George Will's Backhanded Tribute to Sherrod Brown

I don't know what to make of George Will lately.  It's as if George Will the Good has been working his way out of George Will the Bad's closet, escaping for a few minutes of sunlight before his evil twin GWTB discovers him and throws him back in.

George the Good surfaced on Fox News one recent Sunday and had this to say about  the children crossing our borders from Central America:

 "We ought to say to these children, 'Welcome to America, you're going to go to school, and get a job, and become American.  We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county."

He went on to shock his Foxhole buddies by adding,  "The idea that we can't assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous."

 I know!  George Will!  The same George Will who got himself in hot water this June by refuting the reported numbers of sexual assaults on American college campuses, and then refusing to back down.

The same George Will who went after government-sponsored scientific research on climate change, basing his conclusions on what he sees as silly liberal science.  (The ice caps didn't melt when Al Gore said they would.  End of story.)

The proof that there are two George Wills battling against each other comes in this morning's Washington Post piece about Democratic senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.  Today both George Wills are out in the open, and while GWTB gets more print space, GWTG manages to sneak in some swell stuff about our man Brown.  I suspect GWTB allowed it to stay because it was a perfect counterpoint to what he had to say about Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren  (Very first paragraph):

"If Ohio's senior senator were named Sharon Brown instead of Sherrod Brown, progressives would have a plausible political pin-up and a serious alternative to the tawdry boredom of Hillary Clinton's joyless plod toward her party's presidential nomination.  Drop one of Brown's consonants and change another and a vowel, and we might be spared the infatuation of what Howard Dean called "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" for Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "

But both George the Good and George the Bad must have worked on this:

"Brown, however, looks, sounds and acts like a real, as opposed to faculty club, leftist.  Although he is a Yale graduate, he has the rumpled look and hoarse voice of someone who spent last night on Paris barricades, exhorting les miserables to chuck cobblestones at the forces defending property.  And he is not just talk."

(That's a compliment, right?)

Will goes on to talk about Brown's campaign to seat Janet Yellen instead of the president's first choice, Larry Summers, as chairman of the Federal Reserve, complimenting him for managing to get 20 senators to sign a letter in opposition to Summers.  That was a good thing.

He praises Brown for working to end the crazy notion that banks can be too big to fail.  All good.

But then he says, in his inimitable georgewillian style, 

"He is impeccably wrong, meaning progressive, about free trade.  He is for fair trade, a.k.a. protectionism disguised in Pecksniffian sanctimony demanding that less-developed nations adopt stronger labor and environmental standards." 

("Pecksniffian sanctimony"! Score one for George the Bad!)

I may not say it often enough but I think Sen. Brown is such an asset to the country--and to the Democratic Party--if he decided to move up and run for president some time in the future, I would drop everything (within reason, of course) and work my tail off to get him into the White House.   I would do the same for Elizabeth Warren.  They are both liberal populists, and, contrary to what Will might believe, Brown and Warren do, in fact, work well together. 

 Sherrod Brown is not an unknown entity among Democrats, as Will would have us believe.  There are plenty of us, among the hoi polloi, and among the Big Guys,  who have been paying attention to him and like what we see.  There has been talk of a Clinton/Brown ticket in 2016.  Brown is having no part of it--for now. But if Hillary Clinton is our candidate, Sherrod Brown will be right out in front with us supporting that choice, working hard to make that happen. 

The Will Boys end the piece like this:

"Are progressives so preoccupied with gender that they prefer Clinton's risk-averse careerism, or Warren's astonished tantrums about the obvious dynamics of big government, to Brown's authentic progressivism?  Yes."

Well, no.  I would hardly call Hillary Clinton's checkered career "risk-averse".  And  Warren's "astonished tantrums" are not the female version of Brown's "authentic progressivism".  (Nice one, GWTG)  They're one and the same.  Both Brown and Warren are known populists working to lead us out of this mess and millions of us are working to make sure they succeed.

But thanks for the attention, Mr. Will.  And a High Five to George the Good.  See you again sometime?

______________________________

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Alan Colmes' Liberaland.)

Giving Legitimacy to Hate

The faculty of attention has utterly vanished from the Anglo-Saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big bayadère of journalism, of the newspaper and the picture magazine which keeps screaming, "Look at me." Illustrations, loud simplifications... bill poster advertising - only these stand a chance. ~Henry James

This is the front page of the Washington Post this morning:

Small President Obama, BIG teapartier, on the morning after an event of historic proportions--an event pulled off IN SPITE of the tea partiers, not because of them, and yet the tea party guy gets center stage. (Don't look, Mrs. Graham.  It's not a pretty sight.)   

