Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)

Oh yeah...Remembering the War and Other National and Global Crises

dlindorff — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:25:56 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

The ongoing and deepening global economic crisis, to which Barack
Obama owes his presidential election victory, is no small thing, to be
sure. It also presents us on the left with a lot of openings to press
for progressive change.

We saw how the Republican attempt to derail Obama by labeling him a
“socialist” actually backfired—especially when people were reminded
that a fundamental premise of socialism is “income redistribution,” in
which some of the wealth of the rich is taken away through taxation,
and transferred through federal programs to those who are less wealthy.
Joe the Plumber was outraged, but when most Americans who were having
trouble paying for gas or making their next mortgage payment, or who
were worried that their jobs might be about to vanish, thought about
that for longer than a sound-bite, it turns out that, not surprisingly,
they decided socialism and redistribution didn’t sound like a bad or
scary idea at all.

The same can be said of labor unions. In good times, many Americans
have bought the argument that unions are just out to grab dues payments
from their paychecks. But as job security vanishes and wages languish,
people are waking up to the idea that they are simply expendable
“inputs” to employers, and that a union can help them stand up to
abusive, uncaring management. Republican propaganda about the sanctity
of “secret ballot” union elections—ironic given the GOP’s simultaneous
assault all over the country on the right to vote—fell on deaf ears.

Government itself, long a dirty word thanks to years of
conservative propaganda, aped and spread through the corporate media,
is coming back into favor, now that people see that they cannot count
on either themselves or their employers to pull them through hard
times. The idea that government can step in with things like extended
unemployment insurance benefits, food stamps, and even renegotiated
mortgages, makes people who once mocked “big government” view things a
little differently.

But this unprecedented economic crisis also poses dangers.

Because we are so obsessed with the ongoing collapse of the economy
and the gathering storm of debt, unemployment and loss of retirement
savings that it entails, it’s easy for all of us to lose sight of other
crises that demand our urgent attention and action.

Chief among these are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing threat of climate change.

The wars are not going away on their own. The Iraq puppet
government of Nouri al Maliki is close to approving a deadline for the
removal of US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. That is more than
three years from now—nearly as long as the US was involved in World War
II! It’s longer, even, than the absurd 16 months that Obama said it
would take for him to end the US war and occupation of Iraq during his
campaign, which was bad enough. (In the case of Afghanistan, it
represents a decade of war—as long as the Vietnam War!) The danger is
that Obama will allow that status of troops agreement with Iraq to
become his timetable for withdrawal. We have to say “No!” The Iraq War
must be ended immediately.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, is in a meltdown, and every day that US
forces operate there, the opposition to US occupation grows, simply
strengthening the Taliban. Similarly, the more the US tries to attack
Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in neighboring Pakistan, the more
opposition grows to the US in Pakistan. If we opponents of the war
allow Obama to go ahead with his plans for a larger US military force
in Afghanistan, we will end up with an even bigger and wider war in the
Middle East and Asia, with more terrorist recruits, and with whatever
remains of US funds for important domestic initiatives swallowed up by
the Pentagon and the secret intelligence budget.

Let me put this simply: Nothing progressive that has been proposed
by the Obama campaign can be achieved while the US is engaged in these
two criminal wars. No health care reform, no increase in education
loans, no early childhood education, no public works jobs programs,
Nothing.

And then there is climate change. The Obama campaign promised to
finally end eight years of a new Dark Ages, when government simply
denied science or actively attacked science, and to start taking
serious action to reduce America’s role in spewing out carbon into the
atmosphere. But you don’t hear much about that anymore. That’s because
reducing America’s carbon footprint costs serious money—money for
research into non-carbon energy sources, money for a power transmission
system to serve wind generation farms, money to develop a new
generation of non-polluting vehicles and to rebuild light rail and
inter-city rail systems. And once again, with the economy in a crisis,
and with the two wars sucking up all available tax revenues that aren’t
being given away to banks and Wall Street financial firms and insurance
companies, none of that is going to happen either, unless we demand it.

Meanwhile, while the progressive folks who put their all into the
Obama campaign are reveling in his and their Election Night success,
and are now taking a breather, the forces of darkness that control the
Democratic Party (think Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Rahm
Emanuel and the whole Democratic Leadership Council), are grabbing
control of the new administration, filling the incoming Obama cabinet
with carryover hacks from the Clinton administration, even including
the Clintons themselves, and, in some cases, the outgoing Bush
administration).

This is, in other words, no time to sit back and relax, reveling in
the admittedly hard-to-believe prospect of an African-American moving
into the White House. It is a time for action and then more action.

When Barack Obama makes that dramatic walk from his Inauguration
Day speech at the Capitol building to the White House, the streets need
to be lined with protestors holding up signs calling for an immediate
end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When the new Congress tries to vote for a $50 –billion or
$150-billion bail-out of the US auto industry, we need to be packing
the halls shouting it down. That money should be going only into
development of zero-emission automobiles, and it should be in the form
of voting-share equity in those companies.

