Here is a rather thorough analysis of the health care law from a progressive perspective. RGN
March 24, 2010
ObamaCare by the Numbers: Part 1
Posted by John Cassidy
The New Yorker
Addendum added.
Here goes another post destined to make me unpopular in some quarters. (You can find my previous contribution on the same subject here.)
From a political and historical perspective, the passage of health-care reform is a major victory for liberals, moderates, and even conservatives with a social conscience. It has long been a national disgrace that a country as rich as the United States failed to provide basic health care for tens of millions of its citizens. President Obama, to his credit, finally exploited the Democratic majorities in Congress to tackle this problem, and, in the process, demonstrated that he has an inner resolve and determination that I, for one, had doubted. In getting something—anything—done in today’s Washington, he has reinvigorated his Presidency and transformed the political calculus for the rest of his agenda.
But what about the economics of it all? In general terms, as I’ve said before, the case for reform is unassailable. Health care provides a textbook case of an industry plagued by numerous forms of market failure, including moral hazard, adverse selection, and free riding, as well as ad-hoc government interventions. The result is a horrendously costly mishmash, which manages to combine excessive expenditure in some areas (diagnostic testing) with too little expenditure in others (preventative care), and overall health outcomes that are middling, at best. According to Wikipedia, the U.S. ranks 38th in the global life-expectancy league table, just below Cuba (!) and just above Portugal.
Unfortunately, the reform bills that Congress has passed don’t tackle some of the system’s underlying problems, such as the lack of incentives to limit health-care expenditures. Yes, there is financing for pilot schemes that might eventually generate some savings, and, yes, a new independent board of experts will be tasked with identifying possible cuts, but to conflate these initiatives with a guaranteed cure for cost inflation is to fall victim to wishful thinking. Unless I am mistaken—and I hope I am—the reform will end up costing taxpayers considerably more than the Congressional Budget Office is predicting, and it won’t cover nearly as many people as hoped for. In another decade or so, Congress will be back at work, trying to provide genuine universal coverage at a more affordable cost.
The problem is fundamental. Setting aside the expansion of Medicaid and some long-overdue restrictions on the egregious behavior of health insurers, this isn’t really health-care “reform”: it is a significant expansion of the current system of private insurance, with the taxpayer footing the bill. It is Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts experiment writ large, a peculiar amalgam of egalitarian intent and corporate welfare: egalitarianism in the form of providing health care to those who can’t afford it; corporate welfare in the form of paying corporations such as Aetna and Wellpoint generously to take on millions of new enrollees. If the average American doesn’t realize this, people on Wall Street do. Since Obama’s election, in November, 2008, Aetna’s stock has gone from $20 to $35; Wellpoint’s has gone from $30 to $63.
Even now, I don’t think most people realize the size and scale of the subsidies involved in the new system. Take a typical family of four earning $45,000 a year, which is about twice the poverty line and slightly lower than the median household income. (No, you didn’t misread that statistic. More than half the households in the United States earn less than $50,000 a year.) Come 2014, such a family will be entitled to buy a health-care policy for just above six per cent of their income, or $2,800, with the government picking up the rest of the cost. (If you want to see the figures for other incomes and family sizes, check out the excellent health-care calculator at the Washington Post.)
But what will be the excess cost that the taxpayer has to shoulder? Here is where things get murky. After failing to find any definitive figures, I did some back-of-the-envelope sums of my own and came up with some rough estimates. My actual figures should be treated with skepticism—if anybody knows of better ones, please let me know—but I hope they are accurate enough to illustrate the general point. Using private insurance to expand health-care coverage is inordinately expensive!
According to the Kaiser Foundation, in 2008 the average health-insurance premium for a family of four for employer-based coverage was $12,680. Allowing for the subsequent inflation in costs, today’s figure is probably close to $14,000. By 2014, assuming health-care costs rise by five per cent a year, it will be about $17,000. If insurance companies on the new health exchanges were obligated to offer equivalent coverage, the subsidy per family would be at least $14,300 per family. Put another way, the federal government would be providing the typical lower middle class American family with a new entitlement worth roughly thirty per cent of its pre-tax income.
In practice, the cost might be somewhat lower, because the health plans offered to individuals won’t be as comprehensive as group plans are. Exactly what they will look like remains to be determined, but they will come in four varieties: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. The bronze plan will cover sixty per cent of all medical benefits; the platinum plan will cover ninety per cent. Since individual insurance generally offers fewer benefits and involves more cost sharing, in the form of deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, it tends to be cheaper. According to the Kaiser Foundation, the typical premium for non-group coverage for a family of three in 2006/2007 was $5,800. Adding a fourth member of the family (to keep things comparable) and allowing for inflation, brings this figure up to about $10,500 by 2014.
But that figure doesn’t include the cost of expanding coverage to include things the federal government (quite reasonably) wants covered. The Senate bill says this: “All plans must provide preventive and primary care, emergency services, hospitalization, physician services, outpatient services, day surgery and related anesthesia, diagnostic imaging and screenings (including X-rays), maternity and newborn care, pediatric services (including dental and vision), medical/surgical care, prescription drugs, radiation and chemotherapy, and mental health and substance abuse services…. In addition, plans could charge no cost-sharing (e.g., deductibles, copayments) … for preventive care services…. Plans could also not include lifetime limits on coverage or annual limits on any benefits.”
Even with cost-sharing on things other than preventative services, such plans won’t be cheap. All told, it seems reasonable to assume that the price of a typical policy on the new health-care exchanges will be about midway between the price of existing group and non-group coverage, which would put it at roughly $13,750 in 2014 dollars, of which the family earning $45,000 would contribute about $2,800. (See addendum.)
The bottom line: a government subsidy of slightly more than $11,000—or close to twenty-five per cent of the family’s income—all of which will make its way into the coffers of a private health-care company.
Now, that is what I would call redistribution. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of another federal program (or tax policy) that has been so generous to the working and lower-middle classes, at least at the outset. As I noted in my earlier post, and as the Times’s David Leonhardt points out in his column today, health-care reform dwarfs other recent programs designed to help the embattled, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. And given the way it is being paid for—or not paid for—it is far more progressive than Social Security, which is financed in a regressive manner.
What we have, then, is a historic and overdue effort to provide sound health and peace of mind to a needy segment of the U.S. population. But how will it affect economic incentives, and can it be sustained financially? I will be writing on these questions, and others, in Part 2.
ADDENDUM: After putting up this post, I did some more research into the cost of non-group health-care plans, and it suggested to me that my top-of-the-head sums may have been somewhat off, at least for some parts of the country. In New York City, for example, the current cost of a typical non-group family HMO plan is about $10,000, and in Buffalo it is about $7,500. Allowing for annual health care inflation of five per cent, by 2014 these prices would have risen to about $12,150 and $9,120, both of which are considerably below my guesstimate of $13,750.
As I noted, however, additional government mandates could raise the costs of non-group plans offered on the new exchanges compared to existing non-group plans. For example, current non-group HMO plans often come with high deductibles—up to $3,000 per family—and limits on total coverage. Without knowing how the new health exchanges will operate, and what types of plans will end up being offered on them, it’s impossible to say exactly what level of subsidies a typical uninsured lower-middle-class family will receive. But it is probably fair to take my $11,000 guesstimate as an up
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2010/03/obamacare-by-the-numbers-part-1.html#ixzz0jEQXle76
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The White Nationalism of the Christian Right and the Israeli settlements
The Obama administration is to be congratulated for standing up to the illegal settlements the Israelis are proposing to be built in Jerusalem. The Christian right is trying to exploit the administration's stand be labeling the President Obama anti-Israel. The white nationalists are the white nationalists, it doesn't matter if its health care or foreign policy -- they lie!!! The Robert Wright piece exposes Gary Bauer and the right on the strain between the U.S. and Israel. RGN
March 23, 2010, 10:00 pm
Against ‘Pro-Israel’
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Robert Wright on culture, politics and world affairs.
Are you anti-Israel? If you fear that, deep down, you might be, I have important news. The recent tension between Israel and the United States led various commentators to identify hallmarks of anti-Israelism, and these may be of diagnostic value.
As you’ll see, my own view is that they aren’t of much value, but I’ll leave it for you to judge.
Symptom no. 1: Believing that Israel shouldn’t build more settlements in East Jerusalem. President Obama holds this belief, and that seems to be the reason that Gary Bauer, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, deems Obama’s administration “the most anti-Israel administration in U.S. history.” Bauer notes that the East Jerusalem settlements are “entirely within the city of Jerusalem” and that Jerusalem is “the capital of Israel.”
That’s artful wording, but it doesn’t change the fact that East Jerusalem, far from being part of “the capital of Israel,” isn’t even part of Israel. East Jerusalem lies beyond Israel’s internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders. And the common assertion that Israel “annexed” East Jerusalem has roughly the same legal significance as my announcing that I’ve annexed my neighbor’s backyard. In 1980 the United Nations explicitly rejected Israel’s claim to possess East Jerusalem. And the United States, which normally vetoes U.N. resolutions that Israel finds threatening, chose not to do so in this case.
By never criticizing Israel, we’ll all be “pro-Israel.” And that’s a good thing, right?
In short, accepting Gary Bauer’s idea of what it means to be anti-Israel seems to involve being anti-truth. So I don’t accept it. (And if you’re tempted to accept the common claim that Israel is building only in “traditionally Jewish” parts of East Jerusalem, a good antidote is this piece by Lara Friedman and Daniel Seidemann, published on Foreign Policy Magazine’s excellent new Middle East Channel.)
Symptom no. 2: Thinking that some of Israel’s policies, and America’s perceived support of them, might endanger American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (by, for example, giving Jihadist recruiters rhetorical ammunition). This concern was reportedly expressed last week by Vice President Joe Biden to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. And General David Petraeus is said to worry about the threat posed to American troops — and to America’s whole strategic situation — by the perception of American favoritism toward Israel.
Identifying threats to American troops is part of a general’s job, and it seems to me Petraeus could honestly conclude — without help from dark “anti-Israel” impulses — that some of those threats are heightened by the Israel-Palestine conflict and America’s relationship to it. But Max Boot, writing on Commentary’s Web site, seems to disagree; if Petraeus indeed holds such opinions, that’s a sign of “anti-Israel sentiment,” in Boot’s view.
Now, for a lionized American general to even hint that America’s stance toward Israel might threaten American troops is a serious public relations problem for Boot’s ideology. That, presumably, is why Boot tries to show that this “anti-Israel” view, though attributed to Petraeus, is not in fact Petraeus’s view. Specifically, Boot aims to discredit journalists who attributed this quotation to Petraeus: “The [Israel-Palestine] conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel … . Meanwhile, Al Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”
Boot assures us that this passage, far from being a good guide to Petraeus’s thinking, was just “pulled from the 56-page Central Command ‘Posture Statement’ filed by his staff with the Senate Armed Services Committee.” Well, I don’t know who did the filing, but the document itself is titled “Statement of General David H. Petraeus … Before the Senate Armed Services Committee.” So I’m guessing it’s a fair guide to his views — in which case, by Boot’s lights, Petraeus is anti-Israel, right? And in which case I’ll reject Boot’s criterion for anti-Israelism.
Boot has an ally in Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman said the perspective attributed to Biden and Petraeus “smacks of blaming Jews for everything.”
America’s perceived support of Israel’s more inflammatory policies endangers American troops abroad and civilians at home.
Foxman’s claim may seem hyperbolic, but look at it this way: If he can convince us that blaming any Israeli policy for anything is akin to blaming Jews in general for everything, then anyone who criticizes an Israeli policy will be deemed anti-Semitic — and fear of that label will keep everyone from criticizing Israel. And by virtue of never criticizing Israel, we’ll all be “pro-Israel.” And that’s a good thing, right?
Actually, it seems to me that if we were all “pro-Israel” in this sense, that would be bad for Israel.
