. But as the conservative failures pile up, that's changing.

As today's New York Times outlines, McCain is rhetorically moving away from his conservative record opposing government involvement, while Obama is trying to pin McCain down on his past anti-government record:

On the campaign trail on Monday, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, struck a populist tone. Speaking in Florida, he said that the economy’s underlying fundamentals remained strong but were being threatened “because of the greed by some based in Wall Street and we have got to fix it.”

But his record on the issue, and the views of those he has always cited as his most influential advisers, suggest that he has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline.

While Mr. McCain has cited the need for additional oversight when it comes to specific situations, like the mortgage problems behind the current shocks on Wall Street, he has consistently characterized himself as fundamentally a deregulator and he has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms.

He has often taken his lead on financial issues from two outspoken advocates of free market approaches, former Senator Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman. Individuals associated with Merrill Lynch, which sold itself to Bank of America in the market upheaval of the past weekend, have given his presidential campaign nearly $300,000, making them Mr. McCain’s largest contributor, collectively.

Mr. Obama sought Monday to attribute the financial upheaval to lax regulation during the Bush years, and in turn to link Mr. McCain to that approach.

“I certainly don’t fault Senator McCain for these problems, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to,” Mr. Obama told several hundred people who gathered for an outdoor rally in Grand Junction, Colo.

Mr. Obama set out his general approach to financial regulation in March, calling for regulating investment banks, mortgage brokers and hedge funds much as commercial banks are. And he would streamline the overlapping regulatory agencies and create a commission to monitor threats to the financial system and report to the White House and Congress.

In other words, both candidates are making a claim that he can use the tools of government best to make the economy work for everyone. Neither is arguing that Wall Street should be left alone to run the economy as it feels like.

Of course, it's one thing to say you believe in effective government. It's another thing to display the policy knowledge and judgment to convince voters that you mean it.

But what's clear is the political debate has moved to where the country has been for a while. A majority believes that our government should directly create jobs to modernize infrastructure and generate clean energy, should guarantee quality health care for all, should allow employees a free choice to organize in unions, and should hold irresponsible corporations accountable.

That's good. But we must go farther. Candidates should be not be allowed to simply allude to more robust government involvement. Deeper questions must be asked so people can best assess who really has a vision for effective, progressive government.

How will you use our government to create new jobs and strengthen our economic foundation? What new rules will you set to ensure good corporate behavior? How will you enforce them? Will you let corporate lobbyists write rules full off of holes or staff enforcement positions in your government?

What other questions would you ask about the role of government, that would ensure we get a truly informative debate that clarifies the choices before us?

Debunked: Ten Conservative Myths About National Security

Sara Robinson — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:59:23 -0400

True confession: I was terrified on 9/11—for all the right reasons.

I wasn't afraid of the terrorists. There are plenty of countries where people have lived for decades under the constant threat of unholy acts of terror—and yet people still get on buses and subways and airplanes, and life goes on. I'd like to think that Americans are at least as courageous as Israelis or Indonesians. Our "land of the free and home of the brave" mythos insists we should be. So I was damned if I was going to respond to the crisis by giving into irrational fears and thereby, as we used to say, "let the terrorists win."

The Ten Myths

"Islamofascism" is our biggest national security threat.
We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here.
Military solutions are the only effective national security solutions.
What we're doing is working; we haven't had another 9/11.
"Law enforcement" approaches to terrorism don't work.
We don't need allies; we can do this on our own.
You don't negotiate with dictators.
National security spending is different from pork-barrel spending on other programs.
Airport security is critical to our anti-terrorism effort.
It's always necessary to give up our civil liberties in a time of war.

No, what I was really afraid of was that too many of my fellow Americans would forget the lessons of their own history—that they'd lose track of who we are and where we've been and what we're made of. I knew there was a real possibility that this time, we'd fail to live up to our reputation for cool, calm clarity in the face of crisis, and instead be goaded into taking counsel of our fears. I feared the bad choices that would inevitably follow if we stampeded down that road. And I dreaded that it would be the soul death of the country I loved.

I hate having been right about this, though I can hardly blame average citizens for succumbing to the sirens of chaos. Americans trying to make correct sense of the new reality found their efforts stymied everywhere they turned. With the White House distorting intelligence to sell a war, corporate opportunists fanning the coals of panic to heat up vast new business opportunities, media editors milking the drama to keep their ratings high, and terrified hordes quick to shout "treason" whenever anyone dared to question the path we were taking, it was hard for even thoughtful Americans to locate the truth of the matter. And as long as confusion reigned, the terrorists really did keep winning.

