False Labor: After Elaine Chao, You Owe Us

Name me one Republican congressperson who backs the unions.  Name me one who has EVER backed the unions.  Now give me one good reason why any of us who support unions and equity in the work force should be hopeful that they will see the light and give Big Business the business for undermining and ultimately destroying the lives of millions and millions and millions of Americans.

They're not going to do it.  All of our hopes and prayers and groveling and kowtowing will do nothing to change their minds.  The country is falling down around us and they're still concerned with "death taxes" and keeping the business climate sunny with no chance of annoying precipitation.  Unemployment figures mean nothing to them, except as proof of the effectiveness of downsizing, under-employing and off-shoring.  Lean and mean.  That's the way to do it.

Each and every one of them got to where they are by appealing to the rank-and-file members of the work force and getting them to cast their ballots for them.  They couldn't have won without them.  You might say they've turned into ungrateful bastards. I might say "Told you so." They lied, they lied again, and they're still lying.

We couldn't bid high enough so they sold out to the highest bidder.  And before you get all huffy and tell me the Democrats aren't much better, let me just say this about the Democrats: they're not much better. (I qualify it because some of them are much, much better.  Nobody listens to them is all.) 

Here's how I see the Democrats:  There they are hiding behind the trees while the marauders are out there slashing and burning.  They're wringing their hands, muttering, "This can't be right. . .".    Some of them turn tail and run.  Others of them haul out the white flags and surrender.  Even others of them see profit in them thar hills and make a mad, friendly dash to the other side.  So we're left with a ragtag handful of good souls trying to fend them all off with the only ammunition available:  a need to serve a suffering people and a clear vision of what that means.

So the Republicans have now refused to approve the nomination of Craig Becker, President Obama's choice for the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) on the grounds that, as a former labor union lawyer, he's biased toward labor.  No, really.

This is what the NLRB does: 

What We Do

The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1935 to administer the National Labor Relations Act, the primary law governing relations between unions and employers in the private sector. The statute guarantees the right of employees to organize and to bargain collectively with their employers, and to engage in other protected concerted activity with or without a union, or to refrain from all such activity.

So is it too much to ask, in this climate so sunny for all but the masses, that the very agency set up to protect the workers would be administered by someone from LABOR???

The Republicans cry "foul", but, according to a great post by Adele Stan, AlterNet's Washington Bureau chief, Bush used the recess seven times to stack the NLRB with business-friendly members.

There was Peter N. Kirsanow, who "[represented] management in employment-related litigation, as well as in contract negotiations, NLRB proceedings, EEO matters, and arbitration."

There was Ronald E. Meisburg,  a member of the Employment Lawyers Advisory Council of the National Association of Manufacturers, a group that, as Stan reminds us, is about as anti-union as you can get.

There was Michael J. Bartlett,  director of Labor Law policy at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce  (Wait.  I take back what I said about the NAM being as anti-union as you can get.  The USCC tops them and wins, hands down.)

Stan has more to say about this, so please go on over and read the rest.   It wouldn't hurt to pass it along, either.

So maybe you're wondering about my title.  About Elaine Chao and how she fits in here.  Elaine Chao, wife of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, and an unabashed pro-business cheerleader, was Labor Secretary under George W. Bush for eight lo-o-o-o-n-g years.  She was recruited from the Heritage Foundation, where her claim to fame was the constant denunciation of Affirmative Action.  She was praised by the U.S Chamber of Commerce (see above) for supporting "the limited role of government" and "free-market principals".  John Sweeney, former head of the AFL-CIO said of her,  "I have never seen a Labor Secretary who is so anti-labor".

She tried to water down OSHA practices, kept her distance from labor advocates, argued that Homeland Security employees shouldn't be union members because it would cause them not to be able to protect Americans sufficiently, and all around kept those damned labor protections from harming her best buds.

She now stumps for Big Business, talking against any measures that might ease the burden of the working people of this country.  Increased taxes, increased government mandates, increased government regulations.  Her solution?  Stop the health care reforms and cancel scheduled tax increases, including the estate tax.  She says, with passion, "This economy needs to be free from the shackles (voice cracks here) of government regulations and government mandates and government regulations." 

So labor people (and former labor people, and wannabe labor people) could you kindly throw boulders at the Republicans and lob a few bricks at the Democrats and help us get this country back on its feet?

It's not like there's nothing in it for you.

Rachel Maddow on the "Stimulus" hypocrites --Now THERE'S a Stimulus Package!

This may just be the most incredible piece of responsible journalism I've seen in a long, long, LONG time.  Rachel Maddow is the Edward R. Murrow of our age.  The Republicans can have their Sarah Palin.  We have Rachel Maddow.   Let me repeat:  We have RACHEL MADDOW.

Democratic "leadership", listen up:   The great Rachel Maddow may be wood-shedding the Republican hypocrites, but she is talking to YOU. 

(I'm dancing here. . . .)