If Israel’s increasingly powerful right wing has its way, without constraint from American criticism and pressure, then Israel will keep building settlements. And the more settlements get built — especially in East Jerusalem — the harder it will be to find a two-state deal that leaves Palestinians with much of their dignity intact. And the less dignity intact, the less stable any two-state deal will be.
As more and more people are realizing, the only long-run alternatives to a two-state solution are: a) a one-state solution in which an Arab majority spells the end of Israel’s Jewish identity; b) Israel’s remaining a Jewish state by denying the vote to Palestinians who live in the occupied territories, a condition that would be increasingly reminiscent of apartheid; c) the apocalypse. Or, as Hillary Clinton put it in addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference on Monday: “A two-state solution is the only viable path for Israel to remain both a democracy and a Jewish state.”
So, by my lights, being “pro-Israel” in the sense embraced by Bauer, Boot and Foxman — backing Israel’s current policies, including its settlement policies — is actually anti-Israel. It’s also anti-America (in the sense of ‘bad for American security’), because Biden and Petraeus are right: America’s perceived support of — or at least acquiescence in — Israel’s more inflammatory policies endangers American troops abroad. In the long run, it will also endanger American civilians at home, funneling more terrorism in their direction.
The flip side of this coin is that policies that would be truly good for Israel (e.g., no more settlements) would be good for America. In that sense, there’s good news for Bauer and Boot and Foxman: one of their common refrains — that Israel’s and America’s interests are essentially aligned — is true, if for reasons they don’t appreciate.
Sadly, the Bauer-Boot-Foxman definition of “pro-Israel” — supporting Israel’s increasingly hard-line and self-destructive policies — is the official definition. All major American newspapers, so far as I can see, use the term this way. AIPAC is described as “pro-Israel,” but the left-of-AIPAC J Street isn’t, even though its members, like AIPAC’s, favor policies they consider good for Israel.
No doubt this twisted use of “pro-Israel,” and the implied definition of “anti-Israel,” keeps many critics of Israeli policies from speaking out — Jewish critics for fear of seeming disloyal, and non-Jewish critics for fear of seeming anti-Semitic.
So, if I’m right, and more speaking out — more criticism of Israel’s current policies — would actually be good for Israel, then the newspapers and other media outlets that sustain the prevailing usage of “pro-Israel” are, in fact, anti-Israel. I won’t mention any names.
Postscript: It has been reported that, notwithstanding accounts in Israel’s media, Biden did not, in fact, complain to Netanyahu in private about the threat of Israel’s policies to American troops. Perhaps predictably, the journalist who first reported this is the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who has been described by one New York Times columnist as Netanyahu’s “faithful stenographer.” I don’t doubt that Goldberg found an administration source who downplayed Biden’s remarks to Netanyahu; obviously, once tensions started to subside, and the goal of both America and Israel was to smooth relations, it wasn’t going to be hard to find an administration official who would do that, regardless of the truth about what Biden said. So I attach little significance to the administration’s revisionist account of what transpired between Biden and Netanyahu — especially given the heat the administration no doubt took over the original account of what transpired.
March 23, 2010, 10:00 pm
Against ‘Pro-Israel’
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Robert Wright on culture, politics and world affairs.
Are you anti-Israel? If you fear that, deep down, you might be, I have important news. The recent tension between Israel and the United States led various commentators to identify hallmarks of anti-Israelism, and these may be of diagnostic value.
As you’ll see, my own view is that they aren’t of much value, but I’ll leave it for you to judge.
Symptom no. 1: Believing that Israel shouldn’t build more settlements in East Jerusalem. President Obama holds this belief, and that seems to be the reason that Gary Bauer, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, deems Obama’s administration “the most anti-Israel administration in U.S. history.” Bauer notes that the East Jerusalem settlements are “entirely within the city of Jerusalem” and that Jerusalem is “the capital of Israel.”
That’s artful wording, but it doesn’t change the fact that East Jerusalem, far from being part of “the capital of Israel,” isn’t even part of Israel. East Jerusalem lies beyond Israel’s internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders. And the common assertion that Israel “annexed” East Jerusalem has roughly the same legal significance as my announcing that I’ve annexed my neighbor’s backyard. In 1980 the United Nations explicitly rejected Israel’s claim to possess East Jerusalem. And the United States, which normally vetoes U.N. resolutions that Israel finds threatening, chose not to do so in this case.
By never criticizing Israel, we’ll all be “pro-Israel.” And that’s a good thing, right?
In short, accepting Gary Bauer’s idea of what it means to be anti-Israel seems to involve being anti-truth. So I don’t accept it. (And if you’re tempted to accept the common claim that Israel is building only in “traditionally Jewish” parts of East Jerusalem, a good antidote is this piece by Lara Friedman and Daniel Seidemann, published on Foreign Policy Magazine’s excellent new Middle East Channel.)
Symptom no. 2: Thinking that some of Israel’s policies, and America’s perceived support of them, might endanger American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (by, for example, giving Jihadist recruiters rhetorical ammunition). This concern was reportedly expressed last week by Vice President Joe Biden to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. And General David Petraeus is said to worry about the threat posed to American troops — and to America’s whole strategic situation — by the perception of American favoritism toward Israel.
Identifying threats to American troops is part of a general’s job, and it seems to me Petraeus could honestly conclude — without help from dark “anti-Israel” impulses — that some of those threats are heightened by the Israel-Palestine conflict and America’s relationship to it. But Max Boot, writing on Commentary’s Web site, seems to disagree; if Petraeus indeed holds such opinions, that’s a sign of “anti-Israel sentiment,” in Boot’s view.
Now, for a lionized American general to even hint that America’s stance toward Israel might threaten American troops is a serious public relations problem for Boot’s ideology. That, presumably, is why Boot tries to show that this “anti-Israel” view, though attributed to Petraeus, is not in fact Petraeus’s view. Specifically, Boot aims to discredit journalists who attributed this quotation to Petraeus: “The [Israel-Palestine] conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel … . Meanwhile, Al Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”
Boot assures us that this passage, far from being a good guide to Petraeus’s thinking, was just “pulled from the 56-page Central Command ‘Posture Statement’ filed by his staff with the Senate Armed Services Committee.” Well, I don’t know who did the filing, but the document itself is titled “Statement of General David H. Petraeus … Before the Senate Armed Services Committee.” So I’m guessing it’s a fair guide to his views — in which case, by Boot’s lights, Petraeus is anti-Israel, right? And in which case I’ll reject Boot’s criterion for anti-Israelism.
Boot has an ally in Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman said the perspective attributed to Biden and Petraeus “smacks of blaming Jews for everything.”
America’s perceived support of Israel’s more inflammatory policies endangers American troops abroad and civilians at home.
Foxman’s claim may seem hyperbolic, but look at it this way: If he can convince us that blaming any Israeli policy for anything is akin to blaming Jews in general for everything, then anyone who criticizes an Israeli policy will be deemed anti-Semitic — and fear of that label will keep everyone from criticizing Israel. And by virtue of never criticizing Israel, we’ll all be “pro-Israel.” And that’s a good thing, right?
Actually, it seems to me that if we were all “pro-Israel” in this sense, that would be bad for Israel.
If Israel’s increasingly powerful right wing has its way, without constraint from American criticism and pressure, then Israel will keep building settlements. And the more settlements get built — especially in East Jerusalem — the harder it will be to find a two-state deal that leaves Palestinians with much of their dignity intact. And the less dignity intact, the less stable any two-state deal will be.
As more and more people are realizing, the only long-run alternatives to a two-state solution are: a) a one-state solution in which an Arab majority spells the end of Israel’s Jewish identity; b) Israel’s remaining a Jewish state by denying the vote to Palestinians who live in the occupied territories, a condition that would be increasingly reminiscent of apartheid; c) the apocalypse. Or, as Hillary Clinton put it in addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference on Monday: “A two-state solution is the only viable path for Israel to remain both a democracy and a Jewish state.”
So, by my lights, being “pro-Israel” in the sense embraced by Bauer, Boot and Foxman — backing Israel’s current policies, including its settlement policies — is actually anti-Israel. It’s also anti-America (in the sense of ‘bad for American security’), because Biden and Petraeus are right: America’s perceived support of — or at least acquiescence in — Israel’s more inflammatory policies endangers American troops abroad. In the long run, it will also endanger American civilians at home, funneling more terrorism in their direction.
The flip side of this coin is that policies that would be truly good for Israel (e.g., no more settlements) would be good for America. In that sense, there’s good news for Bauer and Boot and Foxman: one of their common refrains — that Israel’s and America’s interests are essentially aligned — is true, if for reasons they don’t appreciate.
Sadly, the Bauer-Boot-Foxman definition of “pro-Israel” — supporting Israel’s increasingly hard-line and self-destructive policies — is the official definition. All major American newspapers, so far as I can see, use the term this way. AIPAC is described as “pro-Israel,” but the left-of-AIPAC J Street isn’t, even though its members, like AIPAC’s, favor policies they consider good for Israel.
No doubt this twisted use of “pro-Israel,” and the implied definition of “anti-Israel,” keeps many critics of Israeli policies from speaking out — Jewish critics for fear of seeming disloyal, and non-Jewish critics for fear of seeming anti-Semitic.
So, if I’m right, and more speaking out — more criticism of Israel’s current policies — would actually be good for Israel, then the newspapers and other media outlets that sustain the prevailing usage of “pro-Israel” are, in fact, anti-Israel. I won’t mention any names.
Postscript: It has been reported that, notwithstanding accounts in Israel’s media, Biden did not, in fact, complain to Netanyahu in private about the threat of Israel’s policies to American troops. Perhaps predictably, the journalist who first reported this is the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who has been described by one New York Times columnist as Netanyahu’s “faithful stenographer.” I don’t doubt that Goldberg found an administration source who downplayed Biden’s remarks to Netanyahu; obviously, once tensions started to subside, and the goal of both America and Israel was to smooth relations, it wasn’t going to be hard to find an administration official who would do that, regardless of the truth about what Biden said. So I attach little significance to the administration’s revisionist account of what transpired between Biden and Netanyahu — especially given the heat the administration no doubt took over the original account of what transpired.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
It's Time to Fight Back: Color of Change Takes on the Ugly White Nationalism
The colorofchange.org is fighting back!! This is a very important struggle. In fact, it may be the most important struggle at this stage of the nation's politics. Let's be clear, this fight over health care is about race. The despicable treatment of members of Congress was clearly about race. With Barack Obama as President, there is no appearance white nationalism is in power in the White House. For a large segment of white society that is unacceptable. John McCain dis get 55% of the white vote. The election outcome defeated white nationalism as the ruling ideology. The T-Party movement is a white nationalist movement. As Keith Olbermann continues to as: where are the black folks? As white nationalism was defeated in the election, it must now be defeated in the body politic. Taking the leadership in this struggle is colorofchange.org. These fascist tactics that are being condoned by the Republican party must be defeated. Below is a letter distributed to those on the Colorofchange.org distribution list. RGN
It's time to hold the Republican Party accountable.
You've probably heard about Tea Party members shouting "Nigger!" at Black Congressmen during a protest in Washington, D.C. last weekend. One of the protesters spat on Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, while another called openly gay Representative Barney Frank a "faggot" as the laughing crowd imitated his lisp.1
But Saturday was just the most recent example of the intolerance and hate coming from right-wing extremists this past year. At times it's been instigated by Republican leaders. When not, it's usually condoned and seen as part of a strategy to score politically. Either way, it's completely unacceptable and has to stop.
It's time to confront Republican leadership and force them to take responsibility for the atmosphere they've helped create. Join us in drawing a line in the sand, and ask your friends and family to do the same:
http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1938-165448
We're calling on RNC Chair Michael Steele, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to publicly do two simple things:
1. Unequivocally condemn bigotry and hate among their supporters, and make clear that those who embrace it have no place in their party.
2. Make clear that they will not tolerate fear-mongering and coded appeals to racism from officials in the Republican party, at any level.