Seven years later, as the miasma dissipates, more and more of us are able to calm down, take a step back, draw a big, cleansing breath and start to sort things out more rationally. Unfortunately, though, a few of the myths promulgated in those first few years have hardened firmly into a new conventional wisdom—some so stubbornly that you often won't even find progressives questioning them any more. The time has come to call out a few of these persistent myths that are still being taken as fact and start firing back on them.

1. "Islamofascism" is America's biggest national security threat.

Not hardly. This is the hot new idea among far-right demagogues who literally can't define who they are without a devil to contrast themselves against, and military hawks looking for an excuse to keep the military-industrial complex's big all-night party rolling in the bleary morning-after of a post-Cold War world. But, as the Center for American Progress notes in this article, it's a dangerous meme that disables our ability to think clearly, and it will almost certainly lead us into even more catastrophic misadventures.

To begin with, "Islamofascism" itself is an impossible idea, and those who promote it betray a fundamental political ignorance. True fascism can only occur within an industrialized nation-state, few of which exist in the Islamic world. And many of our most intransigent problems with terrorism come from the opposite problem: modern terrorists have no state affiliations, and are thus free to drift across international borders with fluid ease. Defeating them means coming to grips with this fact. Calling them "fascists" makes it that much harder to grasp.

Worse, "Islamofascism" suggests that the Muslim world is some kind of vast monolithic conspiracy, equal in might and will to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany back in the day—and that's another dangerous delusion. Just like Christianity, Islam covers a widely diverse range of cultures and political attitudes. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are not jihadis, and consider terrorism abhorrent. Turning one-quarter of the world's people into The Enemy will blind us to the subtle but critical distinctions within Islam. It will doom us to serious blunders, alienate potential allies, and cost us important opportunities to make real inroads against terrorism.

Spencer Ackerman suggests the term "anti-Western Salafist jihadism" as a replacement. Less catchy, perhaps, but more specific and not nearly so fraught with wrong assumptions that can cloud our thinking.

Having dispatched "Islamofascism," though, the more important point remains: Anti-Western Salafist jihadism isn't even America's biggest security threat. It's on the short list—but so are global pandemics, loose nukes, our dependence on foreign energy, the catastrophic effects of climate change, the U.S.'s vast and bloated national debt, and our growing helplessness at producing essential goods for ourselves. As long as we're mired in an endless war to "defeat Islamofascism," we're going to remain weak, distracted, and grossly unprepared for the other serious security threats we face.

2. We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here.

False. The image here is that Iraq is some kind of roach hotel for global terrorism. The truth is, it's become the international finishing school where a new generation of terrorists is getting a front-line, real-time education against the American war machine—and perfecting low-tech ways to close the gap against a high-tech army.

The U.S. official National Intelligence Estimate concludes that the war in Iraq has made new Islamic radicals where none existed before, greatly increasing the terror threat around the world. The number of significant terrorist incidents worldwide has risen every year of the war. In a bipartisan survey of national security experts last year, the consensus found that that the war in Iraq is making the world more dangerous for Americans. (To be fair, this same panel is a bit more upbeat this year, but still thinks the war is a grave mistake.) In the meantime, al-Qaida has regrouped in Pakistan, and is back at full strength—while we've suffered more than 35,000 casualties and spent more than $550 billion, while alienating friends around the world.

"Fighting them there" hasn't been nearly the solution we were promised it would be. But too many of us were eager to buy into that promise, because we'd already been sold on another persistent myth:

3. Military solutions are the only effective national security solutions.

Wrong. So wrong that Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich (who is nobody's liberal) has written an entire book on America's dangerously naïve faith in the military as the only viable solution to everything that ails us.

Which is ridiculous, when you consider all the things military force can't do. Smart bombs won't stop global warming. Battlefield nukes won't cure pandemics. Air strikes won't reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources. Sending in the Marines is no way to reduce the national debt. As we saw above in No. 1, terrorism is just one of a number of real national security threats we're facing—and as we'll see, it's not even clear that that the military is the right answer there, either.