Here, for what it’s worth, are my top 10 demands for action by the new Democratic government iin Washington:

1. US forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Immediately! Shift the
funds saved to reconstruction aid for those two countries and to
veterans benefits, with any extra savings going to help fund education
in poor school districts in the US.

2. Slash military spending by closing most or all overseas military
bases, by dramatically reducing nuclear forces to near zero, by
reducing the number of men and women in uniform, and by closing bases
in the US. Savings should go to shoring up the Social Security and
Medicare Trust Fund.

3. Open up the secret intelligence budget, currently running at over
$40 billion a year, and cut it, for starters, by half. Savings should
also go to the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund. (Along the way,
ban all spying on Americans, and revive the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act in full as originally written.)

4. Break up the banking and automobile industry, as well as any
other industry in which any player is so large it is able to extort
money out of the government by threatening that its failure would cause
a national economic crisis. “Too big to fail” needs to mean “too big to
be permitted to exist.”

5. Join the Kyoto Treaty, and pledge to immediately begin a campaign
to reduce US carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 or better, 2030.
Establish a crash national research program to develop carbon-free
energy sources, and provide funding for households to convert to
passive geo-thermal heating and cooling systems. Funds can come from
the unused $350-billion portion of the Paulson/Bernacke Wall Street
bailout fund. (Talk about a job-creation program, not to mention a big
whack at imported oil!)

6. Pass the Employer Free Choice Act, requiring employers to
recognize a labor union wherever a majority of the workers have signed
cards saying they want a union, and requiring those employers to
negotiate and reach an initial contract agreement within 90 days, or
under mandatory mediation.

7. Reassert the Constitutionally mandated authority of Congress by
rescinding all Bush/Cheney-era signing statements and executive orders
and declaring them, by Presidental declaration and by Joint Resolution
of the Congress, to have been invalid and unconstitutional.

8. Order the US Justice Department to investigate the actions of the
prior administration and, where crimes are discovered, to prosecute
offenders, up to and including the former president, to the full extent
of the law. This would include obstruction of justice, abuse of power,
commission of war crimes, conspiracy, fraud, bribery, war profiteering
and criminal negligence.

9. Appoint Ralph Nader as new chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission, with a powerful mandate take the necessary steps to restore
competition and fairness to the nation’s media. (My pet proposal:
Establish a government loan fund to allow workers at failing newspapers
to buy their publications from the owners and to operate them as
employee-owned enterprises, on a tax-free basis.)

10. Enact a national health care program that provides health
insurance for every person in America. My choice here would be a
single-payer system—essentially an expansion of Medicare to cover
everyone, funded by progressive taxation. Failing that, a system in
which the government has an insurance program operating in competition
with the private sector, should eventually lead to a single-payer plan.
One idea: dispatch a public-citizen commission to Canada to study the
Canadian health system and report back to Congress and the White House
in 90 days.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006).
His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

The War Criminals Cannot Define the Democratic Party

Bob Fertik — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:57:31 -0400

I haven't weighed in on Obama's choice for Vice President, but DLC founder Al From just made it easy with this quote in support of Evan Bayh:

"The antiwar people cannot define the Democratic Party," said Al From, a founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, of which Mr. Bayh was chairman for four years. "I think Evan's real strength is you get someone on the ticket who has a record of being strong on national security, and that is a very important quality to have."

So Al From believes supporting the invasion of Iraq makes a politician "strong on national security"?

By anyone objective measure, the disastrous invasion of Iraq has done more to weaken our national security than any other action in U.S. history.

The direct and indirect costs of the war are $3 trillion
Most of that $3 trillion has gone to the Chinese authoritarians (to buy our every-growing national debt) and the Arab sheiks (for $140/barrel oil)
The invasion weakened Iran's enemy and enormously strengthened Iran
While most of the world supported the U.S. after the 9/11 attack, the invasion and occupation turned most of the world against us
The invasion of Iraq drove up oil and gas prices, which greatly strengthened Russia. Russia is now exerting its new power in Georgia and threatening all of the former Soviet republics
Bush antagonized our strongest allies in "Old Europe" and thereby weakened NATO
Bush let Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora and Al Qaeda has grown significantly
Bush pulled troops out of Afghanistan to invade Iraq and let the Taliban regroup in Pakistan and left Afghanistan in the hands of corrupt opium-exporting warlords

These are the disastrous consequences of the war that Al From, Evan Bayh, and the BushDemocrats supported - and continue to support.

The unprovoked invasion of Iraq was nothing less than a war crime as defined by the U.N. Charter. The war criminals like From and Bayh cannot define the Democratic Party.

Update 1: From the NY Times:

Mr. Bayh’s support of authorizing force in Iraq stands in sharp contrast to Mr. Obama’s oft-stated view that he showed the good judgment to oppose the conflict from the start. After his vote, Mr. Bayh in early 2003 joined Mr. McCain as an honorary co-chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which made regime change in Iraq its central cause.