Republican leaders publicly denounced Sunday's ugly scene, but they failed to acknowledge that this is only the latest incident in a pattern of violent rhetoric, racially charged imagery, and paranoid conspiracy theories at Tea Party rallies.2 Many Tea Partiers aren't simply about dissent -- they use fear and hatred to assault the very legitimacy of our elected leaders. It's the worst America has to offer.
Despite this, Republican leaders court the Tea Party movement while methodically supporting, exacerbating and exploiting their fear and anger for cynical political ends.3 This is nothing less than a betrayal of American values, and it's up to us to force the Republicans to stop aiding and abetting this enterprise:
http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1938-165448
The Tea Party movement has been marked by racially inflammatory and violent outbursts since its inception a year ago. GOP leaders are trying to pass off this weekend's assaults on Congressmen Lewis, Cleaver, Clyburn and Frank as isolated incidents. But when so-called "isolated incidents" crop up again and again, a pattern starts to emerge. The examples are numerous.
At rallies held to protest tax day last year, Tea Partiers carried signs that announced "Obama's Plan: White Slavery," "The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Oven," and "Guns Tomorrow!"4 The Republican National Committee had endorsed the rallies, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele encouraged Tea Partiers to send a "virtual tea bag" to President Obama and Democratic Congressional leadership.5 After reports of the fear-mongering signs surfaced, Steele did nothing to distance his party from the lunatic fringe. He has even gone so far as to say that if he didn't have his current position, he'd be "out there with the tea partiers."6 Some Republican governors even planned a "Tea Party 2.0" for the following month in an effort to build on the rallies' momentum.7
The Tea Party's venomous rhetoric picked up steam over the summer, when angry mobs flooded town hall meetings legislators had organized as sites for rational, civil debate on health care reform. After one meeting in Atlanta, a swastika was painted on the office of Congressman David Scott (D-GA), who had also received a flier addressed to "nigga David Scott." 8 Some protesters showed up at town hall meetings carrying guns, including at least one man who was armed at an event where the President was speaking.9 Again, Republicans responded to these tactics with silence, doing nothing to denounce them.
Similarly, there was no public outcry from Republican leadership when Mark Williams, a leader of the Tea Party movement, was exposed for having described the President as "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief" on his blog.10 Instead, members of the GOP continued to show up to and endorse Tea Party rallies. And as recently as Sunday -- the day that the historic health care bill passed the House -- Republican members of the House riled up the same Tea Party crowd that had earlier harassed their fellow members with hate and bigotry.
Our country deserves better than this. No matter what party one supports, we should all take strong action to support civil, honest, and respectful public debate. Can you take a moment to call on Michael Steele, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell to denounce the racist rhetoric and fear-mongering that have been ongoing, significant characteristics of the Tea Party movement, and tell those who embrace these divisive and un-American beiefs that they have no place in their party, as members or leaders? And when you do, please ask your family and friends to do the same:
http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1938-165448
Thanks and Peace,
-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani, Milton and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
March 23rd, 2010
1. "Tea Party Protests: 'Ni**er,' 'Fa**ot' Shouted At Members Of Congress," Huffington Post, 3-20-2010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/127?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=7
2. "10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs And Extensive Photo Coverage From Tax Day Protests," Huffington Post, 4-16-09
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/128?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=9
3. "Memo Reveals GOP Plan to Exploit Fear of Obama," AOL News, 3-4-2010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/137?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=11
4. See Reference 2
5. "Tax Day Tea Parties Officially Endorsed By Republican Party," Huffington Post, 5-15-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/138?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=13
6. "Steele: I'd join the tea parties," Politico, 1-15-10
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/136?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=15
7. "GOP govs plan Tea Party sequel," Politico, 5-12-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/131?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=17
8. "Rep. David Scott's (D-Ga) office spray-painted with Swastika," Daily Kos, 8-11-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/132?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=19
9. "Armed and Dangerous?" Talking Points Memo, 8-11-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/133?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=21
10. "Tea party leader calls Obama a welfare thug," The Loop, 9-15-09
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/134?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=23
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It's time to hold the Republican Party accountable.
You've probably heard about Tea Party members shouting "Nigger!" at Black Congressmen during a protest in Washington, D.C. last weekend. One of the protesters spat on Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, while another called openly gay Representative Barney Frank a "faggot" as the laughing crowd imitated his lisp.1
But Saturday was just the most recent example of the intolerance and hate coming from right-wing extremists this past year. At times it's been instigated by Republican leaders. When not, it's usually condoned and seen as part of a strategy to score politically. Either way, it's completely unacceptable and has to stop.
It's time to confront Republican leadership and force them to take responsibility for the atmosphere they've helped create. Join us in drawing a line in the sand, and ask your friends and family to do the same:
http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1938-165448
We're calling on RNC Chair Michael Steele, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to publicly do two simple things:
1. Unequivocally condemn bigotry and hate among their supporters, and make clear that those who embrace it have no place in their party.
2. Make clear that they will not tolerate fear-mongering and coded appeals to racism from officials in the Republican party, at any level.
Republican leaders publicly denounced Sunday's ugly scene, but they failed to acknowledge that this is only the latest incident in a pattern of violent rhetoric, racially charged imagery, and paranoid conspiracy theories at Tea Party rallies.2 Many Tea Partiers aren't simply about dissent -- they use fear and hatred to assault the very legitimacy of our elected leaders. It's the worst America has to offer.
Despite this, Republican leaders court the Tea Party movement while methodically supporting, exacerbating and exploiting their fear and anger for cynical political ends.3 This is nothing less than a betrayal of American values, and it's up to us to force the Republicans to stop aiding and abetting this enterprise:
http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1938-165448
The Tea Party movement has been marked by racially inflammatory and violent outbursts since its inception a year ago. GOP leaders are trying to pass off this weekend's assaults on Congressmen Lewis, Cleaver, Clyburn and Frank as isolated incidents. But when so-called "isolated incidents" crop up again and again, a pattern starts to emerge. The examples are numerous.
At rallies held to protest tax day last year, Tea Partiers carried signs that announced "Obama's Plan: White Slavery," "The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Oven," and "Guns Tomorrow!"4 The Republican National Committee had endorsed the rallies, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele encouraged Tea Partiers to send a "virtual tea bag" to President Obama and Democratic Congressional leadership.5 After reports of the fear-mongering signs surfaced, Steele did nothing to distance his party from the lunatic fringe. He has even gone so far as to say that if he didn't have his current position, he'd be "out there with the tea partiers."6 Some Republican governors even planned a "Tea Party 2.0" for the following month in an effort to build on the rallies' momentum.7
The Tea Party's venomous rhetoric picked up steam over the summer, when angry mobs flooded town hall meetings legislators had organized as sites for rational, civil debate on health care reform. After one meeting in Atlanta, a swastika was painted on the office of Congressman David Scott (D-GA), who had also received a flier addressed to "nigga David Scott." 8 Some protesters showed up at town hall meetings carrying guns, including at least one man who was armed at an event where the President was speaking.9 Again, Republicans responded to these tactics with silence, doing nothing to denounce them.
Similarly, there was no public outcry from Republican leadership when Mark Williams, a leader of the Tea Party movement, was exposed for having described the President as "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief" on his blog.10 Instead, members of the GOP continued to show up to and endorse Tea Party rallies. And as recently as Sunday -- the day that the historic health care bill passed the House -- Republican members of the House riled up the same Tea Party crowd that had earlier harassed their fellow members with hate and bigotry.
Our country deserves better than this. No matter what party one supports, we should all take strong action to support civil, honest, and respectful public debate. Can you take a moment to call on Michael Steele, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell to denounce the racist rhetoric and fear-mongering that have been ongoing, significant characteristics of the Tea Party movement, and tell those who embrace these divisive and un-American beiefs that they have no place in their party, as members or leaders? And when you do, please ask your family and friends to do the same:
http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1938-165448
Thanks and Peace,
-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani, Milton and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
March 23rd, 2010
1. "Tea Party Protests: 'Ni**er,' 'Fa**ot' Shouted At Members Of Congress," Huffington Post, 3-20-2010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/127?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=7
2. "10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs And Extensive Photo Coverage From Tax Day Protests," Huffington Post, 4-16-09
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/128?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=9
3. "Memo Reveals GOP Plan to Exploit Fear of Obama," AOL News, 3-4-2010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/137?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=11
4. See Reference 2
5. "Tax Day Tea Parties Officially Endorsed By Republican Party," Huffington Post, 5-15-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/138?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=13
6. "Steele: I'd join the tea parties," Politico, 1-15-10
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/136?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=15
7. "GOP govs plan Tea Party sequel," Politico, 5-12-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/131?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=17
8. "Rep. David Scott's (D-Ga) office spray-painted with Swastika," Daily Kos, 8-11-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/132?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=19
9. "Armed and Dangerous?" Talking Points Memo, 8-11-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/133?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=21
10. "Tea party leader calls Obama a welfare thug," The Loop, 9-15-09
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/134?akid=1397.634006.8JmbP_&t=23
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Monday, March 22, 2010
In Response to T-Bag White Nationalism Dems Show Unity
The Tea Party and the GOP, there's was no distinction on Sunday. While the tea party crowd was calling African American Congressmen the N-word and spitting on them and while they were also yelling epithets at Congressman Barney Frank, Republican members of the Congress joined in the demonstration by being cheerleaders holding up signs reading "Kill the Bill" and other denunciations of the health care bill. In defiance of the tea party attacks, the Dems marched to the Capitol to vote arm-in-arm. The question is when will the Republican party denounce these hostile and hateful expression of racism? RGNRepublican lawmakers stir up the 'tea party' crowd
By Dana Milbank
Monday, March 22, 2010; A01
The Democrats were blamed for many horrible things -- tyranny! socialism! corruption! -- as they marched toward Sunday night's passage of health-care legislation, but nobody ever accused them of making health reform look easy.
It all began 14 long months ago, when Ted Kennedy was still alive and everybody, Republicans and Democrats alike, seemed to agree that the nation's health-care system needed change. Then came the town hall meetings, the death panels, the granny killing, the images of Nazi concentration camps, the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Joe Wilson's "You lie!" moment, the middle-of-the-night and Christmas Eve votes, the Massachusetts special election, the Stupak Amendment, the Slaughter Plan, the filibusters, the supermajorities, the deeming and passing.
It was one of the ugliest and strangest periods the American legislative process has ever experienced. And Sunday was no different. The day's debate on the House floor was in its early moments when two men, one smelling strongly of alcohol, stood up in the public gallery and interrupted the debate with shouts of "Kill the bill!" and "The people said no!" As the Capitol Police led the demonstrators from the chamber, Republicans cheered -- for the hecklers.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who for the second day in a row had homophobic epithets hurled at him by demonstrators, called his Republican colleagues "clowns" for this display. But the circus was just beginning.
As lawmakers debated their way to a vote on the legislation, dozens of GOP lawmakers walked from the chamber, crossed the Speaker's Lobby, stepped out onto the members-only House balcony -- and proceeded to incite an unruly crowd.
Thousands of conservative "tea party" activists had massed on the south side of the Capitol, pushing to within about 50 feet of the building. Some Democrats worried aloud about the risk of violence, and police tried to keep the crowd away from the building.
But rather than calm the demonstrators, Republican congressmen whipped the masses into a frenzy. There on the House balcony, the GOP lawmakers' legislative dissent and the tea-party protest merged into one. Some lawmakers waved handwritten signs and led the crowd in chants of "Kill the bill." A few waved the yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flag of the tea-party movement. Still others fired up the demonstrators with campaign-style signs mocking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Democrats, to show they wouldn't be intimidated, had staged a march to the Capitol from their office buildings, covering the ground where on Saturday African American Democrats were called racial epithets and spat on by protesters. Pelosi, carrying the speaker's gavel, linked arms with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who was harassed Saturday but is no stranger to abuse from his years in the civil rights movement.
Police ringed Lewis, Pelosi and other Democrats while the conservative activists formed a gantlet and shouted insults: "You communists! You socialists! You hate America!"