On the other hand, there's a surprising level of consensus among security experts on both the left and right on what real, effective national security would look like:

We need to beef up our intelligence agencies—in a way that's consistent with the Constitution—so they can monitor terrorist groups and keep dangerous technologies out of their hands.
We need to provide consistent and effective domestic security around ports, chemical plants, and other high-risk targets—something that should have been done immediately after 9/11, but is still largely neglected.
We need to revisit our national infrastructure for disaster preparedness and response. Whether it's floods or fires, evacuation or epidemic, insurgents or industrial accidents, we will be more secure if we have a well-planned, coordinated response, and trained people prepared and in place to handle it.
We need our friends. Diplomacy, alliances, international cooperation, intelligence sharing and police work are the essential tools for pre-empting real threats to our security.
We need to become more self-sufficient. Asked by the Foreign Policy Index to rate strategies for strengthening the nation’s security, 55% of Americans listed “Becoming less dependent on other countries for our supply of energy. Only 17% said “Attacking countries that develop weapons of mass destruction” would enhance our security.

America has very few problems that can best be solved by military means—and a great many problems that require us to look for other strategies.

4. But—what we're doing is working! After all, we haven't had another 9/11...

True, we haven't—but not for the reasons you think. Which leads us to another myth....

5. Everybody knows that "law enforcement" approaches to terrorism don't work.

False. They do work. In fact, they're about the only thing that really does work. Every single terrorist plot that's been prevented since 9/11—both the serious ones, and the ones that were "more aspirational than operational"—were prevented through good old-fashioned police and intelligence work.

Taking the wide view, the fateful choice to send in soldiers rather than international cops turned out to be a major win for the terrorists. Conservative blogger Steve Chapman explained it this way: "By framing the fight as a global war, we have helped Osama bin Laden and hurt ourselves. Had we treated him and his confederates as the moral equivalent of international drug lords or sex traffickers, the organization might not have the romantic image it has acquired. By exaggerating the potential impact, we also magnified the disruptive effect of any plots, which is just what the terrorists seek."

6. We don't need allies: we can do this on our own. Besides, moral authority doesn't matter when you have superior firepower.

More fatal hubris. One of the more noxious side effects of American exceptionalism is that we cling stubbornly to the idea that we're the only country on earth that matters and owe nothing to anyone else.

That wasn't even true back in 1776, when Thomas Jefferson duly noted the new nation's obligation to have "a decent respect" for "the opinions of mankind" in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. It's considerably less true now that we are so dependent on so many for so much. Insisting that we can go it alone in this deeply interconnected world—where our oil comes from the Saudis, our cars come from the Japanese, and our money and everything else comes from China—is very much like a headstrong 14-year-old who insists that they don't need Mom and Dad for anything—except maybe housing and food and an allowance and a ride to the mall.

And that's about how Americans look to the rest of the world whenever we strike this "I'll do it myself, so there" posture: immature, petulant, spoiled and ignorant of all the ways we depend on the family of nations for our continued well-being. Yes, we're big and strong and capable of doing tremendous damage if we get angry. But we can only throw that weight around for so long—by and by, the other nations will band together to find alternatives to dealing with us, and may even start actively looking for ways to knock us down to size. In some places, this is already happening, and it's not in our long-term interest for it to continue.

It's time for us to remember our grown-up manners and return to our seat at the global family table.

7. Negotiating with "irrational" dictators is pointless, and a sign of weakness.

Catastrophically dumb. Conservatives condemn the idea of presidents talking to their counterparts from "enemy" countries, but 67 percent of Americans disagree, according to a June 2 Gallup poll. "Large majorities of Democrats and independents, and even half of Republicans, believe the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States," the poll says. Fifty-nine percent of Americans, for example, would support the U.S. president meeting with the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

If FDR could confer with Stalin and JFK could negotiate with Khrushchev and Nixon could go to China and sit down with Mao, there's no reason whatsoever our current president can't arrange a meeting with Ahmedinejad. Bush's refusal to do this is a sign of his essential smallness of character and the narrowness of his worldview. The problem with all ideologues is that once they decide that "you're with us or against us," then no further discussion—let alone compromise—with the other side is possible. That's a dangerous trait in a president, and one we should watch out carefully for in the future.

8. Government spending on national security is different than pork-barrel spending on other programs.

Another myth busted. Recall that when the Republicans controlled Congress, they devised a formula that diverted security money from high-risk (and mostly liberal) states like New York and California to lower-risk (and mostly conservative) places like Wyoming and Nebraska. This made no logical sense from a security standpoint—the only explanation was that the Republican Congress was using 9/11 as an excuse to dole out pork.