Cherish this woman; honor her; let her know how very appreciated she is:  rachel@msnbc.com

I'm doing my part to send this into the viralsphere.  I hope you'll do your part, too.  What Rachel just did for us here is pretty remarkable.  And if you'll notice, she didn't have to look at her hand once.

Ramona

Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here

Sarah Palin Tea Party Speech SIMULCAST: Surrender NOW

It's 5 AM.  I can't sleep.  Moments ago I was lying under the covers, thinking, did I fully enjoy life before the coup?  Will I have enough good memories?  Because after today memories are all I'm going to have left.

Normally, I'm on top of things enemy-wise (or at least I thought I was), but I missed this one.  For most of the day yesterday (Saturday) the TV was off, and last night we had a rare night out visiting friends.  So I didn't know a thing about the end of the world until a few minutes after we got home, when my daughter called.

 Me:  Hello?

My daughter:  Can you believe they've got her on ALL the channels?

Me:  Who?

MD:  Sarah PALIN!  That tea party speech!  And now she's doing a x#%* Q and A!!

Me:  What!!! (Alarmed) You've got to be kidding!   MSNBC too?  Not C-Span!

MD:  All of them!  Turn on your TV!

I gotta go," my daughter said, "I'm writing letters; I'm calling those stations.  They can't get away with this."

I turned on the TV.  MSNBC.  The crowds were cheering and Sarah Palin was smiling and waving, Evita-like, blowing kisses, winking.

I turned the TV off.

This can't be happening, I remember thinking.  I went to the window and looked out into the darkness.  I put my ear to the glass.  I waited for the inevitable sights and sounds of war:  the rumble of tanks, the whump, whump, whump of helicopter rotors, the ack, ack, ack of flak guns, the fires rising skyward, telling me whole towns were being destroyed. . .

So far nothing was happening.  That was good.  I turned on my computer.  It didn't appear to have been taken over yet, so I went to my Twitter page to see what my buddies were reporting about it.

Roger Ebert:  Did she just say Mikey Cyrus?

Joan Walsh:  "So tired of hearin' the talk talk talk" -- she sees me! Sarah Palin sees ME!
   

Buzzflash:  Good Grief! Palin said "America is Ready for Another Revolution." What, the Revolt of the Zombies? 

  

Borowitz Report:  It turns out Palin was reading from crib notes written on her hand 2nite. I for one am shocked she can read and write.

Good God.  They were using pea-shooters against heavy artillery.  All is LOST.

So what could I do?  No guns in the house.  (I'm anti-gun.  Wouldn't you know?)  I did the only thing I knew how:  I wrote protest emails to everyone at NBC, MSNBC, CNN and C-Span.

(When I went to the MSNBC-TV home page,  a huge picture of President Palin hit me, first off.  She was smiling and waving, and the headline read something close to:  Palin to Obama:  Ha!  Ha ha ha ha and HA!!)  

Then it was midnight and I was tired.  I wanted so much to cling to this day, the last day of life as I would know it, but sleep took over--blessed oblivion for a few quiet hours--and now, as I write this I'm surprised at how afraid I am.

I should go and read what our new leader said last night.  Be right back.

(In the meantime, a musical interlude for your pleasure.)

This is taking longer than I thought.  Here's another one.  Sit tight:





Okay, I can't watch it.  I'm sorry.  I can't.   I watched 3 minutes, 20 seconds and had to quit when she got to the "guy with the truck".   Aiii.  And oy.  It's almost as bad as Carly Fiorina's sheep ad.

So.  Now that it's over for the rest of us, I keep thinking:  Should we have seen this coming?  Did we completely overlook the power of big hair, good teeth and a teasing wink?  When that tea party guy held up that sign that said, "Get a brain, Morans",

did he really mean "morans" and not "morons"?   Did we miss the deeper message?

 
And when that nice tea party lady raised her sign telling us to make English our "offical" language, did we just think she meant "official"?   Will Offical be our official language now that we've been taken over?

And when the tea party guy paraded with the sign that said "niggar",  was it maybe not as ignorant and odious as we originally thought?  Was he just innocently speaking Offical?


Remember how much fun we had with those people?  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  I'm thinking it was all a clever ruse designed to put us off-guard until the actual Saturday-night Tea Party massacre.

All the time we spent laughing at them, they were just biding their time.  Sarah Palin, the unemployed-former governor-because-she-quit-Sarah Palin, finding new life going back to her old baton-twirling, cheer-leading days, collected $100,000 for an hour-long, $500-a-seat pep rally eagerly awaited and covered by the major cable networks (the same ones she called the "lamestream" media), filmed in its entirety by C-Span, the people's network (paid for by you and me, the cable subscribers), and told the citizens of the United States to get ready for a revolution.

And today, enjoying full collaboration with the media, it's here.  (Can't say she didn't warn us.)   So back to the age-old question; the one we've been asking and asking and asking without ever getting an answer:  What now?