The tone was little better indoors. Pelosi, holding a news conference after a meeting with her Democratic caucus, was heckled by a demonstrator. Inside the House chamber, Republicans placed on Democrats' chairs photos of the Democratic lawmakers who lost their jobs in 1994. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) went to the well to say that "freedom dies." Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.), sitting in the front row in a way that displayed the Lone Star flag on his cowboy boots, said Democrats were on "the path of government tyranny." Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) warned of a "fiscal Frankenstein."
After hours of procedural delays forced by the minority, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) began the final stage of the debate with an appeal to rise above the insults. "We have seen angry people at the doorstep of the Capitol," he said.
The angry people were closer than Hoyer realized. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) hollered on the floor about "dirty deal after dirty deal." Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) likened the Democrats to Soviets. "Say no to totalitarianism!" he said. Somebody in the Republican seats shouted "Baby killer" at Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), an antiabortion Democrat.
The legislators were making such a ruckus on the floor that they couldn't hear the ruckus just outside their walls. The tea-party demonstrators chanted "Nancy! Nancy!" and held signs saying such things as "Red Queen Nancy -- Joseph Stalin Was Not a Saint."
That would have been the end of it, had Republican lawmakers not stirred things up. First Reps. Buck McKeon (Calif.), Rob Bishop (Utah) and Mike Turner (Ohio) came out waving signs saying "KILL THE BILL." The crowd went wild. Reps. Mary Fallin (Okla.), Geoff Davis (Ky.) and Bill Posey (Fla.) held the "Don't Tread on Me" flag, and Rep. Pete Sessions (Tex.), head of the House Republicans' 2010 campaign committee, came out with half a dozen colleagues and more kill-the-bill signs. Rep. Jeff Miller (Fla.) dangled an American flag from the balcony.
"That's kind of fun," Fallin said cheerfully after a turn at riling the crowd with signs saying "No" in red letters.
Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.), crashing his Republican colleagues' mischief, went out on the balcony and waved. "I feel like Mussolini now!" he said as the crowd booed him.
The noise continued, inside and outside, late into the night. Inside the chamber, civil rights icon Lewis, brushing off the slurs that the demonstrators had sent his way, went into the well. "On this day, on this moment, in this chamber, answer the call of history!" he urged colleagues.
Outside, the demonstrators offered an answer to such appeals. They arranged themselves on the lawn to spell the word "NO."
By the time Minority Leader John Boehner took the floor at about 10 pm, the mood on the floor was barely distinguishable from the mood on the lawn outside. "Shame on each and every one of you," the Republican leader yelled at the Democrats, as the GOP lawmakers gave him a standing ovation. Boehner said the Democrats were a "disgrace" to Jeffersonian values.
"Hell, no, you can't!" Boehner shouted at the Democrats.
"No, you can't! No, you can't!" echoed the protesters outside.
But they could. And at 10:45 p.m., after 14 months of trying, 219 Democrats finally did.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
To Members of Congress: The N-Word or other Epithets
Tea Partiers Prove to be true to themselves. At the protests on Saturday out cam the racism, homophobia, and sexism. Calling Democratic congressmen names and spitting on them was the order of the day. In Buffalo, a Congresswoman's office was vandalized. As much as it is about health care, it is about preserving white nationalism and America as a white nation. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post tells the story. RGN
Tea Party Protests: 'Ni**er,' 'Fa**ot' Shouted At Members Of Congress First Posted: 03-20-10 04:56 PM | Updated: 03-20-10 09:00 PM
by Sam Stein
Abusive, derogatory and even racist behavior directed at House Democrats by Tea Party protesters on Saturday left several lawmakers in shock.
Preceding the president's speech to a gathering of House Democrats, thousands of protesters descended around the Capitol to protest the passage of health care reform. The gathering quickly turned into abusive heckling, as members of Congress passing through Longworth House office building were subjected to epithets and even mild physical abuse.
A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a 'ni--er.' And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams.
Frank, approached in the halls after the president's speech, shrugged off the incident.
But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.
"It was absolutely shocking to me," Clyburn said, in response to a question from the Huffington Post. "Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday... I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins... And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus."
"It doesn't make me nervous as all," the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. "In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else."
Asked if he wanted an apology from the group of Republican lawmakers who had addressed the crowd and, in many ways, played on their worst fears of health care legislation, the Democratic Party, and the president, Clyburn replied:
"A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this is not about health care a all. And I think a lot of those people today demonstrated that this is not about health care... it is about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful."
UPDATE 6:55 PM ET: Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's office released the following statement:
For many of the members of the CBC, like John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver who worked in the civil rights movement, and for Mr. Frank who has struggled in the cause of equality, this is not the first time they have been spit on during turbulent times.
This afternoon, the Congressman was walking into the Capitol to vote, when one protester spat on him. The Congressman would like to thank the US Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the others Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care. After all the Members were safe, a full report was taken and the matter was handled by the US Capitol Police. The man who spat on the Congressman was arrested, but the Congressman has chosen not to press charges. He has left the matter with the Capitol Police.
This is not the first time the Congressman has been called the "n" word and certainly not the worst assault he has endured in his years fighting for equal rights for all Americans. That being said, he is disappointed that in the 21st century our national discourse has devolved to the point of name calling and spitting. He looks forward to taking a historic vote on health care reform legislation tomorrow, for the residents of the Fifth District of Missouri and for all Americans. He believes deeply that tomorrow's vote is, in fact, a vote for equality and to secure health care as a right for all. Our nation has a history of struggling each time we expand rights. Today's protests are no different, but the Congressman believes this is worth fighting for.
UPDATE 7:48 PM ET: The Buffalo News reports that Rep. Louise Slaughter's district office in Pine View, New York, was vandalized on Saturday.
Sometime early this morning, someone threw a brick through the front window of her Pine Avenue office.
The damage was discovered about 12:30 a.m., city police said.
The brick put a hole in the outer-most window at the office at 1910 Pine Ave., but did not damage a second interior window, police reported. A piece of broken brick believed to have caused the damage was found at the scene.
Damage was estimated at $350.
UPDATE 8:57 PM ET: The Associated Press reports that Capitol Police arrested the man who spit on Cleaver, but the Congressman won't press charges.
Tea Party Protests: 'Ni**er,' 'Fa**ot' Shouted At Members Of Congress First Posted: 03-20-10 04:56 PM | Updated: 03-20-10 09:00 PM
by Sam Stein
Abusive, derogatory and even racist behavior directed at House Democrats by Tea Party protesters on Saturday left several lawmakers in shock.
Preceding the president's speech to a gathering of House Democrats, thousands of protesters descended around the Capitol to protest the passage of health care reform. The gathering quickly turned into abusive heckling, as members of Congress passing through Longworth House office building were subjected to epithets and even mild physical abuse.
A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a 'ni--er.' And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams.
Frank, approached in the halls after the president's speech, shrugged off the incident.
But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.
"It was absolutely shocking to me," Clyburn said, in response to a question from the Huffington Post. "Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday... I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins... And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus."
"It doesn't make me nervous as all," the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. "In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else."
Asked if he wanted an apology from the group of Republican lawmakers who had addressed the crowd and, in many ways, played on their worst fears of health care legislation, the Democratic Party, and the president, Clyburn replied:
"A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this is not about health care a all. And I think a lot of those people today demonstrated that this is not about health care... it is about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful."
UPDATE 6:55 PM ET: Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's office released the following statement:
For many of the members of the CBC, like John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver who worked in the civil rights movement, and for Mr. Frank who has struggled in the cause of equality, this is not the first time they have been spit on during turbulent times.
This afternoon, the Congressman was walking into the Capitol to vote, when one protester spat on him. The Congressman would like to thank the US Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the others Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care. After all the Members were safe, a full report was taken and the matter was handled by the US Capitol Police. The man who spat on the Congressman was arrested, but the Congressman has chosen not to press charges. He has left the matter with the Capitol Police.
This is not the first time the Congressman has been called the "n" word and certainly not the worst assault he has endured in his years fighting for equal rights for all Americans. That being said, he is disappointed that in the 21st century our national discourse has devolved to the point of name calling and spitting. He looks forward to taking a historic vote on health care reform legislation tomorrow, for the residents of the Fifth District of Missouri and for all Americans. He believes deeply that tomorrow's vote is, in fact, a vote for equality and to secure health care as a right for all. Our nation has a history of struggling each time we expand rights. Today's protests are no different, but the Congressman believes this is worth fighting for.
UPDATE 7:48 PM ET: The Buffalo News reports that Rep. Louise Slaughter's district office in Pine View, New York, was vandalized on Saturday.
Sometime early this morning, someone threw a brick through the front window of her Pine Avenue office.
The damage was discovered about 12:30 a.m., city police said.
The brick put a hole in the outer-most window at the office at 1910 Pine Ave., but did not damage a second interior window, police reported. A piece of broken brick believed to have caused the damage was found at the scene.
Damage was estimated at $350.
UPDATE 8:57 PM ET: The Associated Press reports that Capitol Police arrested the man who spit on Cleaver, but the Congressman won't press charges.
Friday, March 19, 2010
"Progressive Pragmatism": Is Obama a President of Consequence
The most interesting thing about this piece by Ron Brownstein is that it is reminiscent of an old saying: don't mistake kindness for weakness. According to Brownstein, on the issue of health care, Obama took the risk of doing really big and really risky, stood steadfast on achieving an accomplishment of historic proportions. Essentially, even though Brownstein does not say it exactly, with the passage of health care Obama will have been a consequential president. He will have gotten passed into law legislation a social policy no less important than the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or Medicare, or social security. That is the stuff upon which the terms greatness or at least significant presidencies are born. Brownstein argues, without saying so, that Obama really is a "progressive pragmatist," who is showing strength and determination in his major mission is to “transform America.” RGN
POLITICAL CONNECTIONS
Obama And The Supertanker
The constant in Obama's presidency has been his determination to chart a new course.
by Ronald Brownstein
Saturday, March 20, 2010
At various points in health care reform's long slog through Congress, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has offered President Obama options to settle for more-incremental change. But at each juncture, Obama has persisted in pursuing a
comprehensive, big-bang bill.
In an interview with National Journal, Emanuel said he has intermittently provided Obama his assessment of "the equities" in more- and less-ambitious approaches, especially "given everything [else] we're trying to do." He continued, "This is what I'm supposed to do as chief of staff. But he has... always said, 'This is what needs to be done,' and he has said he is willing to pay the political price to get it done."
The grueling health care struggle, now nearing a decisive vote in the House, has filled in a picture of Obama that remained stubbornly unfinished through his first year. Most immediately, it has shattered the image of him as a passionless president, too cool to fully commit to any cause.
Win or lose, Obama has pursued health care reform as tenaciously as any president has pursued any domestic initiative in decades. Health care has now been his presidency's central domestic focus for a full year. That's about as long as it took to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, originally introduced by John F. Kennedy and driven home by Lyndon Johnson. Rarely since World War II has a president devoted so much time, at so much political cost, to shouldering a single priority through Congress. It's reasonable to debate whether Obama should have invested so heavily in health care. But it's difficult to quibble with Emanuel's assessment that once the president placed that bet, "He has shown fortitude, stamina, and strength."
The fight has opened a second window into Obama. The key here is his 2008 campaign assertion that "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America" more than Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton did. The health care struggle suggests that Obama views changing that trajectory as the ultimate measure of a presidency's success. His aim is to establish a long-term political direction -- one centered on a more activist government that shapes and polices the market to strengthen the foundation for
aim is to establish a long-term political direction -- one centered on a more activist government that shapes and polices the market to strengthen the foundation for sustainable, broadly shared growth. Everything else -- the legislative tactics, even most individual policies -- is negotiable. He wants to chart the course for the supertanker, not to steer it around each wave or decide which crates are loaded into its hull.