Homeland security has grown up to become one of the biggest pork barrels in American politics. Security professionals are quick to point out that too many of these efforts aren't designed to provide objectively effective security—in fact, as we'll see below, many of them are based on flawed assumptions about how effective security works. Instead, the contracts are written in such a way that the only way to fulfill them is to funnel our tax dollars into the pockets of well-connected conservative cronies. The upshot is that we spend more than we should, and get less real protection than we deserve.

And perhaps worst of all: Seven years of this unregulated, unfocused spending has created a booming new industry that can only survive as long as it keeps selling us on new threats to fear—which has long-term implications for our entire national culture.

9. Airport security is a critical part of our anti-terrorism effort.

True, but not as true as it should be. Security experts are still deeply concerned about at least two big holes in the system that make the high drama of the passenger screening area into nothing much more than a farce.

The first one is that we're still not adequately inspecting air cargo. Any competent engineering student can make and ship a timed bomb, which is why the 9/11 Commission Report insisted on aggressive inspection of all air cargo. At this point, most airports are doing random profiling and screening of parcels; but it's a far cry from the careful one-by-one inspection being given to people and luggage traveling on the same plane. In 2007, the Transportation Security Administration spent $5 billion inspecting passengers and luggage, and just $55 million on cargo going on the same planes. Cargo inspectors comprise less than 1 percent of the TSA workforce. Feeling safer yet?

The other security hole big enough to fly another 9/11 through comprises the various programs that allow crew members, frequent fliers, people with security clearances, and other "trusted travelers" to bypass inspection. As Bruce Schneier points out, these programs are based on the dangerous myth that terrorists match a particular profile, and that we can somehow pick terrorists out of a crowd if we only can identify everyone and get them all on watch lists.

Schneier, who has consulted with the TSA, is emphatic that dividing the world into "trusted travelers" and people on watch lists creates more security problems than it solves. "Most of the 9/11 terrorists were unknown and not on any watch list. Timothy McVeigh was an upstanding U.S. citizen before he blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel are normal, nondescript people. Intelligence reports indicate that al-Qaida is recruiting non-Arab terrorists for U.S. operations." Furthermore, if you create a low-inspection loophole in the system, would-be terrorists will aim for that loophole—and are more likely to get through it. The only way to prevent this is to throw out the watch lists and inspect everyone—no exceptions.

Schneier and other airline security experts will tell you that most of the safety gains since 9/11 come about through just two developments: hardening cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. "Everything else—Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included—is security theater," writes Schneier. "We would all be a lot safer if, instead, we implemented enhanced baggage security—both ensuring that a passenger's bags don't fly unless he does, and explosives screening for all baggage—as well as background checks and increased screening for airport employees."

10. It's always necessary to give up our civil liberties in a time of war.

Wrong. So horribly wrong, in fact, that my very conservative eighth-grade civics teacher wouldn't have graduated a kid who failed this part of the exam. She put the fear of the Founders in us, along with a clear sense of our obligations and rights as citizens. There hasn't been a day since 9/11 that I haven't mourned the fact that America has not produced nearly enough Mrs. Hermans.

Last night, I was watching NBC's presentation of "9/11: As It Happened," a two-hour summary of its coverage that awful morning seven years ago. At one point, late in the broadcast, Tom Brokaw made a comment: "We are a country at war now....we're going to have to reconsider some of the freedoms we now enjoy." The smoke of the towers was still rolling up the streets of Manhattan, and NBC's senior anchor was already declaring a new era in which patriotic Americans must be willing to surrender their liberty for security. I was left wondering how someone who wouldn't have made it out of eighth grade at Home Street School ended up in a national anchor spot—and remembering all over again just what it was on that day that made me so deeply, truly afraid for my country.

Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War, and FDR claimed extraordinary powers for himself during World War II—but neither of them ever tried to argue that being at war was a natural excuse for suspending the entire Bill of Rights. In fact (as we have seen) the more dangerous the times, the more important those liberties become. In times of huge social transformation or economic upheaval, when everything else is up for grabs, our worldview and our values—the internal qualities that define who we are, the things nobody can ever take away from us—move to the front and center. Everything else can go up in smoke; but as long as we hold onto those core beliefs, we will be able to survive the worst, and find everything we need within us to rebuild the world anew.

The Declaration and the Constitution are the defining documents of our country, expressing the central ideals that determine who we are. If we abandon those ideals, we will simply cease to be American—and, perhaps, lose the chance of ever restoring America again. If we are truly concerned about national security, this is, beyond a doubt, the worst thing we could ever allow to happen.