The online link to the teapartier story has a lovely photo gallery on those nice people and the efforts they go through in order to make their voices heard:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032503849.html?sub=AR

I'm all for public dissent.  I wish we would have seen more of it during the Bush years.  I wish we would have seen ANY of it during the Reagan years.  But for the Washington Post to relegate the president's picture to a small square at the top of the page after an historic achievement in order to highlight the dissenters who are off to join the crazies is tabloid journalism at best and reckless anointing of the fringe elements at worst.

WaPo staff writer Eli Saslow followed a man named Randy Millam as he prepared his protest sign on his kitchen table and drove his "muddy Ford Fusion 50 miles across the cornfields" to Iowa City, where President Obama was scheduled to speak.  Two years before, Millam lost his job as an assembly-line worker at Kraft Foods, and he was angry.

"Millam's resolve Thursday was reinforced by the sense that he was taking part in a movement -- a rising tide of anger, fear and vitriol in the wake of the health-care overhaul signed into law by Obama this week. Millam joined a chorus of discontent surrounding the president's visit: a warm-up protest Wednesday night, a greeting party of protesters waiting at the airport and hundreds more with plans to chant outside the downtown arena while Obama spoke. In the hours before he left for Iowa City, Millam watched reports on Fox News Channel about vandalism at Democratic offices and visited a Web site of the conservative "tea party" movement, where he was inspired by a Thomas Jefferson quote about how bloodshed might be necessary to protect a country from tyranny.

"I'm not ready for outright violence yet. We have to be civil for as long as we can," Millam said. But, he added, "we are watching the infrastructure of this country crumble under our feet. The government doesn't want to hear us. We have to make them listen."

Mr. Saslow apparently never got around to asking Mr. Millam how exactly he would go about "making them listen". When you're writing a feel-good story you want your readers to feel good. The jolly Mr. Millam is just a'jawin' when he mentions the Jefferson quote (The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants). It's all in fun.

"'The president just about declared war against the American people last weekend,' [Millam] said. And it is a war Millam intends to fight."

Hey, Eli!  Did you even read your own piece?  The guy is giving you signals, and you're not picking up.   His anger over not having a job is legit.  Boy, can we all relate. (Those Bush years were doozies.)  But by giving him and his buddies everyman status, heroes of the people, out to right a wrong by any means necessary, you've given them license to do damage.

Where was the other side in that article?   Here:

"By now a group of about 200 Obama supporters had stopped to watch and listen, congregating across the street from the protesters. Seven police officers stood in the middle of the road, monitoring both sides. On one sidewalk: Obama T-shirts, health-care-reform advocates, and students from the University of Iowa, one of whom held a sign inviting Obama to join him at a local bar for Thursday night's $1 you-call-it drink special."

And here:

"Finally, one student walked across. He wore dark sunglasses and carried a poster-board sign, made moments earlier. It read: "These People are Idiots." He stood with the protesters, his sign mocking them, while he listened to an iPod."

Memo to WaPo Front Page editor:   You missed the big news.  The big news is that American health care just took a baby step toward actual reform.  You might be bored with it, it's been going on for so long, but trust me, the millions without adequate health care can't get enough of it.

Ramona
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To Hell with Hunger, Palin's got a book out

The magnitude of the increase in food shortages -- and, in some cases, outright hunger -- identified in the report startled even the nation's leading anti-poverty advocates, who have grown accustomed to longer lines lately at food banks and soup kitchens. The findings also intensify pressure on the White House to fulfill a pledge to stamp out childhood hunger made by President Obama, who called the report "unsettling." 
(Amy Goldstein, Washington Post, 11/17/09)

_________________________________________

Every morning I get email alerts from the Big Papers about stories they've published that day.  Yesterday I was skimming the list of articles in the Washington Post, and I saw this:  America's Economic Pain Brings Hunger Pangs.

I read the story and was, as anticipated, duly appalled beyond belief.  This is America and we're talking about hungry people numbering in the millions.  "Hungry" does not mean starving.  It means a scarcity of food.  It means food this morning but what about tonight? It means food today, but what about tomorrow?  It means a rumbling in the stomach because food has to be rationed.  It means that as a country we're following a road we thought we had left behind.

Children in Soup Line - 1930s

So on more than a whim, I pulled up the WaPo website to see where this story fit on their main page, and--guess what?  It wasn't there.   The two top-read stories yesterday morning were about--guess what?  Sarah Palin's book tour blitz.