Obama's core health care goals have been to establish the principle that Americans are entitled to insurance and to build a framework for controlling costs by incentivizing providers to work more efficiently. He has been unwavering about that destination but flexible and eclectic in his route. He has cut deals with traditional adversaries, such as the drug industry, and confronted allies to demand an independent Medicare reform commission. But Obama has also waged unconditional war on the insurance industry. He has negotiated and jousted with Senate Republicans. He has deferred (excessively at times) to congressional Democratic leaders but has also muscled them at key moments. He has pursued the liberal priority of expanded coverage through a centrist plan that largely tracks the Republican alternative to Clinton's 1993 proposal.
Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek, a shrewd student of the presidency, sees in this complex record evidence that Obama and his team are torn between consensual and confrontational leadership styles. The first, he says, stresses "the progressive reform idea of bringing everybody to the table [for] rational, pragmatic decision-making." The second argues "that you transform politics only through wrenching confrontation." Skowronek believes that the most-consequential presidents, such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, usually start with the first approach and evolve toward the second as they encounter entrenched resistance.
Liberals who consider Obama too conciliatory have speculated that his willingness to use the Senate reconciliation process to force a final vote on health care signals a turn toward consistent confrontation. But it seems more likely that he will continue to seek broad coalitions on some issues (education, energy, immigration) while accepting, even welcoming, greater partisan conflict on others (financial reform).
The approaches that Skowronek views as alternatives Obama may consider tools he can wield in different combinations for each challenge. The constant is Obama's determination to turn the supertanker -- and his Reagan-like willingness to bet his party's future on his ability to sell the country on the ambitious course he has set.
POLITICAL CONNECTIONS
Obama And The Supertanker
The constant in Obama's presidency has been his determination to chart a new course.
by Ronald Brownstein
Saturday, March 20, 2010
At various points in health care reform's long slog through Congress, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has offered President Obama options to settle for more-incremental change. But at each juncture, Obama has persisted in pursuing a
comprehensive, big-bang bill.
In an interview with National Journal, Emanuel said he has intermittently provided Obama his assessment of "the equities" in more- and less-ambitious approaches, especially "given everything [else] we're trying to do." He continued, "This is what I'm supposed to do as chief of staff. But he has... always said, 'This is what needs to be done,' and he has said he is willing to pay the political price to get it done."
The grueling health care struggle, now nearing a decisive vote in the House, has filled in a picture of Obama that remained stubbornly unfinished through his first year. Most immediately, it has shattered the image of him as a passionless president, too cool to fully commit to any cause.
Win or lose, Obama has pursued health care reform as tenaciously as any president has pursued any domestic initiative in decades. Health care has now been his presidency's central domestic focus for a full year. That's about as long as it took to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, originally introduced by John F. Kennedy and driven home by Lyndon Johnson. Rarely since World War II has a president devoted so much time, at so much political cost, to shouldering a single priority through Congress. It's reasonable to debate whether Obama should have invested so heavily in health care. But it's difficult to quibble with Emanuel's assessment that once the president placed that bet, "He has shown fortitude, stamina, and strength."
The fight has opened a second window into Obama. The key here is his 2008 campaign assertion that "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America" more than Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton did. The health care struggle suggests that Obama views changing that trajectory as the ultimate measure of a presidency's success. His aim is to establish a long-term political direction -- one centered on a more activist government that shapes and polices the market to strengthen the foundation for
aim is to establish a long-term political direction -- one centered on a more activist government that shapes and polices the market to strengthen the foundation for sustainable, broadly shared growth. Everything else -- the legislative tactics, even most individual policies -- is negotiable. He wants to chart the course for the supertanker, not to steer it around each wave or decide which crates are loaded into its hull.
Obama's core health care goals have been to establish the principle that Americans are entitled to insurance and to build a framework for controlling costs by incentivizing providers to work more efficiently. He has been unwavering about that destination but flexible and eclectic in his route. He has cut deals with traditional adversaries, such as the drug industry, and confronted allies to demand an independent Medicare reform commission. But Obama has also waged unconditional war on the insurance industry. He has negotiated and jousted with Senate Republicans. He has deferred (excessively at times) to congressional Democratic leaders but has also muscled them at key moments. He has pursued the liberal priority of expanded coverage through a centrist plan that largely tracks the Republican alternative to Clinton's 1993 proposal.
Yale University political scientist Stephen Skowronek, a shrewd student of the presidency, sees in this complex record evidence that Obama and his team are torn between consensual and confrontational leadership styles. The first, he says, stresses "the progressive reform idea of bringing everybody to the table [for] rational, pragmatic decision-making." The second argues "that you transform politics only through wrenching confrontation." Skowronek believes that the most-consequential presidents, such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, usually start with the first approach and evolve toward the second as they encounter entrenched resistance.
Liberals who consider Obama too conciliatory have speculated that his willingness to use the Senate reconciliation process to force a final vote on health care signals a turn toward consistent confrontation. But it seems more likely that he will continue to seek broad coalitions on some issues (education, energy, immigration) while accepting, even welcoming, greater partisan conflict on others (financial reform).
The approaches that Skowronek views as alternatives Obama may consider tools he can wield in different combinations for each challenge. The constant is Obama's determination to turn the supertanker -- and his Reagan-like willingness to bet his party's future on his ability to sell the country on the ambitious course he has set.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time to Abandon Bi-Partisanship: Time to say No to the Part of No!!
Kutter thinks that Obama has learned an important lesson when it comes to the Republicans: time to forget bi-partisanship. It is obvious that the Republicans are the "party of no." This an excellent analysis on Obama's development as President. Obama's style is reconcile differences in a non-ideological fashion. It seems as though the lesson to abandon "reaching out" to Republicans is a failed strategy and Obama's style the last few weeks in which he is taking on the Republicans is a reflection of lessons learned. Check out Kutter. RGN
The End of an Illusion
Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American
Prospect
March 14, 2010 10:30 PM
Are we at a turning point in the Obama presidency? It
took far too long, but the president has belatedly
grasped that when the other party is out to destroy you,
the search for common ground is a fool's errand.
For over a year, Obama believed that reform required him
to govern as a post-ideological bipartisan. Now,
mercifully, he has learned that progressive leadership
demands taking on the Republicans, just as it requires
taking on the insurance and banking industries. There is
little common ground on those fronts either.
Since early March, Obama has begun to sound more like
the bold figure who won the hearts of voters during the
campaign. The showdown is expected late next week.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi seldom schedules a vote without
having a majority in her pocket. With all the bill's
deficiencies, winning its passage would be a triumph,
not just for expansion of health coverage, but for
Obama's capacity to learn and grow in office and defeat
Republican obstruction.
Should he succeed, there will be little public sympathy
for Republican caviling about the use of the
reconciliation progress to, well, reconcile differences
between the House and Senate bills. Technical
parliamentary complaints will seem more like the
bleating of sore losers. Obama can seize the high ground
of majority rule.
And thanks to the sheer extremism of episodes like Sen.
Jim Bunning's attempted blockage of unemployment
insurance, Liz Cheney's association of lawyers honoring
the constitutional right to legal counsel with treason;
and the refusal of Congressional Republicans to back
even token recovery spending, Obama is well positioned
to define a new political mainstream even as he becomes
a more effective partisan progressive.
This odyssey was not an easy journey, and it is far from
complete. Obama's belief in common ground runs very deep
in his being. It remains to be seen whether his
reluctant embrace of partisanship to win the health
reform battle marks a durable change in his governing
style, or a one-off. But a victory on this defining
issue, after months of defeatism, would surely taste
sweet and would very likely mark a shift in Obama's
conception of leadership.
I say all this despite serious misgivings about the
health plan itself. The compulsory mandate is a
fundamental flaw, as Obama himself recognized during the
campaign. There is a world of difference between true
social insurance and a mandate to purchase a private
product. The former reinforces the value of government
and of social solidarity; the latter signals a coercive
state in concert with private industry profits. The
proposed tax on decent insurance was a tone-deaf assault
on wage earners for whom good health coverage is a rare,
reliable island in a rising sea of economic insecurity.
The diversion of Medicare funds was a political gift to
Republicans. And the back-loading of benefits purely for
budgetary reasons made the bill a political piñata, with
the risks evident and the gains deferred.
All of these elements made the plan a harder sell with
legislators of Obama's own party -- but all can be
fixed. At the end of the day, even Congressional
Democrats who worried that voters might punish them for
supporting this measure grasped a more fundamental
political truth: winning beats losing. There will be
time to improve the bill, particularly now that
Democrats have given themselves permission to use
majority rule rather than defer to Republican
obstruction.
Obama's new stance also serves as a role model. Senate
Banking Chairman Chris Dodd's belated abandonment of a
futile bipartisan approach to financial reform provides
a bookend to the president's new partisan leadership on
health reform.
Obama has also just appointed three relative
progressives to the Federal Reserve, including Sarah
Bloom Raskin of Maryland, widely considered the best of
the state financial regulators. There is not a single
businessman or banker in the lot.
Including in the health package an overhaul of the
student loan program, long blocked in the senate, is
another welcome demonstration of presidential nerve. But
prevailing on this first round of health reform will be
just the first step on a long road back.
Though both Obama and the Republicans treated health
reform as the defining issue of his presidency, other
challenges loom far larger. Obama has to do better on
employment, mortgage relief, and financial reform. He
has to deliver more tangible help to people for whom
this recovery still feels like a depression.
Presidential leadership has been crowded out by the
grand distraction of health reform and by Obama's own
reluctance to think bigger and fight harder. In these
critical areas too, corporate and partisan adversaries
have blocked progress. For this to be a true turning
point, his new-found partisanship and bolder progressive
stance must extend to the larger enterprise of restoring
prosperity.
If Obama wins health reform, and goes on to fight harder
for a real recovery program, some future historian
(doubtless guided by extended interviews with Rahm
Emanuel) will report that this latest turn to aggressive
partisanship was all part of the grand design. Obama
would spend his first year seeking bipartisan consensus,
and then when it was clear to one and all that the
Republicans were hopeless obstructionists, he'd spring
the trap.
The reality was a lot messier. Obama's administration
was all over the place strategically, and only came to
presidential toughness belatedly and as a last resort.
But Obama's behavior during the past two weeks does
remind us why we saw great things in this man, and
better late than never.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and
a senior fellow at Demos. His forthcoming book is A
Presidency in Peril.
The Original
The End of an Illusion
Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American
Prospect
March 14, 2010 10:30 PM
Are we at a turning point in the Obama presidency? It
took far too long, but the president has belatedly
grasped that when the other party is out to destroy you,
the search for common ground is a fool's errand.
For over a year, Obama believed that reform required him
to govern as a post-ideological bipartisan. Now,
mercifully, he has learned that progressive leadership
demands taking on the Republicans, just as it requires
taking on the insurance and banking industries. There is
little common ground on those fronts either.
Since early March, Obama has begun to sound more like
the bold figure who won the hearts of voters during the
campaign. The showdown is expected late next week.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi seldom schedules a vote without
having a majority in her pocket. With all the bill's
deficiencies, winning its passage would be a triumph,
not just for expansion of health coverage, but for
Obama's capacity to learn and grow in office and defeat
Republican obstruction.
Should he succeed, there will be little public sympathy
for Republican caviling about the use of the
reconciliation progress to, well, reconcile differences
between the House and Senate bills. Technical
parliamentary complaints will seem more like the
bleating of sore losers. Obama can seize the high ground
of majority rule.
And thanks to the sheer extremism of episodes like Sen.
Jim Bunning's attempted blockage of unemployment
insurance, Liz Cheney's association of lawyers honoring
the constitutional right to legal counsel with treason;
and the refusal of Congressional Republicans to back
even token recovery spending, Obama is well positioned
to define a new political mainstream even as he becomes
a more effective partisan progressive.
This odyssey was not an easy journey, and it is far from
complete. Obama's belief in common ground runs very deep
in his being. It remains to be seen whether his
reluctant embrace of partisanship to win the health
reform battle marks a durable change in his governing
style, or a one-off. But a victory on this defining
issue, after months of defeatism, would surely taste
sweet and would very likely mark a shift in Obama's
conception of leadership.