America: Yours, Mine, and Ours (Part 1)

Terrance Heath — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:18:23 -0400

Part One: Yours, Mine...

One of the things I hoped for when Michelle Obama spoke at the Democratic convention, was that she would introduce people to the America that she came from, and that was the setting of her story. One of the biggest shames in the campaign — aside from the fact that political realities required this intelligent, accomplished woman to effectively bite her tongue for the last couple of months — is the lack of any honest discussion about the reality that we don't all live in the same America. It's one reality that both progressives and conservatives must grapple with between now and November, and beyond

Delivered on a night that carried the theme "One America," her speech should serve as a reminder that if we are to be America, we have to first acknowledge that what we have are three America's: yours, mine, and ours.

In speech after speech at the convention, love of country was invoked. Hillary Clinton spoke of reclaiming "the country we love." John Kerry declared "you don't decide who loves this country." And Michelle Obama, after having to stay silent for so long, had to step on to the stage Monday night and declare what shouldn't have been questioned in the first place: "I love this country."

And then she spoke of the America she loved, the America she grew up with — the America that she saw get up every morning, get up, struggle, and triumph, just like children in families across America right now. Just like I watched my father sometimes work two jobs to support us, pushing forward despite facing discrimination, and going to night school in an effort to extend his education and become an even better provider.

Right now, children like I was and like Michelle Obama was are growing up in a different America. Not an an America where people own seven homes, but where more and more people are losing theirs to foreclosure, and in neighborhoods darkened by blight — encroaching where it had once been pushed back — as their neighbor's homes are foreclosed upon. They're growing up in an America where some who still have them will find it harder to heat their homes this winter. And not just because of the rising cost of fuel, but because their employers — attempting to stay ahead of the rising cost of doing business — have cut full-time employees down to part-time or implemented part-time layoffs in hopes of cutting payrolls.

They live in an America where parents who aren't merely underemployed may be among the growing numbers of the unemployed, and where the employed are increasingly insecure, concerned that the reality of globalization makes it likely their jobs will be shipped overseas. Theirs is an America in which stimulus checks are long since spent and their temporary effects faded, leaving behind the reality that household incomes haven't grown during our so-called economic boom. Despite that, in their America people still spend ever more on on basic necessities like household utilities and groceries; where more and more families rely on food stamps, and where those food stamps buy less and less, leaving a growing number of families facing "food insecurity" — a condition we used to call "hunger."

They aren't likely to fare much better at school, where rising food costs have hit school lunches, leading to more families requesting reduced lunches. And even them, some can only look forward to school lunches four days out of five, as more schools cut back to four-day weeks in an effort to save costs. In their America, grandparents are chipping in on back-to-school bills, to help defray costs. That is, if they can. Some grandparents may be too busy working, as they've put off retirement to deal with falling home values and rising. Some grandparents are facing bankruptcy, due to increasing medical bills.

Theirs is an America where prescription drug costs and health care costs are cutting into stagnant wages, and where people tap into their savings accounts, home equity and credit cards, going into debt to pay for health care. Those 47 million without health insurance, contrary to popular belief, pay $30 billion collectively for health care — and typically get less than they pay for when it comes to the quality of that care.

It's a world away from the America where the rich have gotten richer in the past seven years, but just around the corner from the America where the poor have indeed gotten poorer, and more of them crowd into poverty-stricken neighborhoods — reversing a trend of upward mobility that began in the previous decade and ended around the time this one began. It's light years away from the America where and income of $5 million qualifies as "rich" and $250,000 annually is solidly middle class, but down the street from the America where wages are decades behind prices. And it's nowhere near the America where a CEO can keep a "compensation package" worth over 18$ million, even his company loses $841 million and requires a tax-payer funded bailout. It's light years away from the America where the economy is basically sound, but smack in the middle of an America full of "whiners" squeezed by that same economy, and most say it's getting worse.

Of course, the concept of "two Americas" isn't new, but it doesn't merely speak to economic injustices and inequality. There has been more than one America for as long as there has been an America. Sojourner Truth gave voice to it in her famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech. W.E.B. Du Bois named it when he wrote of a "twoness of being" in Souls of Black Folk.