This week is National Hunger and Homeless Awareness week--not that anyone would notice.   The unofficial event is coordinated and co-sponsored by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness.   (In order for it to be official, somebody in the ranks of government would have to recognize hunger and homelessness as a real problem.  Though Obama called the hunger report "unsettling", I don't see any emergency mobilizing going on. It's simply another report among many that causes them to shake their heads and make promises they sincerely believe in, but about which they have no idea how to even begin addressing.)

This is the first paragraph of Goldstein's article:  "The nation's economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to get enough to eat."

Fifty million people, including one child in four, didn't have enough to eat last year.  You can cite rampant unemployment, you can blame illegals, you can certainly put the finger on outsourcing and off-shoring, but the report touches on a major factor that nobody wants to talk about:  insufficient wages. 

"The report's main author at USDA, Mark Nord, noted that other recent research by the agency has found that most families in which food is scarce contain at least one adult with a full-time job, suggesting that the problem lies at least partly in wages, not entirely an absence of work." 

So while we talk about "joblessness" and the impact of hundreds of thousands of jobs lost each and every month, we tend to forget that homelessness and hunger also comes to people struggling to make a living in a job market that is increasingly hostile to them and to their families. There are working people living in their cars, for God's sake.

When millions of able-bodied workers with practical skills and functioning brains are reduced to fighting for menial jobs that pay peanuts, under circumstances that not a one of us could have foreseen even 10 years ago, we have to finally admit that for most of us, life in America is not the recurring pleasant dream but the absolute nightmare.

So here I go again:  Jobs, jobs, jobs that pay, pay, pay. . . a living wage, dammit. We can start like this:

We can build factories and roads and bridges and schools and libraries and railroad stations and we can fill those places with art by American artists.  We can put our young people to work maintaining and creating parks and waysides and scenic overlooks.  And we can send our best writers and photographers out on the road to chronicle the Second Coming of the Great Depression. This is history in the making, and it is history repeating itself.  These are real people who, many of them, come from families who were in this place before.  Many of them worked hard and created a life swank in the middle class, only to be dropped back into the dark places of their forebears.  I'm guessing they're ready and eager to get to work.

It goes without saying that we will need to pay our people a living wage for the necessary work they do.  But in turn, they will once again be able to pay their fair share of taxes, they will once again be consumers, and they will once again be shareholders in an America that welcomes and rewards their efforts.

But in the meantime we have to feed people who don't have enough food, we have to house people who are homeless (even as their former homes sit empty), and we have to stop pretending that millions of people without hope for a future is a situation that, given enough time, will right itself.

It's not going to happen without a whole lot of pushing and shoving.  The very thought of a New New Deal sends Corporate America reaching for their buggy-whips.  Back!  Back!  You can have our billions when you pry it from our cold, dead hands!

So.  All Right.  There's a crowbar around here somewhere. . .

Ramona

Bill Moyers shines light on the health insurance mess - a Journalistic Best

There are so few mainstream investigative journalists in this country anymore, I have to wonder in whose pockets the MSM has cozily slipped--and why.

When one of our best investigative newspapers has slipped to such depths that it's publisher invites health insurance execs hellbent on killing any hint of public options to hobnob with, and thus lobby, top-level White House officials at a private soiree in her own home (but only if they fork over $25,000), and when nobody else seems to notice or care, we can give up any remaining quaint notion of a watchdog press.

We're on our own, folks, and if not for the precious few like Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow, we would be dead in the water. They are the mainstream media remnants of a once-proud profession and we need to treat them like the treasures they really are.

They study the issues, they bring on guests who can discuss them intelligently, they ask the right questions, they give their guests time to answer thoughtfully, they continue the conversation with smart follow-ups, and best of all, they don't give up their precious air time to raucous, spitting catfights between notoriously biased opponents.

Last week, Bill Moyers brought to our attention two important stories. (See above for the first one)

On "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS Friday night, Bill talked with Wendell Potter, a former Cigna exec turned whistleblower. In Potter's own startling words (startling not because we didn't know, but because a former insider, someone who, less than two years before, was a practicing purveyor of these professed sleazy tactics, said them):

“The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that you're heading down the slippery slope towards socialism... I think that people who are strong advocates of our health care system remaining as it is, very much a free market health care system, fail to realize that we're really talking about human beings here, and it doesn't work as well as they would like it to... They are trying to make you worry and fear a government bureaucrat being between you and your doctor. What you have now is a corporate bureaucrat between you and your doctor... The public plan would do a lot to keep [health insurance companies] honest, because it would have to offer a standard benefit plan. It would have to operate more efficiently, as does the Medicare program. It would be structured, I’m certain, on a level playing field so that it wouldn’t [have an] unfair advantage [over] the private insurance companies. Because it could be administered more efficiently, the private insurers would have to operate more efficiently.”