I say all this despite serious misgivings about the
health plan itself. The compulsory mandate is a
fundamental flaw, as Obama himself recognized during the
campaign. There is a world of difference between true
social insurance and a mandate to purchase a private
product. The former reinforces the value of government
and of social solidarity; the latter signals a coercive
state in concert with private industry profits. The
proposed tax on decent insurance was a tone-deaf assault
on wage earners for whom good health coverage is a rare,
reliable island in a rising sea of economic insecurity.
The diversion of Medicare funds was a political gift to
Republicans. And the back-loading of benefits purely for
budgetary reasons made the bill a political piñata, with
the risks evident and the gains deferred.
All of these elements made the plan a harder sell with
legislators of Obama's own party -- but all can be
fixed. At the end of the day, even Congressional
Democrats who worried that voters might punish them for
supporting this measure grasped a more fundamental
political truth: winning beats losing. There will be
time to improve the bill, particularly now that
Democrats have given themselves permission to use
majority rule rather than defer to Republican
obstruction.
Obama's new stance also serves as a role model. Senate
Banking Chairman Chris Dodd's belated abandonment of a
futile bipartisan approach to financial reform provides
a bookend to the president's new partisan leadership on
health reform.
Obama has also just appointed three relative
progressives to the Federal Reserve, including Sarah
Bloom Raskin of Maryland, widely considered the best of
the state financial regulators. There is not a single
businessman or banker in the lot.
Including in the health package an overhaul of the
student loan program, long blocked in the senate, is
another welcome demonstration of presidential nerve. But
prevailing on this first round of health reform will be
just the first step on a long road back.
Though both Obama and the Republicans treated health
reform as the defining issue of his presidency, other
challenges loom far larger. Obama has to do better on
employment, mortgage relief, and financial reform. He
has to deliver more tangible help to people for whom
this recovery still feels like a depression.
Presidential leadership has been crowded out by the
grand distraction of health reform and by Obama's own
reluctance to think bigger and fight harder. In these
critical areas too, corporate and partisan adversaries
have blocked progress. For this to be a true turning
point, his new-found partisanship and bolder progressive
stance must extend to the larger enterprise of restoring
prosperity.
If Obama wins health reform, and goes on to fight harder
for a real recovery program, some future historian
(doubtless guided by extended interviews with Rahm
Emanuel) will report that this latest turn to aggressive
partisanship was all part of the grand design. Obama
would spend his first year seeking bipartisan consensus,
and then when it was clear to one and all that the
Republicans were hopeless obstructionists, he'd spring
the trap.
The reality was a lot messier. Obama's administration
was all over the place strategically, and only came to
presidential toughness belatedly and as a last resort.
But Obama's behavior during the past two weeks does
remind us why we saw great things in this man, and
better late than never.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and
a senior fellow at Demos. His forthcoming book is A
Presidency in Peril.
The Original
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Obama to Change Education
The President has been in office a little more than a year. During that time he has accomplished so much for what would be a progressive agenda. You would not realize the extent of his accomplishments by listening to and/or watching the tube. Fox News, followed by its imitators, presents a very negative picture of the President. The health care debate has robbed politics of an integrity -- opposition lies are now treated as respectable talking points. In a related discussion when it comes to this president, "Enhanced interrogation techniques" (e.g., water boarding) are not torture. He is making us less safe. They have no shame. Whatever!! In addition to bringing the nation back from the brink of economic disaster, he has a long list of accomplishments for his first year.
While saving us from economic disaster, taking on the heavy lifting of health care reform that has taken over 70 years to get passed, needing to address the high unemployment rates in the nation but twice the going rate in the black community with a program of jobs, jobs, jobs, the President is now taking on the schools. This is a bold move and likely to be successful since there's an earnestness as opposed to a cynicism that provides the impetus. Central city school have been educational wastelands. This president is determined to do something about it. Institutionalized failure is to be attacked at its core. Ineffective teachers will be weeded out, as will administrators who are just collecting a pay check. Accountability is to be the new order of the day. RGN
March 13, 2010
Obama Calls for Major Change in Education Law
By SAM DILLON
The Obama administration on Saturday called for a broad overhaul of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, proposing to reshape divisive provisions that encouraged instructors to teach to tests, narrowed the curriculum, and labeled one in three American schools as failing.
By announcing that he would send his education blueprint to Congress on Monday, President Obama returned to a campaign promise to repair the sprawling federal law, which affects each of the nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools. His plan strikes a careful balance, retaining some key features of the Bush-era law, including its requirement for annual reading and math tests, while proposing far-reaching changes.
The administration would replace the law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure individual students’ academic growth and judge schools based not on test scores alone but also on indicators like pupil attendance, graduation rates and learning climate. And while the proposal calls for more vigorous interventions in failing schools, it would also reward top performers and lessen federal interference in tens of thousands of reasonably well-run schools in the middle.
In addition, President Obama would replace the law’s requirement that every American child reach proficiency in reading and math, which administration officials have called utopian, with a new national target that could prove equally elusive: that all students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.
“Under these guidelines, schools that achieve excellence or show real progress will be rewarded,” the president said in his weekly radio address, “and local districts will be encouraged to commit to change in schools that are clearly letting their students down.”
Administration officials said their plan would urge the states to achieve the college-ready goal by 2020.
The No Child law, passed in 2001 by bipartisan majorities, focused the nation’s attention on closing achievement gaps between minorities and whites, but it included many provisions that created what Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Friday called “perverse incentives.”
In an effort to meet the law’s requirements for passing grades, many states began dumbing down standards, and teachers began focusing on test preparation rather than on engaging class work.
“We’ve got to get accountability right this time,” Mr. Duncan told reporters Friday. “For the mass of schools, we want to get rid of prescriptive interventions. We’ll leave it up to them to figure out how to make progress.”
The administration’s turn toward education signaled that the president hoped to get beyond health care and broaden the agenda before the midterm elections make progress on legislative issues more difficult.
Mr. Duncan has been working behind the scenes on rewriting the No Child law with a bipartisan group of senior lawmakers in both chambers, and administration officials say they hope to complete work on a new bill by August, when the elections will dominate the Congressional agenda. Many skeptics question that timetable.
And while leading Congressional Democrats praised the plan, the nation’s two major teachers unions did not. “We are disappointed,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said of the proposal, “From everything that we’ve seen, this blueprint places 100 percent of the responsibility on teachers and gives them zero percent of the authority.”
Christopher Edley Jr., a former Clinton administration official who is dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on civil rights law, said a briefing document he read had left him concerned about the administration’s direction.
“I worry about retreating from the notion of quality education as a civil right,” Mr. Edley said. “N.C.L.B. had some good sticks in it to compel equity. I’m alarmed by the frequent references to ‘incentives,’ and the apparent intention to reduce the federal role in forcing compliance.”
Representative John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the House education committee, was also skeptical. “From 30,000 feet, the blueprint seems to set a lot of right goals,” Mr. Kline said. “Yet when we drill down to the details, we are looking at a heavier federal hand than many of us wish to see.”
But Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, a group that represents corporate executives, called the proposals a “really positive step forward.” The business community especially liked the proposed new goal of helping all students graduate from high school ready for college and career, Ms. Traiman said.
Administration officials laid out their blueprint in briefings Friday and Saturday with governors, lawmakers, education organizations and journalists. Officials said they intended to leave the drafting of a bill up to Congress.
Mr. Duncan was scheduled to tour Iowa schools on Sunday with Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is the new chairman of the Senate education committee. In a statement, Mr. Harkin called the proposals a “bold vision” that could help “fix the problems with the No Child Left Behind Act.”
Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, said, “This blueprint lays the right markers to help us reset the bar for our students and the nation.”
Under the current law, testing focuses on measuring the number of students who are proficient at each grade level. The administration instead wants to measure each student’s academic growth, regardless of the performance level at which they start.
The complete article
Rahm Emmanuel: The Good and the Not so Good.....
Rahm Emmanuel has been in the news recently from what has sounded like he was protecting his own image at the expense of the President. Much of the left has seen him as the enemy inside the White House. It was reported that back in the fall he referred to progressives as "a bunch of (expletive deleted) retards." It was progressives who worked the hardest for Obama’s election. Yet, rather than a “transformational” President like Reagan, we have noticed bi-partisanship erode opportunities for progressive gains. This compromise seems more like the DLC than the real d/Democrat we trust Obama to be. Below is a New York Times Magazine article on Rahm. “Rahmanism…. By Peter Baker. While some of Rahm’s advice may seem to be too cautious, Baker is pretty convincing that he serves Obama well. Let's just hope the man who worked the Congress to get us NAFTA is working his magic for the success of a progressive agenda. RGN
The Limits of Rahmism: He was chosen as Whit House chief staff because he could make things happen. What happened?
by Peter Baker
Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, is arguably the second most powerful man in the country and already one of the highest-profile chiefs of staff in recent memory. During the transition, he played a crucial role in the selection and courtship of nearly every cabinet member and key White House staff member.
Renowned as a fierce partisan, Mr. Emanuel, who had hopes of becoming House speaker, stepped into a job characterized by short tenures, high burnout rates and the need to subjugate personal ambitions to the service of the president. As a staff member in the Clinton White House, a three-term House member from Chicago and the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he was viewed by many as a consummate purveyor of a crass, kneecapping brand of politics.
Mr. Obama, who settled on his fellow Chicagoan to be his chief of staff well before he was elected, was drawn to Mr. Emanuel's experience in both the White House and Congress and called him ''the whole package'' of political acumen, policy chops and pragmatism. Mr. Emanuel was also a skilled compromiser. He initially resisted taking the job, but accepted after Mr. Obama insisted and assured him that the position would be the functional equivalent of ''a No. 2'' or ''right-hand man.''
In March 2010, after more than a year in the White House, Mr. Emanuel and his boss were facing a time of conflict and discontent. Mr. Obama and Mr. Emanuel, an unlikely tandem of inspirational leader and legislative mechanic that was supposed to enact the most expansive domestic program since the Great Society, have come nowhere close to accomplishing their goals.
After a Democratic debacle in January 2010 in Massachusetts — the loss to the Republicans of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, which cost Democrats their Senate supermajority — Washington has engaged in a favorite exercise, conducting the autopsy before the body is actually dead. How had it come to this? How did the president's legislative drive drag on for so long that the surprise loss of a Senate seat could unravel it? Did Mr. Obama make a mistake by disregarding his top adviser's counsel? Or was it Mr. Emanuel who failed to execute the president's strategy? Was it both, or perhaps neither?
Read More...
Ron Walters -- Join the Party Movement: Why Not a Black Party
Ron Walters has raised a fundamental question: where is the grassroots movement to pressure for the interests of the President's most loyal constituency? While it is true that blacks are still very high on Obama, like many of these "party" types, the question is where is our bailout. Evidently, though not wanting to neglect the black community, the rhetoric of the administration is that they are pursuing more universalistic solutions, rather than racially-targeted programs. If there was a "rising tide" that strategy might work but there is no rising tide and the black community is mired in a depression. To address this problem Walters is raising if there is not a need for another "party," a black party? He reminds us of some of the promise and pitfalls of black party. RGN
Tea Party, Coffee Party: Why Not A Black Party?
By Ron Walters
Now we have the Coffee Party which I suppose is a liberal counterpart to the Tea Party that emerged in the Washington, DC area by folks led by Annabel Park a documentary film maker who was horrified by the ugly, menacing and anti-government spirit of the Tea Party crowd that emerged to disrupt the flow of civil discussion about important issues. I’ve been asking, where are the folks who voted for Barack Obama, believing in Hope and Change and pinning for a new post-Bush, post-Conservative America.