As I've written before, I grew up in — and still reside in — a different America than the one that my friends grew up in or that even my next door neighbors reside in. I grew up knowing, because my parents knew and knew that I needed to know, that I lived in a different America than my white classmates; one where I couldn't get away with the same things they might get away with, and where I could expect harsher punishment if caught because of my race. I reside today in, and am raising two African American sons in, an America where I am still held suspect because I am an African American man; and where they most likely will be held suspect too.

It's an America where a woman I'd spoken to on the phone several times in a previous job exclaimed aloud upon meeting me, "I didn't realize you were black. You're so articulate!" And because I'd grown up in the America I grew up in, I could answer her "Is there some reason I shouldn't be?", without anger or resentment, and even with a smile, and get my message across. It's an America where the host of a baby-sitting co-op social we attended after our oldest son was born assumed that, because my son was (a) African American and (b) had two gay dads, that (c) he must have been a "crack baby." That time, my spouse spoke up while I was silent with rage.

My America is one where a friend of ours — whose wedding we attended, and with whom we celebrated when he and his partner adopted their son after several disappointments — was turned away from the hospital emergency room where his husband lay suffering a brain aneurysm. He was told that the hospital wouldn't give him any information or allow him to see his husband until he could show legal proof of their relationship, because he was "not net of kin." He drove all the way home to retrieve the documents — will, advance directives, medical powers of attorney — and all the way back to the hospital, not knowing if his husband would be dead or alive when he returned. He was lucky. He got the chance to see his husband before he passed away days later. Bill Flanagan and Robert Daniel weren't as fortunate. Neither were John Crisci and Michael Tartaglia, or Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond.

Because of those stories, my America is one where my family does not travel without those same documents — wills, advance directives, and medical powers of attorney — as well as our children's birth certificates and adoption decrees. (We started carrying those documents after Oklahoma passed a law banning recognition of adoptions by same-sex couples, and carry them still even though a federal court overturned the law.) My spouse and I each keep copies of all these documents in our desks at work, just in case. Even with those documents, there's no guarantee our relationships as a family will be recognized if we're somewhere far from home, but we're better off with them than without them.

Just down the street, my neighbor — whom I told the story of what my friend went through — lives in an America where she walked into a hospital when her husband was rushed to the emergency room, and said just three words to hospital staff: "I'm his wife." In response she got — not a request for documents or proof of their relationship — three words as well: "right this way." I don't know, but I'd hazard a guess that — in their America — my neighbors probably don't travel with their marriage license at hand, and probably don't need to.

It's not an America that Michelle Obama inhabits, but neither do she and her husband deny its existence — or insist upon the primacy of their America. Probably because they know there's another America that considers them "uppity." And coming from a white, Georgia congressman, that word should carry all the old historical implications. Born and raised in Georgia, I'm hard pressed to believe Rep. Westmoreland — who grew up in Georgia during the 1950s — had never heard the term used in a racially derogatory sense and had no idea just how his comment would be heard.

I've never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of ‘uppity' is ‘affecting an air of inflated self-esteem -- snobbish.' That's what we meant by uppity when we used it in the mill village where I grew up.

Well, I was raised by parents who married in 1955, and lived in Georgia almost all of their lives; parents who grew up in the Georgia of the 1930s and 1940s, where the country's last mass lynching took place in 1946. They grew up in an America even more different than the one I grew up in, and almost certainly different than the one Rep. Westmoreland grew up in; where an entire social system was dedicated to keeping them, their families, and their communities "in their place." Or, more succinctly, to keep them from getting too "uppity." That dog-whistle is easy to hear, if you've had a lifetime to recognize its tone.

I've heard it before, and I hear it still. That's my America.

To hear all of the above, you might not believe that I love it — and even question whether or not I do — but I do. When I am proud of it, it is because of the times it lives up to its promise, and at other times in spite of its failure to do so. Sometimes I am less proud of it than at others. But that is the context of my America and my loving it.

Too often, when some of who have seen America fail to live up to what it promises to be on paper — and seen it finally coaxed and cajoled doing so after some time — give voice to that experience, first our love of country is questioned. Then, soon after, we're told how to love America.

Main thought. Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama's problem. America is Mr. Obama's problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men's Vogue, the candidate who loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over ... the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter's Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There's gold in that history.

John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school, in the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa's knee. Mrs. Clinton learned at least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas, circa 1977-92.

Mr. Obama? What does he think about all that history? Which is another way of saying: What does he think of America? That's why people talk about the flag pin absent from the lapel. They wonder if it means something. Not that the presence of the pin proves love of country - any cynic can wear a pin, and many cynics do. But what about Obama and America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn was loveable, and what does he think about it all?