Ramona

We are the Ordinary People of Our Time

"[Howard Zinn's] fame and popularity came from helping us see America from the ground up - as ordinary people struggling to gain and hold their place in it. When no history book told that story as it should be told, he wrote the book himself -- A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. It became a perennial best seller."

Bill Moyers Journal, 1/29/10

Think of those who joined in — and in many cases became leaders of — the abolitionist movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the feminist revolution, the gay rights movement, and so on.  Think of what this country would have been like if those ordinary people had never bothered to fight and sometimes die for what they believed in.

Bob Herbert, "A Radical Treasure",  1/29/10

___________________________

As the woes of this country escalate instead of dissipate, as millions of us go to bed each night knowing that we won't stop thinking about tomorrow, it's a pretty safe bet we're eventually going to work up to, and beyond, the point of just edgy. (I think we saw it in Massachusetts last week.  Yes, Martha Coakley had to be dragged kicking and screaming onto the campaign trail, and probably deserved to lose, but why was she the candidate in the first place?  That was the best the Massachusetts Dems could do?)

In millions and millions and MILLIONS of households, every day is a new calamity.  Some if not most of these calamities are fixable with a little help from Those who Have--including the government, whose holdings are largely OURS anyway.  If they were seriously working on the jobs situation--creating them, bringing them back to America, being honest about what constitutes a livable wage--people would be seriously working.

If people were working, they would be living in their homes, not standing on the outside looking in. They would be buying groceries and trying on clothes and sitting for family portraits again.  They might even be turning up their thermostats.

If banks were making low-, or even reasonable-interest loans, the people with jobs would be purchasers again, entrepreneurs would be building small businesses again, and all who were honest enough would be paying their fair share of taxes again.

If some of those billionaires would stop worrying about how they'd survive if they suddenly became millionaires again, and see themselves less as the privileged few and more as the instigators of this mess, we might get out of this mess quicker.

If the U.S (as in United States) Chamber of Commerce became less the foul foreign-interest chamber pot and more the cheerleaders for true American commerce, those meaningless slogans about "jobs, jobs, jobs" might actually morph into jobs, jobs, American-made jobs.

But so far, none of those things are happening, and we're left with a conundrum:  How do we--that's WE, as in we, the citizens, the hoi polloi, the common people,  the teeming masses, the heedless multitudes--build up the strength to fix this?

The truth is, I don't know.  I've spent months thinking about this, ever since Barack Obama became president, and it all comes down to--I don't know.  So if you're still with me and you're waiting breathlessly for an answer, you might as well exhale. I'm just one lone person here, same as you, thinking hard, talking my head off, working up the energy to march to and against and for. . .without even a hint of a plan taking shape.

Frank Rich gave me a real eye-opener on Sunday when he wrote:  "The historian Alan Brinkley has observed that we will soon enter the fourth decade in which Congress — and therefore government as a whole — has failed to deal with any major national problem, from infrastructure to education. The gridlock isn’t only a function of polarized politics and special interests. There’s also been a gaping leadership deficit."

It's true.  The Democrats, my party for better or. . .dammit. . .bounce between lethargy and stupidity.  Harry "public option is too HARD" Reid was so riled up over what's happening around here, he merely yawned during the SOTU speech but didn't actually fall asleep.  Nancy Pelosi seems to think that grinning is the solution to everything.  And the Blue Dog Democrats take pride in being the infiltrators from the enemy camp.  The few who actually see some urgency in saving the country--damn the torpedoes--say all the right things but in voices so weak everybody gets away with pretending they can't hear them.
 
If you count the 535 house and senate members in Congress, plus the president, the vice president and the entire West Wing, plus the deputies and the assistants to the deputies, plus a whole slew of pundits who claim to know everything, that's a lot of people wandering around in a fog looking for answers to what ails us.

So a year later, here they are, bragging about unemployment numbers in the tens of thousands per month instead of hundreds of thousands,  still without a WPA-like emergency jobs program that would immediately put people to work rebuilding America, still without any hope of a health care reform bill that first and foremost addresses health.  And those are just the big things.

Obama gave his State of the Union speech early last week and then, a few days later, went to see the Republicans at what was laughingly called their "retreat" (they don't "retreat", we do).   I'm always looking for signs, it's true, but last week I might have seen the first signs of a leader ready to fight.
 Some words from our president that gave me hope:

"In this new decade, it's time the American people get a government that matches their decency, that embodies their strength.

 ". . .And to encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America.

". . .So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support 2 million jobs in America.

". . .I took on health care because of the stories I've heard, from Americans with pre-existing conditions whose lives depend on getting coverage, patients who've been denied coverage, families, even those with insurance, who are just one illness away from financial ruin.
After nearly a century of trying -- Democratic administrations, Republican administrations -- we are closer than ever to bringing more security to the lives of so many Americans.
The approach we've taken would protect every American from the worst practices of the insurance industry.  (This worries me.  What about the least worst practices?)

"...To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.

"...And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, a supermajority, then the responsibility to govern is now yours, as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.  So let's show the American people that we can do it together."