The interview is a half-hour long. Later into it he outlines the insurance industry's efforts to discredit Michael Moore's documentary, "Sicko", when they saw the truth in it and were afraid the American people might believe it, too. This to me was a stunning admission, the entire interview an astonishing piece of journalism--again, not entirely surprising, but I saw a door opening, enough for us to wedge our foot in. Wan rays of sunshine about to turn dazzling, if only we can keep the momentum going.

I beg everyone who reads this and clicks onto the link to send it on to everyone you know. Send it to your congressmen, your governors, your legislatures, the White House. Get an email chain going--put the link up on yard signs or billboards. Put it on bumper stickers. Stencil it on tee-shirts or tattoo it onto your forehead. Whatever it takes.

This is a television event too important to let die. Please. Keep it alive. Keep it going. It's up to us now.

(Cross-posted on Talking Points Memo here)

Ramona

Obama, It's Krugman. Please Pick Up

I'm usually the last one to panic when things go from haywire to havoc. I'm the one who's out there directing traffic, shushing, patting shoulders, plumping pillows, digging in my pockets for chocolate--whatever it takes.

I don't see the tunnel, I see the light at the end. If there's a rainbow in the sky, I'll look past the dark clouds and find it. Pollyanna and I are almost BFFs, for God's sake. But when I see a Nobel-laureate in Economics practically self-immolating on the White House lawn in order to be heard, I'm not just scared, I'm petrified.

I don't know if Paul Krugman is right when he says the White House is going about this banking debacle all wrong, and that we're near the edge of the Cliff of Doom. One misstep, he seems to be saying, and it's all over. He's not the only one saying it, of course. If he were, I might go back to singing my comfort songs and handing out bonbons.

There are two camps now, each of them filled with "experts", each of them plucking ideas out of thin air and calling them "solutions". Their voices are ringing across a battleground, over our heads. We hear them shouting in a strange, incomprehensible language: "TARP bailout" "Zombie banks", "toxic assets", "Cash for Trash". . .

We want at least one of them to come over to our side and give us a heads up. What the hell is going on? What's going to happen? Are we or aren't we doomed?

This was the week it all hit the fan. Lots of voices out there shouting messages to Obama, and Obama, strangely, answers back with his version of "Heck of a job, Brownie". On "60 Minutes" last Sunday there was this exchange with Steve Kroft:

Kroft:Your Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, has been under a lot of pressure this week, and there have been people in Congress calling for his head. Have there been discussions in the White House about replacing him?
President Obama: No.
Kroft: Has he volunteered to or come to you and said, “Do you think I should step down?”
President Obama: No, and he shouldn’t. And if he were to come to me, I’d say, “Sorry, buddy, you still got the job.” But look, he’s got a lot of stuff on his plate, and he is doing a terrific job. And I take responsibility for not, I think, having given him as much help as he needs.

That was wince-worthy and I was wincing. One of those could-come-back-to haunt sound bite traps that Obama should know better than to fall into .

On Monday Paul Krugman wrote a piece in the NYT called "Financial Policy Despair" He said, " If the reports are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair. "

That can't be good.

Non-economist Frank Rich wrote a column this week called "Has a 'Katrina Moment' arrived?". He said, "Bob Schieffer of CBS [asked Larry Summers] the simple question that has haunted the American public since the bailouts began last fall: “Do you know, Dr. Summers, what the banks have done with all of this money that has been funneled to them through these bailouts?” What followed was a monologue of evasion that, translated into English, amounted to: Not really, but you little folk needn’t worry about it. Yet even as Summers spoke, A.I.G. was belatedly confirming what he would not. "It has, in essence, been laundering its $170 billion in taxpayers’ money by paying off its reckless partners in gambling and greed, from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on Wall Street to Société Générale and Deutsche Bank abroad."

(Money-laundering? Isn't that illegal?)