Another challenge. Snooty lefties get angry when you ask them to talk about these things. They get resentful. Who are you to question my patriotism? But no one is questioning his patriotism, they're questioning its content, its fullness. Gate 14 has a right to hear this. They'd lean forward to hear.

Most often, this comes from someone who doesn't live in our America. And of course, whether they know it or not, they are really telling us how to love their America, demanding that it be our America, and that we love it their way. Not to put too fine a point on it, but do note what the examples from Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column — the Wright brothers, George Washington, and Henry Ford among others — have in common. And then ask why it is preferable that Barrack Obama get "misty-eyed" over them instead of Americans whose strivings made his life and his candidacy possible, or by Michelle Obama must get "misty-eyed" over the same rather than the father whose strivings made it possible for her story to happen?

And why is it assumed that love of that America cannot be commuted to the America that made possible the strivings of so many, strivings that lead to not only to civil rights movement, the womens' movement, and all the other progressive movements that — when others were "standing athwart history yelling Stop!'" — pushed of forwards into a present that has seen historic candidacies not dreamed of at the nation's founding?

In one sense, Noonan is right, it's not actually the patriotism of progressive Americans that's being called into question. It's the content of that patriotism that's questioned by some because its context is not their America. What's demanded, in the guise of questions about flag lapel pins, is what Michael Berube once astutely defined as contentless patriotism.

I'm familiar with Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A.," of course. We all are — it's been inescapable for twenty years. Or so I thought. It turns out, instead, that I somehow have managed to escape hearing the intro and the first verse until just this past month, when the song was used as part of Jamie's fifth-grade graduation video (as the background music for his school's visit to Fort Robideau). That's no doubt because, as a paid-up member of the latté-drinking liberal cultural elite, I tend to avoid social occasions and gatherings in which the song is played and sung along to.

And needless to say, I think the song is odious almost beyond measure. That's not because I'm a paid-up member of the latté-drinking liberal cultural elite who sneers at my fellow citizens' simple, heartfelt expressions of patriotism; it's because the song's version of patriotism is completely contentless. Two verses and three choruses, and Mr. Greenwood couldn't find a single reason to love the U.S.A.? Yeah, yeah, I know, pride, pride, freedom, freedom: "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free." But free to do what? To fire employees without cause, thanks to the at-will employment doctrine? To abolish the estate tax? To hold up a sign saying that Matthew Shepherd got what he deserved? Or to protest foolish wars, march for civil rights, and support the right of kids with Down syndrome to be educated in regular classrooms where they can go to visit Fort Robideau with their nondisabled peers? "God Bless the U.S.A." doesn't say, and that's what makes it such a perfect emblem of a certain kind of right-wing contentless patriotism, the kind of patriotism that supports the troops by flying flags from cars while supporting a President who leads the troops off to needless slaughter and then cuts their veterans' benefits. Had Greenwood said anything about that freedom — "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free of all taxes on my estate of $36 million," or "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free to fight for the right to register Mississippi's black voters in the face of murderous right-wing opposition" — one imagines that his song would be a good deal less popular.

Less popular because an honest account of my America or yours calls into question the context of someone else's? In that equation, whose America has both authenticity and primary? Or are there as many ways of being an American and loving America as there are Americans, each as authentic as the other? Must one — and only one — have primacy?

Whose?

Phil Gramm Is Conservatism: The Sequel

Bill Scher — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:45:01 -0400

When Phil Gramm called America a "nation of whiners" for not loving the economy, I said: "This is does not make Gramm uniquely callous. It just makes him a conservative." Gramm was merely echoing documented and widespread sentiment among conservative leaders -- that if you feel the economy isn't working for you, then you're wrong.

Today in St. Paul, where conservatives are gathered for the Republican National Convention, Gramm wanted to make sure you heard him right. Bloomberg (via ThinkProgress) reports:

"If you're sitting here today, you're not economically illiterate and you're not a whiner, so I'm not worried about who you're going to vote for,'' Gramm told supporters of McCain at a Financial Services Roundtable event in Minneapolis on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.

Putting the politics of the presidential campaign aside, exactly who was Gramm talking to at a "Financial Services Roundtable event?"

As The Financial Services Roundtable describes itself:

The Financial Services Roundtable represents 100 of the largest integrated financial services companies providing banking, insurance, and investment products and services to the American consumer. Member companies participate through the Chief Executive Officer and other senior executives nominated by the CEO.