Near the end of his speech, he said,  "I don't quit.  We can't quit."   I loved hearing that.  It sounded as if we had started. 

At the Republican Retreat in Baltimore, Obama did a little hand-smacking:  (He did a lot of brown-nosing, too, but I expected that.)

"I'm not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything, whether it's on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me.

"I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you've been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."

 Well, that was on Friday, so on Monday morning I tuned in to "Morning Joe" to hear Joe and bunch's take on the dressing-down in Baltimore.   When I got there, Mika was in the middle of reading a couple of paragraphs fromWSJ about Obama's detached style and his perceived lack of irony.  Joe latched onto it and every time someone said something favorable about either the SOTU speech or the Baltimore Q&A, Joe said, in effect, "Yes, but is he ironic?"

It came from this piece entitled, "The Obama Spell is Broken", by Fouad Ajami:
"We have had stylish presidents, none more so than JFK. But Kennedy was an ironist and never fell for his own mystique. Mr. Obama's self-regard comes without irony—he himself now owns up to the "remoteness and detachment" of his governing style. We don't have in this republic the technocratic model of the European states, where a bureaucratic elite disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will. Mr. Obama was smitten with his own specialness.
In this extraordinary tale of hubris undone, the Europeans—more even than the people in Islamic lands—can be assigned no small share of blame. They overdid the enthusiasm for the star who had risen in America."

It takes some bodacious, mendacious audacity to write in the Wall Street Journal about hubris or ". . .a bureaucratic elite [that] disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will" after those not-so-long-ago (but really, really long) Bush years, but if anybody can pull it off, it's the WSJ.   Their audience has the most to lose if Obama wins his battles.

It's the ordinary people (that's us) who need to keep Obama where he is.   Underneath the "uniter" facade is a street fighter.  "Community organizer" is on his resume.  He knows what it's like to be ordinary.  So he might not have the answers, and I might not have the answers, and I might not know exactly where we're going (and he might not, either), but I'm picking sides.  That's something.

___________________________

Signs that I'm getting way too immersed in this "saving the country" business:  I saw this internet bumper sticker the other day and I immediately thought of congress:  "I'm not really slapping you, I'm just high-fiving your face."

Labor's Cries are Getting Weaker. Who is Going to Dig Them Out?

We Americans are terrific when it comes to catastrophes--even when we're in the midst of one of our own.  We blog, we sing, we donate, we put ourselves out there physically, bodily, and with our hearts.  We cannot stand to see people hurting.  We see pictures of homeless victims, of orphaned children with bloated bellies, of families who have lost everything including loved ones, and we cannot help but cry.

We do this because our hearts are full of love for our fellow human beings. 

We do this, oftentimes and amazingly, without ever making the connections to our own nation's victims:  the jobless, the homeless, the children without enough food, the families without the health care necessary to save a loved one's life.

We have a history of putting blinders on when things get tough, and we have a history of not learning from our own history.  We're in the midst of another severe economic crisis, for all intents a repeat of our Great Depression, and still we hear the voices telling us it's not so bad--and we want to believe them.
 We don't want to have to admit that we've been through this same crisis before, caused by the same mighty forces of neglect and greed.  There are dots to be connected, but we won't play.

Jim Grilio, White House spokesman for the Recovery Act would have us believe that "Nearly a year after the Recovery Act was signed into law, [it] is already responsible for about 2 million jobs.  These jobs are created by wildfire protection grants, assistance to American farmers, investments in research at America's top universities, innovative energy retrofit programs, funding for a smart energy grid and countless other Recovery Act programs like them."

Over at ABC News on January 8, Sunlen Miller reported:

"Switching gears quickly from disappointing jobs numbers (The Labor Department reported this morning that U.S. employers shed 85,000 jobs last month, leaving the unemployment rate steady at 10 percent) to efforts the administration is taking to create jobs, the President announced that the administration is awarding $2.3 billion in tax credits for American manufacturers of clean energy technologies -- companies that build wind turbines, solar panels, and assemble cutting-edge batteries.

Awarded to 180 projects in over 40 states, the administration says they hope the initiative will generate about 17,000 jobs. The money will come from the $787 billion stimulus program.

'This initiative is good for middle class families. It is good for our security.  It is good for our planet,' Obama said, 'a clean energy manufacturing initiative that will put Americans to work while helping America gain the lead when it comes to clean energy.'"

Well and good, but these are the kinds of band-aids you would use when first you begin to think there might be a crisis looming on the horizon.   I'm looking around me, and as far as the eye can see, the disaster is upon us.  Where are the damned emergency crews?

(By the way, about those wind turbines?  This from the UAW's Ron Gettelfinger: "When $1 billion in stimulus money was used to boost the U.S. wind power industry, more than 80 percent of the money went to foreign firms. We're paying to buy wind turbines from China -- even though the Chinese have strict 'Buy China' rules for their own $600 billion stimulus program.")