Well, many of the ground troops of the Obama movement that were responsible for its grass roots organizing were young adults who went back to school, back to their professional desks or somewhere back to their normal pursuits, but away from politics. In their de-mobilization, they left the field open to the crazies who have mounted a movement not designed to be a force for change, but for the status quo and even for retrogression, wanting to “take back America” from a future they fear. Organizing for Change, the organization created as the repository of the Obama campaign, has largely been ineffective in my evaluation and David Plouffe, its head and Obama’s campaign manager, has recently gone into the White House. So, what is developing is a discussion at the level of communities across the country about the role of government and the Tea Party and now the Coffee Party are instruments of civic organizing in this process. The Republican party seems to be attempting to grab hold of the Tea Party movement and turn it into an election day force against Democrats vulnerable to elections in this cycle, At this point, the Coffee party has not come that far and the Democratic party has not made its move.
Where does this put blacks? There is a healthy discussion going on in the black community about the role of President Obama and his responsibility, or the lack of it, to the Black community but with the exception of Tavis Smiley for all the folks who believe that they have to make him accountable to a black agenda, they have not yet put a mechanism on the ground to do it.
There has been a long discussion about the efficacy of a Black political party and many years ago, I joined Ron Daniels and others in an attempt to create one. The irony of that experiment was while half of the people attracted to the idea wanted it to serve as a power-base for elections, others wanted to only exist as a grass roots organizing tool. It eventually split apart along those lines.
Today, it is clear, however, that beyond the general discussion about accountability, there needs to be not only a place where you get down to the “nuts and bolts” about exactly who should be accountable about what, but how to develop effective methodologies of tactics and strategies to achieve it. Thus, whether you call it a party or a posse doesn’t matter, the point is that there is a necessity to mobilize to achieve the ends people are talking about.
A Black party could enable the discussion about accountability to focus on the cabinet agencies where the Federal budget exist to achieve some of the things needed by the black community. Some of the specific programs being rolled out around jobs and a new focus on home foreclosure and etc. look good, but others such as “race to the top” as an educational program looks questionable to me – and the issue is that few of these programs across the board have been developed with the vigorous input and engagement of those for whom the programs are supposed to be designed.
A Black party could also monitor and engage local initiatives more effectively. Where the rubber meets the road is in the local communities and there, mayors, county officials, state legislators and others presumably have some idea of what it takes to make black communities whole, what resources are addressed to that task and what is lacking. A mobilized force could assist in this task of projecting community needs and monitoring whether or to what extent they are met.
What I am suggesting has been happening to some extent with the vigilance of our Civil Rights organizations, the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and the action of progressive black officials at the national, state and local levels. However, there should be a greater role for citizen engagement and a Black party mechanism could be the key. What we are witnessing is the rush of media attention to these movements, a dynamic that gives them power and places our interests farther and farther into the background. Mobilizing would give us the power to regain the footing to address the truth of our condition.
Dr. Ron Walters is a Political Analysts and Professor Emeritus of the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (University of Michigan Press). rwalters@umd.edu
Tea Party, Coffee Party: Why Not A Black Party?
By Ron Walters
Now we have the Coffee Party which I suppose is a liberal counterpart to the Tea Party that emerged in the Washington, DC area by folks led by Annabel Park a documentary film maker who was horrified by the ugly, menacing and anti-government spirit of the Tea Party crowd that emerged to disrupt the flow of civil discussion about important issues. I’ve been asking, where are the folks who voted for Barack Obama, believing in Hope and Change and pinning for a new post-Bush, post-Conservative America.
Well, many of the ground troops of the Obama movement that were responsible for its grass roots organizing were young adults who went back to school, back to their professional desks or somewhere back to their normal pursuits, but away from politics. In their de-mobilization, they left the field open to the crazies who have mounted a movement not designed to be a force for change, but for the status quo and even for retrogression, wanting to “take back America” from a future they fear. Organizing for Change, the organization created as the repository of the Obama campaign, has largely been ineffective in my evaluation and David Plouffe, its head and Obama’s campaign manager, has recently gone into the White House. So, what is developing is a discussion at the level of communities across the country about the role of government and the Tea Party and now the Coffee Party are instruments of civic organizing in this process. The Republican party seems to be attempting to grab hold of the Tea Party movement and turn it into an election day force against Democrats vulnerable to elections in this cycle, At this point, the Coffee party has not come that far and the Democratic party has not made its move.
Where does this put blacks? There is a healthy discussion going on in the black community about the role of President Obama and his responsibility, or the lack of it, to the Black community but with the exception of Tavis Smiley for all the folks who believe that they have to make him accountable to a black agenda, they have not yet put a mechanism on the ground to do it.
There has been a long discussion about the efficacy of a Black political party and many years ago, I joined Ron Daniels and others in an attempt to create one. The irony of that experiment was while half of the people attracted to the idea wanted it to serve as a power-base for elections, others wanted to only exist as a grass roots organizing tool. It eventually split apart along those lines.
Today, it is clear, however, that beyond the general discussion about accountability, there needs to be not only a place where you get down to the “nuts and bolts” about exactly who should be accountable about what, but how to develop effective methodologies of tactics and strategies to achieve it. Thus, whether you call it a party or a posse doesn’t matter, the point is that there is a necessity to mobilize to achieve the ends people are talking about.
A Black party could enable the discussion about accountability to focus on the cabinet agencies where the Federal budget exist to achieve some of the things needed by the black community. Some of the specific programs being rolled out around jobs and a new focus on home foreclosure and etc. look good, but others such as “race to the top” as an educational program looks questionable to me – and the issue is that few of these programs across the board have been developed with the vigorous input and engagement of those for whom the programs are supposed to be designed.
A Black party could also monitor and engage local initiatives more effectively. Where the rubber meets the road is in the local communities and there, mayors, county officials, state legislators and others presumably have some idea of what it takes to make black communities whole, what resources are addressed to that task and what is lacking. A mobilized force could assist in this task of projecting community needs and monitoring whether or to what extent they are met.
What I am suggesting has been happening to some extent with the vigilance of our Civil Rights organizations, the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and the action of progressive black officials at the national, state and local levels. However, there should be a greater role for citizen engagement and a Black party mechanism could be the key. What we are witnessing is the rush of media attention to these movements, a dynamic that gives them power and places our interests farther and farther into the background. Mobilizing would give us the power to regain the footing to address the truth of our condition.
Dr. Ron Walters is a Political Analysts and Professor Emeritus of the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: The Price of Racial Reconciliation (University of Michigan Press). rwalters@umd.edu
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The President Triumphs!!!
This is a powerful piece by Frank Schaeffer on what is and will be the triumph of President Barack Obama! With all of the turmoil about health care that finds its roots in both the left and the right, the notion of triumph might seem remote. Taking their cue from Rush Limbaugh who declared he wanted this president to fail, the right wing oppose any success by this president. The left has declared that the "transformation" has turned into more of the same are desserting the President. These forces notwithstanding, Frank Schaeffer who woke up from his relegio-fascism history to expose white Christian nationalism for what it is. Schaeffer has been very outspoken in his warnings about this force. Even with his knowledge of white nationalist opposition to Obama, Schaeffer provides solid evidence of Obama's success in spite of the right or the left for that matter. RGN
The President will Triumph!
Obama Will Triumph -- So Will America
By Frank Schaeffer
Before he'd served even one year President Obama lost the support of
the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the
hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and
ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight,
57-year-old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive
writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical
leader) this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our
President. Why?-- because he is succeeding.
We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him
as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.
Obama’s steady supporters will be proved right. Obama’s critics will
be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best
and shriveled hate mongers at worst.
The Context of the Obama Presidency
Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World
War and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not
since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided
country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any
president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully
ignorant opposition –– from both the right and left.
As the President’s poll numbers have fallen so has his support from
some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all
those lefty web sites and commentators that were falling all over
themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008
election.
The left’s lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling “prophecy”-- snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn't have anything to do with it!
Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his
fault:
# An ideologically divided country to the point that America wasreally two countries
# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that was
unnecessary and immoral
# The worst economic crisis since the depression
# America’’s standing in the world at the lowest point in history
# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of
prisoners of war
# A health care system in free fall
# An educational system in free fall
# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about
which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing)
# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left
# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally irresponsible
Bush administration……
And those were only some of the problems sitting on the President’s
desk!
“Help” from the Right?
What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and
half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans were
reduced to by the time Obama took office -- do to “help” our new
president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he wasn’t a
real American, didn't have an American birth certificate, wasn't born
here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating "racist", was secretly a
communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was a reincarnation of
Hitler and wanted “death panels” to kill the elderly!
They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the
not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a
bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized “tea parties” to
sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and
gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry
lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) “commentators” from Glenn
Beck to Rush Limbaugh.
The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the
utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who
was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment,
to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to
help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican
leadership only knew one word: “No!”
In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American
far right, combined with the educated but obtuse neo conservative war
mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Fed
Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting
acquiescent “bishops”, frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating
flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an
uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!
“Help” from the Left?
What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of
them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad
choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan
that he'd inherited from the worst president in modern history!
Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President’s economic
policies had “failed” before the President even instituted them!
Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won
within virtually minutes of the President taking office, they'd been
“betrayed”! (Never mind that Obama's vocal support to the gay community
is stronger than any other president’s has been. Never mind that he
signed a new hate crimes law!)
Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific
emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how
"disappointed" they were that they'd not all immediately been
translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House!
Where was the “change”? Contrary to their expectations they were still
mere mortals!
And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay
attention for longer than a nanosecond…… “Governing”?! What the hell
does that word, uh, like mean?”
The President’s critics left and right all had one thing in common:
impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone
reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were thewhite, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just couldn't
imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren't as smart as they thought
they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn't
consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!
The Obama critics' ideological ideas defined their idea of reality
rather than reality defining their ideas——say, about what is possible
in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt
by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush
into office…… twice!
Meanwhile back in the reality-based community –– in just 12 short
months -- President Obama:
#Continued to draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices
regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Restored America’’s image around the globe
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Banned torture of American prisoners
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Stopped the free fall of the American economy
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to
halt global warming
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Stood up for educational reform
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Won a Nobel peace prize
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system
of checks and balances
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost
impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed
to even begin
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor
and patience
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Stopped the free fall of job losses
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous
far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that
show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying
Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the “blood of tyrants” needing to
“water the tree of liberty”……
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but
explain and defend them brilliantly
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama “failed”! Other than that he didn't “live up to expectations”!
Who actually has failed...
...are the Americans that can't see the beginning of a miracle of
national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the
smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this
President to fail so that they could be proved right in their dire and
morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers behind our
obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned ““news”” into just more
stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country.
Here’s the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help
of his lefty “supporters” or hate-filled Republican detractors!
The Future Looks Good
After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom
in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all
fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible succeeds,
(it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are
burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved not
just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all Americans were
panicked into thinking the sky was falling.
Just because we didn't get everything we wanted in the first short and
fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us
stayed the course. And we will be proved right.
PS. if you agree that Obama is shaping up to be a great president,
please pass this on and hang in there! Pass it on anyway to ensure
that his ““report card”” gets the attention it deserves.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of “Patience With God –– Faith
For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism).”
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Obama FDR Comparison....
Comparisons are often made between Obama and FDR. Many claim Obama SHOULD be more like FDR. A major point made by Nate Silver is that Obama does not have the political support that FDR had. RGN
3.01.2010
Obama's No F.D.R. -- Nor Does He Have F.D.R.'s Majority
by Nate Silver @ 11:55 AM
Every time I read an article like this from the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes:
Is Obama the new FDR? The answer is no.
If Franklin Delano Roosevelt were president today [...] liberal health care reform would have been enacted already. [...]
The reason is tied to what is probably the greatest difference between FDR and Obama. Roosevelt took command of Washington. Obama hasn’t. “FDR became the father of the modern presidency by moving the Chief Executive to the center of the American political universe,” John Yoo writes in his new book on presidential power, Crisis and Command. “Roosevelt’s revolution radically shifted the balance of power among the three branches of government.” [...]
FDR seized legislative authority. The bills that Congress passed in his first 100 days and beyond were produced by the Roosevelt administration and ratified reflexively by Congress.