Literally, the CEOs of the nation's top financial services companies and their representatives.

So to translate Gramm-speak, if you are a CEO of corporations such as Allstate, Bank of America, Capital One, Charles Schwab, Citigroup, Countrywide, Fidelity Investments, General Electric, JPMorganChase, Visa, Wachovia or another of the top 100 financial services companies, then you are "not economically illiterate and you're not a whiner."

Never mind that several of those "economically literate" CEOs are directly responsible for the current housing and credit crisis.

But Gramm is at least right that these CEOs are not whining. Why would they? They are doing quite well, after taking advantage of conservative economic policies to line their pockets while the American economy turns to rubble.

As for those in the 99.999999% of the country -- who are not part of the Financial Services Roundtable and who are trapped under the economic rubble -- Phil Gramm still speaks for conservatism when he tells you to shut up.

While Gramm is speaking for conservatives, we at Campaign for America's Future are speaking to conservatives. Check out our new ad below, which is greeting conservative delegates in their St. Paul hotel rooms this week.

And if Phil Gramm wants to call us whiners for reminding them about the damage inflicted on Americans by their policies, then we'll just whine louder.

Twin Cities Violence: Just What The RNC Ordered

Sara Robinson — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:04:30 -0400

It almost seems like the Twin Cities cops are going way out of their way to create trouble, doesn't it?

We had our share of ugly police events in Denver—almost all of them resulting when party leaders ordered police to harass journalists trying to document swanky confabs between fat cats and industry lobbyists. But, even so, one did not get the impression that the legions in black Gore-Tex were going out of their way to create trouble, let alone incite public riots. Mostly, they were remarkably live-and-let-live.

On the other hand, law enforcement in the Twin Cities tipped their hand Friday night that they're so ready to rumble that they're perfectly willing to throw the first punch, if that's what it takes to get the riot started. Glenn Greenwald and FDL's Lindsay Beyerstein have been providing summary coverage of events as they unfolded; in their reporting, it's all too clear that there are lot of powerful people involved who are spoiling for a street fight with progressives.

At the local level, according to a National Lawyers Guild attorney interviewed by Greenwald, there's Ramsay County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, a "right-wing authoritarian" who is apparently gunning for a bigger share of the Homeland Security pie—and thinks that invading "hippie houses" is the key to that.

At the district level, we have warrants being signed by federal district court judges, and guys wearing FBI jackets milling around on the various bust scenes. That tells you that whatever is going on here, it's not just a matter of local cops getting too big for their britches.

And at the level of the national campaign, we have plenty of motivation to turn RNC '08 into a replay of DNC '68.
Faithful readers of Nixonland know that Nixon loved these kinds of street scenes so much he'd routinely have his ratfuckers go out and deliberately stoke peaceful protests into full-fledged riots so he could get it all on film. Those images of the forces of Law And Order taking it to the Dirty Fucking Hippies played right into his favorite political narratives. He sold himself as the candidate who would protect the Silent Americans from those noisy, dirty bums whose public tantrum-throwing threatened the good order of the nation.

Conservatives have been relying on that narrative to stir voters—and discredit the left —ever since. The prize they're really looking for here is fresh film of Dirty Fucking Hippies Getting Theirs. Once you understand that, it's not hard to believe that the Twin Cities police forces may have been gunning from the get-go to purposefully ignite as much confrontation as possible.

What we're seeing in Minneapolis (and did not see in Denver) is incitement to riot on a grand scale—planned and executed by law enforcement agencies themselves. There's plenty of evidence that the orders are coming from the federal level—and a credible suggestion that local law enforcement has been promised some sweet favors if they deliver.

It wouldn't be the first time, or the hundredth time. Progressives don't gain power by sending goons out into the streets to put the power of the state on display. But conservatives have long understood that they can't win without this. It not only keeps the liberals quiet; it also proves to their authoritarian base that they've got what it takes to lead.

At the very least, a president Obama should plan to take a close look at the misuse of government police power—and made damn sure Sheriff Fletcher and any other bureaucratic profiteers are indeed "well-rewarded" for their complicity here.

But, taking the larger view, it's also high time for the progressive movement to look at the role these street battles play in reinforcing the narratives of both sides of the conflict—and perhaps get a bit more imaginative about how to break up a cycle that's gotten more predictable (and more predicably toxic) with each iteration.