The president is giving his first State of the Union address tonight.  Words are good.  We need words, and he knows how to deliver.  But will action follow?   We need the kind of action that changes nations.  We need programs so broad in scope it'll terrify us just to think about them.  We need to think in terms of hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes.   What we're facing right now is the earth moving, the winds howling, the seas rising.  Emergency forces need to mobilize STAT, giving aid and succor to the wounded. Triage units need to be fully supplied.  Volunteers need to be forming in cities, towns, churches and schools everywhere.  The troops need to be on the alert for scammers and looters. And members of the press need to be on the ground, reporting the devastation.

The task ahead, to rebuild the United States, is daunting, but if we really have the kind of spirit and guts we say we do, it won't be impossible.  The message I want to hear from President Obama tonight is that the number one priority of the recovery process is jobs.  American workers need American jobs that will fill their wallets and lift up their souls.  The government we (The People) elected must set aside their petty differences, must drop their allegiances to the monied class, and start cooperating.

We cannot survive this disaster without them.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)         

The SCOTUS Five: Just Asses

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our
moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our
government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."   --  Thomas Jefferson

 _________________________

Yesterday, five "justices" of the Supreme Court--the usual suspects: Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy--overturned most of McCain-Feingold, wrinkled up large chunks of the constitution, and laid to rest any laughable remnant of a notion that this is a government of the people, by the people and for the people.  (Unless you're one of those who actually buys into that hokum that a corporation is really a person.  In which case, more about that later.)


Yesterday those five scamps saw another chance to give their corporate heroes the gift that keeps on giving--namely US on a platter--and made into law the right for "corporations, trade associations, unions and nonprofit groups"  to spend any amount they wish from any old source, in order to bash, lash, eviscerate, decapitate, or otherwise destroy, any political candidate who might seriously get in their way.  No holds barred anymore.  None.  Free at last, free at last. . .

 But, since this is America, the decision by those fair-minded (as opposed to "activist") gents, those black-robed pillars of our society, was all-inclusive:  Yes, "trade associations, unions and non-profit groups" get their chance, too.  NOW we're breathing easy.  But, wait. . . tsk. . .hmmm.   Since none of the above have treasuries anywhere near as vast as the corporations,  there might be some slight  disadvantage.  But never mind.  The law says they're included, and the law is the law.

So let's say the UAW empties its coffers in order to get a like-minded candidate elected, but GM really doesn't like the guy.  Every day for, say, six months, right up until Election Day, GM reaches into its pocket, pulls out a fist full of change, and goes after him.  A few days worth of GM's pocket change equals the UAW's treasury over their entire lifetime if they never spent another dime.  Who is going to win?  I don't know about you, but the suspense won't be killing me.

But back to the person-hood issue.  What kind of person is this "corporation"?  Is he/she young?  Old?  Male?  Female?  Black?  White?  Brown?  Yellow?  Red?  Single?  Married?  Gay?  Christian?  Jew?  Buddhist?  Muslim?  Rastafarian?  Other?  Does he/she have a criminal record?  Should he/she have a criminal record?  Is he/she even a full-time citizen of these United States, or are his/her interests elsewhere?  Why don't we know these things?

If a corporation can be a person, can a person be a corporation?  Can my liver and kidneys make up my board of directors or do I have to have a quorum?  Do I still have to pay taxes?  If I beg hard enough and lie good enough will my government give me somebody else's taxes?  Can I get a "Get Out of Jail Free" card?  Can I buy a Senator?

So many questions.  But this is serious.   It all started because an unpleasant little group of people called "Citizens United" made a nasty movie about Hillary Clinton.  I don't know all the details, and I don't care, but apparently things didn't work out on the distribution trail, so they took their gripes all the way to the top.   I don't know how this happened, either, but somehow a 20-year-old court decision in Michigan, my Michigan, Austin vs The Michigan Chamber of Commerce, got hot-footed, too.  Thrown out along with the bathwater.

All day yesterday and into today it's been a veritable firestorm, all the flak over that one ruling.  When John McCain heard of the court's decision to decimate the bill he co-wrote with Russ Feingold, he said, wanly,  “I am disappointed by the decision of the Supreme Court and the lifting of the limits on corporate and union contributions.  However, it appears that key aspects of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), including the ban on soft money contributions, remain intact.”

Russ Feingold took it harder:  "Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns. Just six years ago, the Court said that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was ‘firmly embedded in our law.’  Yet this Court has just upended that prohibition, and a century's worth of campaign finance law designed to stem corruption in government.  The American people will pay dearly for this decision when, more than ever, their voices are drowned out by corporate spending in our federal elections."  