...I wonder why there's no mention of this:
When F.D.R. took over the Presidency in 1933, the Democrats controlled 64 percent of the Senate seats and 73 percent (!) of the House seats, counting independents who were sympathetic to the party. And those numbers only increased over the next couple of midterms -- during their peak during 1937-38, the Demorats actually controlled about 80 percent (!) of the seats in both chambers. Obama, by contrast, came into his term with 59 percent majorities in both chambers. That's not much to complain about by the standards of recent Presidencies, but is nevertheless a long way from where F.D.R. stood during his first two terms, or for that matter where L.B.J.'s numbers were during the 1965-66 period, when the bulk of the Great Society programs were implemented.
F.D.R. and L.B.J. might have been great cleanup hitters -- and you'll get no argument from me that Obama's aptitude at shepherding his agenda through Congress has been mixed, at best. But they basically spent the first several years of their Presidencies playing in the Congressional equivalent of Coors Field. Considering how dramatic the impact of the loss of just one Senate seat has been on both the perception and the reality of Obama's agenda, that needs to be kept in mind when drawing the comparison.
...see also agenda, history, obama
For the comparison graphs between Obama and FDR and comments see:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=4233217762125074861
3.01.2010
Obama's No F.D.R. -- Nor Does He Have F.D.R.'s Majority
by Nate Silver @ 11:55 AM
Every time I read an article like this from the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes:
Is Obama the new FDR? The answer is no.
If Franklin Delano Roosevelt were president today [...] liberal health care reform would have been enacted already. [...]
The reason is tied to what is probably the greatest difference between FDR and Obama. Roosevelt took command of Washington. Obama hasn’t. “FDR became the father of the modern presidency by moving the Chief Executive to the center of the American political universe,” John Yoo writes in his new book on presidential power, Crisis and Command. “Roosevelt’s revolution radically shifted the balance of power among the three branches of government.” [...]
FDR seized legislative authority. The bills that Congress passed in his first 100 days and beyond were produced by the Roosevelt administration and ratified reflexively by Congress.
...I wonder why there's no mention of this:
When F.D.R. took over the Presidency in 1933, the Democrats controlled 64 percent of the Senate seats and 73 percent (!) of the House seats, counting independents who were sympathetic to the party. And those numbers only increased over the next couple of midterms -- during their peak during 1937-38, the Demorats actually controlled about 80 percent (!) of the seats in both chambers. Obama, by contrast, came into his term with 59 percent majorities in both chambers. That's not much to complain about by the standards of recent Presidencies, but is nevertheless a long way from where F.D.R. stood during his first two terms, or for that matter where L.B.J.'s numbers were during the 1965-66 period, when the bulk of the Great Society programs were implemented.
F.D.R. and L.B.J. might have been great cleanup hitters -- and you'll get no argument from me that Obama's aptitude at shepherding his agenda through Congress has been mixed, at best. But they basically spent the first several years of their Presidencies playing in the Congressional equivalent of Coors Field. Considering how dramatic the impact of the loss of just one Senate seat has been on both the perception and the reality of Obama's agenda, that needs to be kept in mind when drawing the comparison.
...see also agenda, history, obama
For the comparison graphs between Obama and FDR and comments see:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=4233217762125074861
Friday, February 5, 2010
Alice Walker on Howard Zinn...
As Black and Progressive Sociologists who support the Barack Obama presidency, a friend of our cause for social justice was lost this past week, Howard Zinn. Howard Zinn has been critical to the struggles for economic and social justice, particularly with regard to our knowledge of United States and our place in it. I say to my students that "A Peoples' History of the United States" is required reading for anyone calling themselves a college graduate. Below is a tribute to Howard by Alice Walker. Zinn had played a pivotal role in her development. Howard was one of her professors at Spelman. He stood inspired her and stood with her in SNCC. She discusses this relationship and the pain of his loss. RGN
Saying goodbye to my friend Howard Zinn
By Alice Walker, Globe Correspondent
January 31, 2010
On hearing the news of his death.
Me: Howie, where did you go?
Howie: What do you mean, where did I go? As soon as I died, I went back to Boston.
I met Howard Zinn in 1961, my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over. My African roommate and I got a good look at him every day when he came for his mail in the post office just beneath our dormitory window. He was always in motion, but would stop frequently to talk to the many students and administrators and total strangers that seemed attracted to his energy of non-hesitation to engage. We met formally when some members of my class were being honored and I was among them. I don’t remember what we were being honored for, but Howard and I ended up sitting next to each other. He remembered this later; I did not. He was the first white person I’d sat next to; we talked. He claimed I was “ironic.’’ I was surprised he did not feel white.
I knew nothing of immigrants (which his parents were) or of Jews. Nothing of his father’s and his own working class background. Nothing of his awareness of poverty and slums. Nothing of why a white person could exist in America and not feel white: i.e., heavy, oppressive, threatening, and almost inevitably insensitive to the feelings of a person of color. The whole of Georgia was segregated at that time; and in coming to Spelman I had had a run-in with the Greyhound bus driver (white as described above) who had forced me to sit in the back of the bus. This moment had changed my life, though how that would play out was of course uncertain to a 17-year-old.
One way it did play out was that the very next summer I was on my way to the Soviet Union to see how white those folks were and to tell as many of them as I could, even if they were white, that I did not agree to my country’s notions of bombing them. I didn’t see a lot of generals, but children and women and men and old people of both sexes were everywhere. They were usually smiling and offering flowers or vodka. There was no “iron curtain’’ between us, as I’d been told to expect by Georgia media. I love to tell the story of how I was so ignorant at the time I didn’t have a clue who folks were queuing up to see in Lenin’s tomb; nor did I even know what the Kremlin was. I also didn’t speak a word of Russian.
Coming back to Spelman, I discovered Howard Zinn was teaching a course on Russian History and Literature and a little of the language. I signed up for it, though I was only a sophomore and the course was for juniors (as I recall). I had loved Russian Literature since I discovered Tolstoy and Dostoevsky back in the school library in Putnam County, Georgia. As for the Russian language, as with any language, I most wanted to learn to say hello, goodbye, please, and thank you.
Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it also. We did. My mother, who earned $17 a week working 12-hour days as a maid, had somehow managed to buy a typewriter for me and I had learned typing in school. I said hardly a word in class (as Howie would later recall), but inspired by his warm and brilliant ability to communicate ideas and conundrums and passions of the characters and complexities of Russian life in the 19th century, I flew back to my room after class and wrote my response to what I was learning about these writers and their stories that I adored.
He was proud of my paper, and, in his enthusiastic fashion, waved it about. I learned later there were those among other professors at the school who thought that I could not possibly have written it. His rejoinder: “Why, there’s nobody else in Atlanta who could have written it!’’
It would be hard not to love anyone who stood in one’s corner like this.
Under the direction of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) many students at Spelman joined the effort to desegregate Atlanta. Naturally, I joined this movement. Howie, taller than most of us, was constantly in our midst, and usually somewhere in front. Because I was at Spelman on scholarship, a scholarship that would be revoked if I were jailed, my participation caused me a good bit of anxiety. Still, knowing that Howard and others of our professors, the amazingly courageous and generous Staughton Lynd, for instance, my other history teacher, supported the students in our struggle, made it possible to carry on. But then, while he and his family were away from campus for the summer, Howard Zinn was fired. He was fired for “insubordination.’’
Yes, he would later say, with a classic Howie shrug, I was guilty.
For me, and for many poorer students in my position, students on scholarship who also worked in the Movement to free us from centuries of white supremacy and second-class citizenship, it was a disaster. I wrote a letter to the administration that was published in the school paper pointing out the error of their decision. I wrote it through tears of anger and frustration. It was these tears, which appeared unannounced whenever I thought of this injustice to Howard and his family - whom I had met and also loved - that were observed by Staughton Lynd, who realized instantly that a) there was every chance I was headed toward a breakdown; and b) the administration would quickly find a reason to expel me from school. Added to the stress, which nobody knew about, was the fact that I was working for a well-respected older man who, knowing I had to work in order to pay for everything I needed as a young woman in school, was regularly molesting me. Lucky for me he was very old, and his imagination was stronger than his grasp. As a farm girl and no stranger to manual labor, I could type his papers with one hand while holding him off with the other. What rankled so much, then as now, is how much others respected, even venerated him.
Perhaps this was one of many births of my feminism. A feminism/womanism that never seemed odd to Howard Zinn, who encouraged his Spelman students, all of them women, to name and challenge oppression of any sort. This encouragement would come in handy, when, years later, writing my second novel, “Meridian,’’ I could explore the misuse of gender-based power from the perspective of having experienced it.
With Staughton Lynd’s help, and after he had consulted with Howie (I did not know this), I was accepted to finish my college education at Sarah Lawrence College, a place of which I had never heard. I went off in the middle of winter, without a warm coat or shoes and ice and snow greeted me. But also Staughton’s mother, Helen Lynd, who immediately provided money for the coat and shoes I needed, as well as a blanket that had been her son’s.
In my solitary room, and knowing no one on campus, I hunkered down to write. Letters to the Zinns, first of all. To inform them I had been liberated from Spelman, as they had been, and had landed.
I was Howard’s student for only a semester, but in fact, I have learned from him all my life. His way with resistance: steady, persistent, impersonal, often with humor, is a teaching I cherish. Whenever I’ve been arrested, I’ve thought of him. I see policemen as victims of the very system they’re hired to defend, as I know he did. I see soldiers in the same way. In some ways, Howie was an extension of my father, whom he never met. My father was also an activist as a young man and was one of the first black men unconnected to white ancestry or power to vote in our backwoods county; he had to pass by three white men holding shotguns in order to do this. By the time I went off to college, the last of eight children, he was exhausted and broken. But these men were connected in ways clearer to me now as I’ve become older than my father was when he died. They each saw injustice as something to be acknowledged, confronted, and changed if at all possible. And they looked for signs of humanity in their opponents and spoke to that. They both possessed a sense of humor and love of a good story that made them charismatic teachers. I recently discovered, and it amuses me, that their birth dates are close, though my father was 13 years older.
Howie and I planned to rendezvous in Berkeley in March, when he came out to spend a few weeks with his grandchildren. In April we planned to be on a panel with Gloria Steinem and Bernice Reagon at an event in New Orleans for Amnesty International. I had decided not to go, but Howie said if I didn’t come he would “sorely miss’’ me. I wrote back that in that case I would certainly be there as “soreness of any sort’’ was not to be tolerated.
Over the years I’ve been in the habit of sending freshly written poems to Roz and Howie. After her death, I continued to send the occasional poem to Howie. Last week, after the Supreme Court’s decision to let corporations offer unlimited financing to electoral candidates, I wrote a poem about what I would do if I were president, called: “If I Was President: ‘Were’ For Those Who Prefer It.’ ’’ My first act as president, given that corporations may well buy all elections in America from now on, would be to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, both men accused of murders I’ve felt they did not commit; both men in prison for sadistically long periods of time.
Howie’s response, and the last word he communicated to me, was “Wonderful.’’ I imagined him hurriedly typing it, then flying, even at 87, out the door.
The question remains: Where do our friends and loved ones go when they die?
They can’t all go back to Boston, or wherever they’ve lived their most intense life.
I fell asleep, after leaking tears for Howie most of the day: my sweetheart’s shirt was luckily absorbent and available to me, and after tossing and turning almost all night, I had the following dream: We (Someone and I) were looking for the place we go to when we die. After quite a long walk, we encountered it. What we saw was this astonishingly gigantic collection of people and creatures: birds and foxes, butterflies and dogs, cats and beings I’ve never seen awake, and they were moving toward us in total joy at our coming. We were happy too. But there was nothing to support any of us, no land, no water, nothing. We ourselves were all of it: our own earth. And I woke up knowing that this is where we go when we die. We go back to where we came from: inside all of us.
Goodbye, Howie. Beloved. Hello.
Alice Walker is known for her poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, including her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Color Purple.’’ © 2010 by Alice Walker
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