Even-handed Eugene Robinson--no economist, either, it must be said--doesn't think we've quite reached the cliff edge yet, but he's not ruling out the possibility. In the Washington Post today he wrote a column called, "The Repairman's Burden". He said, "Geithner's plan offers private investors the opportunity to reap relatively big gains by taking relatively small risks. Some of the risk is assumed by taxpayers. Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, said over the weekend that these private firms will be doing the government a favor by participating in the program. But that's wrong. Investors will participate because they think they can make money. The only entity that's doing anyone a favor -- make that doing everyone a favor -- is the government of the United States. "

Romer: "private firms doing the Government a favor". Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

When they're talking about billions and trillions they're talking way over my head. I barely understand the concept of millions. I don't understand economics, or banking, or bailouts, or almost anything to do with Big Money. But what I'm hearing these days is panic and frustration among the cognoscenti. They see things that we don't see, and we're counting on them to make sure we get this right.

Somebody has to have a handle on this crisis. So far, nobody does. I don't know about you, but I would feel a whole lot better if I knew that President Obama was at least willing to listen to those whose opinions differ from his chosen few. His Washington insider choices for top cabinet positions made little old me nervous right from the start. When the new "Change" president puts former Big Business people in charge of regulating Big Business, even the dumbest among us sees trouble ahead.

So give a little listen, Mr. President. It can't hurt. These are your friends, remember. They're all talking about you, anyway. Better to have them in front of you than behind your back.

Ramona

War and Remembrance

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Louis D. Brandeis


As politicians go, John Conyers is a good man. And, as with so many good people who work passionately toward a more just world, he's had his share of hostile enemies. His ongoing quest for answers about the Bush Administration's murky and undoubtedly illegal maneuverings has earned him a special place in the hearts and minds of that loyal corps of screwballs who still work at protecting Bush's legacy. They'd like to see him six feet under. But he's not going anywhere. He's on a mission, and there are bastions of citizen bloggers who are cheering him on.

I don't know how I missed "Why We Have to Look Back", the column he wrote in the Washington Post last week. I just caught up with it this morning, thanks to those bloggers, and again I have to wonder why something this important hasn't been talked about by the TV pundits, who spent so much time jawing about Rod Blagojevich's hair, the First Lady's dress designers, and Caroline Kennedy's unfortunate over-use of "You know. . .".

Conyers was announcing the release of a 486-page report entitled "Reining in the Imperial Presidency", detailing the many legitimate instances of legal and ethical abuses by the Bush Administration. The report offered these immediate and important suggestions for remedies:

"First, Congress should continue to pursue its document requests and subpoenas that were stonewalled under President Bush. Doing so will make clear that no executive can forever hide its misdeeds from the public.

Second, Congress should create an independent blue-ribbon panel or similar body to investigate a host of previously unreviewable activities of the Bush administration, including its detention, interrogation and surveillance programs. Only by chronicling and confronting the past in a comprehensive, bipartisan fashion can we reclaim our moral authority and establish a credible path forward to meet the complex challenges of a post-Sept. 11 world.

Third, the new administration should conduct an independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities. Just this week, in the pages of this newspaper, a Guantanamo Bay official acknowledged that a suspect there had been "tortured" -- her exact word -- in apparent violation of the law. The law is the law, and, if criminal conduct occurred, those responsible -- particularly those who ordered and approved the violations -- must be held accountable."

Such reasonable observations. How could anybody deny their worth? He ended the piece this way:

"Some day, there is bound to be another national security crisis in America. A future president will face the same fear and uncertainty that we did after Sept. 11, 2001, and will feel the same temptation to believe that the ends justify the means -- temptation that drew our nation over to the "dark side" under the leadership of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. If those temptations are to be resisted -- if we are to face new threats in a manner that keeps faith with our values and strengthens rather than diminishes our authority around the world -- we must fully learn the lessons of our recent past."

I don't doubt that a future president will face fear and uncertainty if another 9/11 happens in this country. I differ with the good congressman that the belief that the ends justify the means would draw a future leader to the dark side. From the day George W. Bush gave up on becoming baseball commissioner and ran for president instead; from the day Dick Cheney chose himself as GWB's running mate, those two inhabitants of the dark side burrowed even deeper into their holes. The horrific events of 9/11 gave them the leverage they needed to draw the rest of us into their lair, and damned if they didn't succeed at the worst hornswoggling this country has ever seen.

Now we're all coming into the light again and we find ourselves so dirty, so poor, so exhausted from eight years on the dark side, all we want is a good, hot meal and a siesta in the sun.

But somebody has to go back in and get the bad guys--even if those bad guys are of our own making. I can't do it alone and neither can you, but if Conyers the Dragon Slayer says he can, what fool would stand in his way?

Ramona