Last year, Feingold stuck his finger up in the air, felt which way the wind was blowing, and knew this was coming.  He spoke about it on the senate floor last October:  

"Before BCRA was passed, corporations were making huge soft money donations. They were also spending money on phony issue ads. That’s what Title II was aimed at. But what they were not doing was running election ads that expressly advocated the election or defeat of a candidate. That has been prohibited in this country for at least 60 years, though it is arguable that the Tillman Act in 1907 prohibited it forty years before that. So it is possible that the Court’s decision will not just take us back to a pre-McCain-Feingold era, but back to the era of the robber baron in the 19^th century. That result should frighten every citizen of this country. The Court seems poised to ignite a revolution in campaign financing with a stroke of its collective pen that no one contemplated even six months ago. "

I think that's pretty much what Jefferson was thinking.  But since the SCOTUS Five are not "activist" judges, it doesn't matter what anybody thinks.  The law is the law.  Until it isn't anymore.   But do not fret, O ye of little faith, the justices taketh away state's rights (Bush v. Gore), but giveth them back whenever the mood strikes.  The law is the law when they say it is.

Final thought:  Every one of those bastards are in this for the long haul.  That means an entire lifetime, if they so wish it.  They are NOT too big to fail.   If they decree it, we shall fold.

I don't know about you, but I'M not taking the blame.  (Not that that makes me feel any better.)


Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo and Alternet)

A Year of Obama: The Hope Still Lives

A year ago today, as I sat watching the inauguration of Barack Obama, listening to our new president's call to duty, it suddenly occurred to me that it might be a good day to start a political blog.  I already had a couple of sadly neglected blogs on other subjects, and I had been sort of casually thinking of ideas for it, so I got to work setting it up the morning of January 20 and finished it around 4:30 that afternoon.  I began it like this:

Today is January 20, 2009. Inauguration day for Barack Obama, and it can't have come soon enough. It's true that he's been de-facto president since November, 2008, when George W. Bush unofficially, without fanfare or hesitation, turned the job over to him, but today it became official. What a day it's been! They're estimating the crowds at 2 million strong, a sight unseen on any Presidential First Day in modern history.

Obama's speech, so anticipated by us all, was anticlimactic and, at first hearing, a bit of a disappointment. It didn't soar. It didn't sing. The soundbites were few and far between. But, as I think about it now, I realize that what he was going for was resonance. I don't remember the words, but I feel the feeling. What he said was that we're in trouble, we'll need to work hard to get out of it, and if we'll do all that we can do, so will he. He told the world that we were back to being honest and sincere and that they could trust us again.  He told those who would want to harm us to back off.  But most importantly, he told the Fat Cats that their glory days are over. As I said, resonance.

Oh, the joy in my heart as I wrote those words.  Take THAT, you lousy, bloated, insufferable faux-Capitalists.  The Sheriff's saddling up and the posse's not far behind.  We're off to save the ranches!  Widows and orphans, help is on the way!

But lest you think I was totally naive, I also wrote:  "I have no grand illusions about a rapid return to health for this country."  No, I had no grand illusions, but I did have dreams.  I've followed the Great Depression and the effect Roosevelt's brave New Deal had on the country, and I thought I heard the welcome sounds of a Rooseveltian Revolution in Obama's words.  Three hundred and sixty five days later, I realize my hearing might have been failing me.

Still, as I've said so many times before, I'm not ready to write Obama off.  I'm nervous about a lot of what's been coming out of the White House this past year--I admit it.  When I saw Wall Street move in, I chewed my fingers to the nubs.  When Rahm Emmanuel became the head whip-cracker, I felt a distinct shiver up my spine.  And when Barack Obama stopped talking about labor, even as hundreds of thousands of our workers were losing their jobs every month,  I gave up any inclination I might have had to genuflect.

I keep reminding myself that the Good Man took on what amounted to a national nightmare.  There were no easy fixes, and nobody pretended there would be.  But I would have slept better this past year if only I had been able to see the president as a "people person".   Was he ever that?  I don't know.  We might have made him into our own images, taking much needed comfort in an illusion of our own making.  Maybe he is what he is.  But what is he?  After a full year of hosting him in The People's House we're no closer to knowing where he stands, or, more importantly, where he's going.

And yet. . .  And yet.  I trust him.  I believe he is a Good Man.  I believe he understands what it is we need from him, and I believe he is Honest to God trying.  Do I believe he's done everything right?  Of course not.  The proof is in the pudding.  We are not that far along.   In fact, in some respects, we've fallen farther behind.  Our unemployment numbers hover at an unacceptable 10 percent, the bankers are giving out even bigger bonuses even as more and more homes sit empty, the stock market sings "Hallelujah" every time it looks like we're all shout and no clout, and just last night the state of Massachusetts awarded Ted Kennedy's senate seat to a Republican whose election promise was to kill any kind of Health Care Reform bill.   As if it isn't enough that we had to say goodbye to the great Lion of the Senate last year.  Now we have to watch as health care reform, Teddy's all-consuming passion, breathes its last.

So, as this January day marks the beginning of Barack Obama's second year, I'm remembering the grand enthusiasm of that dawning day one year ago.  And, while I admit to the need to dream, I'll be at my listening post, keeping my eyes wide open, pushing--ever pushing--this Good Man to find his backbone and boldly lead where no Democrat has gone before.  (Or at least not for a long, long time.)

I think I'll send him this as a reminder.  Feel free to do the same:

" On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right"

The Rev. Martin Luther King.  Address at the Episcopal National Cathedral, Washington D.C., March 31, 1968

Ramona

 (Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)

Robertson, Limbaugh and Why They Matter

 Hour by hour, day by day, we've been watching the devastation that is Haiti.  The plight of that sad, forgotten country is being forced on us in such a way that it is no longer possible to turn away from it, to ignore it, to stop thinking of it as somebody else's problem.  Their most recent crisis was caused by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, and the horror, almost beyond comprehension, is that tens of thousands of people have died because of it.

But we've known for decades that the Haitian people, even before this natural disaster, were living lives of pure misery.  Remember the Haitian "Boat People"?  They arrived on our shores by the thousands in the 1970s and 80s, before our government finally put a stop to it by sending them back to their homeland, where abject, implacable, unending destitution was what had driven them onto those skimpy boats in the first place.  Many of them died along the way, but that kind of desperation--the kind that most of us could never possibly understand--throws caution to the winds.  There were many of us--I hope there were millions of us--who wrote letters begging our government to at least turn a blind eye to those wretched wanderers staggering toward America.  But bureaucracies prevailed, as they always do, and the struggles of the Boat People to find peace and a helping hand were for nought.  We turned them away.

Now we're going to help.  As a nation, we'll do everything we can to ease the suffering in Haiti.  I know that for a fact, even though I haven't forgotten that as a nation we turned some of these very people away not so long ago.  We're bombarded with the images of the earthquake aftermath and it's hard, seeing the poor suffering victims, not to make the comparisons with our own Hurricane Katrina.  Our reporters, some of the same who covered Katrina, are exhausted and near tears as they describe the horrors they've seen.  They are helpless to do much more than to explain, to make us see, to force us away from our daily routines and bring us along with them into hell. 

We will not let uncaring bureaucracies get in the way this time.   Moments after the reports of the earthquake, the White House went into action and within hours the trucks were beginning to be loaded, the airlifts were in place.  As I write this, three days afterward,  there is a traffic jam on the tarmac at the Port-au-Prince airport as planes filled with volunteers and relief supplies attempt to unload.  The whole world, it seems, finally wants to come to the aid of the Haitians.

As a nation, we're feeling good.  We're where we should be.  We're cheering the aid workers on, we're sending money, we're mobilizing.  For most of us, the fact that the Haitians we're caring about are poor and dark-skinned has no bearing on anything.  And why would it?  But for the past two days we've been sidetracked by the astonishingly pitiless comments of two powerful countrymen who draw enormous audiences and make untold millions from their daily utterances.

Pat Robertson, citing a legend about early Haitians making a pact with the devil to get out from under the French (calling it a "true story"), gave Satan the credit for all of the misery Haiti has had to endure.  He ended by saying, "They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God. . ."

This drew clearly undisguised anger from a Haitian embassador, who probably had better things to do than respond to a so-called cleric who calls a legend about a pact with the devil "a true story":




So then the 700 Club comes back and says it was all about the legend, and we care a lot about the Haitians, who are still--sorry to say--cursed by the devil because they asked for it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rush Limbaugh, that great humanitarian, first suggested that President Obama will make hay over this tragedy because. . .something about mutual dark skins.  When that got the expected outrage he so craves, he came back and gloated about tweaking the media.  Then, because his craving for attention hadn't been sated, he used his pulpit to warn people against using the White House website for earthquake relief donations, for fear their money would disappear into Obama's pockets or, worse, the Democrats would be able to get information from their applications.

So why does it matter what these two men say?  It matters because in the Land of Milk and Honey they've amassed unbelievable wealth and power by appealing to the darkest sides of civilized Americanism.

They matter because they've each built entire lucrative industries by consistently proving to be less than we would expect of our fellow Americans.

They matter because, even though they work at eroding the underpinnings of our values while pretending to be at the forefront of everything good and ethical, they gather audiences that most rock stars could only dream about.

Americans by the millions follow their every word, defending them this side of death, spreading far and wide their messages of intolerance and hate.  I wonder how many of their listeners are looking for ways to help the Haitians?  I wonder how many of them see the paradox between what they're hearing and what their hearts are telling them to do?  And if they do, I wonder why they go on doing it?

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)

Take Me to Our Leader

The reasons for the stillbirth of the new progressive era are many and much discussed. There's the death of liberal and moderate Republicanism, the reluctance of some administration officials and congressional Democrats to challenge the banks, the ever-larger role of money in politics (see reluctance to challenge banks, above), the weakness of labor, the dysfunctionality of the Senate -- the list is long and familiar. But if there's a common feature to the political landscapes in which Carter, Clinton and now Obama were compelled to work, it's the absence of a vibrant left movement. 

Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, 1/6/10

__________________________________________

 Alas, it's true.  The "left movement"--the true left movement, not the middle-of-the-road "Progressives" nor the loony "Lefties"--is no longer vibrant.  We lost our glow long ago, when we decided the worst thing we could ever do to ourselves was to get in the position of being considered Socialists.  We even dropped "social programs" from our lexicon lest someone should suspect us of Commie leanings.  Then we dropped social programs altogether, just in case.

We either forgot or ignored the real contributions unions had brought us since before our grandparents were young, and turned on them just when we needed them the most.  We let the actor Ronald Reagan make the first incision and then stood back, wringing our hands, while the strength of our labor movement slowly seeped away.

Our voices were no more than mere whispers when American jobs by the millions moved to foreign countries.  No representative howls from these quarters when American manufacturing and American wages moved toward the downslide while corporate America's profits went soaring through the stratosphere.

We never completely bought the notion that all was right with the world, that our path to prosperity was named "deregulation", that the people in power had even a nibble of a clue, but every time we turned around someone wicked or more cunning was stealing our soapbox.  So we shut up.  Or so it seemed, for all the good our grousing and complaining did.


For eight long Bushwhacked years, we moaned and groaned and predicted the predictable outcomes.  And when they came, we got nothing for our troubles except to be able to utter a wholly unsatisfying "We told you so".  Because for eight long Bushwhacked years we, the Liberals afraid to speak our own name, had no real leaders.

Nobody stood out as the one willing and courageous and strong enough to take on corrupt big government and big business (even more dazzlingly corrupt).  We've had many voices--many fine voices--like Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, MLK, Walter Reuther, Cesar Chavez, Barbara Jordan, Mario Cuomo, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich,  Anthony Weiner, Sheldon Whitehouse, Byron Dorgan (Yes, I've heard--but he still has a voice), Elizabeth Warren, Bill Moyers, Rachel Maddow.  We've had Molly Ivins, Michael Moore, Jim Hightower, and now Al Franken, who's laughing all the way to the Hill.

But where is the one strong leader leading the charge to help put our country back together again?  To take on the jammers and scammers in high places?  To demolish the Fat Cats' havens?  To get people back to work?  To keep families healthy and safe, without poverty looming?   For awhile there, we thought it was going to be Barack Obama.  For a while, I think even Barack Obama thought it was going to be him.   But it isn't.  It's clear he's not the one.


No leader.  Oh, well. . .so be it.

What??

Wait, that was last year.  This year--2010--we're going to have to do it ourselves.  We who see ourselves as the perennial, ineffectual caretakers are going to have to make our presence known.  Don't answer to "Liberal", I don't care.  Call yourselves "Progressives", I don't care.  Just do what liberals have always done.  Help the poor, feed the hungry, nurture the children, restore human dignity, and advocate, always, for equity and honesty.

This year is the year of the PEOPLE.  We are the people.  Only we can make it happen.  We can't do it alone.  We can't even do it with rooms full of like-minded people.  In order to be heard, we have to do it by the millions.  There are millions of us out of work with nothing but time on our hands.  There are millions of us who are retired, with no real schedule, who remember what it was like when the middle class was on top and want that back again.  There are millions of us with brain power and skills working at no-hope jobs through no fault of our own.  And there are millions of us who are union members who need a refresher course in labor struggles and organized ass-kicking.

2010.  The Year of the People.   Last I looked, that's us.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)

Today is my Dad's 99th Birthday

I could have said, "Today would have been my Dad's 99th birthday" and the tense would be truer--he's no longer with us.  But do we stop celebrating birthdays just because the honoree  isn't here to blow out the candles?  I hope not.

Wish this was in better condition.  I love it.

My dad was not a gusher.  He was a toucher, not a hugger.  A pat on the shoulder, a tap on the head. . .that was about as close as he came to showing physical affection after I got too gangly to be sitting on his lap.  But I never doubted that he loved me.

He was not well-spoken, not well-read, but he understood completely his daughter's insatiable need for reading material.  For a time, on most paydays (when there was a payday), he would surprise me with the very book I had been hinting for all week.  When that wasn't possible, he would sit quietly at the public library while I searched the stacks for signs of magic.

He lived to be 78, a hard worker almost to the end.  In his later years he became a notorious (and really, a hilarious) curmudgeon, but to nearly everybody but me.  I don't remember him ever raising his voice to me.  When I began dating, he was a nervous wreck but he left it to my mother to pass along his warnings.  "Your dad says you need to be in before midnight. . ."

He was gruffer with my brothers, Mike and Chris, but there was never any doubt that he loved them both.

He loved his grandkids and always had some special surprise for them when they visited.  He taught the other man in my life how to cook Italian.  His Chicken Cacciatore has never been duplicated, but my husband's comes mighty close.

He was seven years older than my mother, but he outlived her by three years.  She died eight months after they celebrated their 50th anniversary, and on that day he began to die.  His days without her were sad enough that when he slipped into a fog and finally passed, it was with our blessing.

Today he would have been 99 years old.  Even though he would have pretended otherwise, I think he would have liked that we noticed.


Ramona