“He was not only wrong, he was aggressively wrong,” said Tom Andrews, national director of the Win Without War coalition, referring to Mr. Bayh. “In my view, he would contradict if not undermine the Obama message of change, turning a new page on foreign policy and national security.”

Why Do "Conservative" Democrats Support Warrantless Wiretapping?

Bob Fertik — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:24:38 -0400

I cannot for the life of me understand why any Democrat would vote for warrantless wiretapping.

I can easily understand why every Republican would. Republicans fully support the Bush Dictatorship in every way, including imperialism, torture, corruption, and warrantless wiretapping. If George Bush took the completely opposite positions (as he did before the 2000 election), they would support him too. They don't think and have no principles, they blindly follow their ~~Fuhrer~~ Leader.

But why would any Democrat - including our party leaders?

At the Presidential polling blog FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver analyzed 31 vulnerable House Democrats in conservative-leaning seats, and found 23 voted for warrantless wiretapping, while 8 voted against. Nate observes,

Did these Democrats vote for the FISA bill because they think it will help them to get re-elected? Or were they elected in 2006 because they were conservative enough Democrats to vote for this legislation in the first place?

But wait a minute!

Until George Bush stole the White House in 2000, "conservatives" stood for "freedom," the Constitution, smaller government and strict law enforcement.

Doesn't anyone remember Ronald Reagan, let alone Barry Goldwater? Is anyone familiar with Milton Friedman or the NRA or Ron Paul? (For the record, Ron Paul didn't vote. He has real principles, no?)

By each of these standards, opposing warrantless wiretapping is the "conservative" stance. And any Democrat running in a "conservative" district who wants "conservative" votes should oppose warrantlesss wiretapping, not support it!

The only possible arguments for supporting warrantless wiretapping are

absolute trust in and support for Republican dictatorship,
the belief that corporations should be completely unaccountable, and/or
the desire to give up all freedoms because there are terrorists who hate us.

Obviously the Republican Party now believes this. But do "conservatives"? Has George Bush not only redefined the meaning of "Republican," but also the meaning of "conservative"?

I'm sure if you went to an NRA meeting and asked members if they believe the government should have the power to listen to your phone calls and read your emails without a warrant issued by a judge, they would grab their biggest gun and point it at your Big Government head. (Interestingly, there is no mention of wiretapping - or even Big Government - on the NRA issues page, which proves that the NRA is simply a Republican front group, just like Ron Paul is a Republican hack.)

Surely Democrats in "conservative" districts understand the NRA mentality, whether they personally share it or not.

The bottom line is: we cannot begin to understand why "conservative" Democrats voted for warrantless wiretapping until we reject the idea that it was a "conservative" vote.

So if it wasn't a "conservative" vote, what was it? Here are the possibilities:

Stupidity
Corruption for telecom and corporate cash
Fear of attack ads by Republicans and/or their 527 allies
"Sistah Soulah" triangulation
Blind obedience to Steny Hoyer

1. Stupidity

Anyone familiar with the NRA mentality would realize that "conservatives" oppose warrantless wiretapping. But it's possible that "conservative" Democrats aren't familiar with the NRA mentality. In that case, the only word to describe them is stupid.

It's also possible that the Democrats who voted for the warrantless wiretapping bill think it is a good bill and don't understand they voted for warrantless wiretapping - that even if they wrote the strictest possible language, George Bush will simply ignore it and continue to wiretap anyone he pleases without a warrant. Again, if they believe that, the only word to describe them is stupid.

Finally, it's possible that Democrats support it because it's a "bi-partisan compromise," which is the Ultimate Good according to "High Broderism," the philosophy of Washington Press Corpse Dean David Broder. Any Member who listened to the passionate floor debate by Democratic opponents - or tallied their phone calls and emails - knows this was no compromise, just a Democratic sellout. So if they really believe this is a compromise, the only word to describe them is stupid.

2. Corruption for telecom and corporate cash

It takes a lot of money to win in a competitive district, and the telecom giants are rich and powerful companies that give away a lot of money. So it's easy to understand the desire of Democrats in these districts to try to get a chunk of telecom money. And there's a simple word for it: corruption.

3. Fear of attack ads by Republicans and/or their 527 allies

We know Republicans and their 527 allies will use any issue to attack Democrats, whether or not it bears any relationship to reality or truth. So it's easy to understand the desire of Democrats in these districts to avoid giving Republicans an issue to attack them with. Of course, Republicans tried to use this very issue in 2006, most notably in the CT05 race between incumbent Nancy Johnson (R) and challenger Chris Murphy (D). And who won? Murphy. Based on that experience, a rational politician would conclude that warrantless wiretapping ads don't work. But we all know that primitive emotions trump rational analysis every time. And there is no more primitive emotion than fear.

4. "Sister Soulah" triangulation

During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton proved he was not a "knee-jerk liberal" by going before Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition to attack hip hop MC Sister Souljah, who was quoted in the Washington Post saying "If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" This was the quintessential act of "triangulation" - winning votes in the center by attacking the "far left."

Digby thinks Obama may be following this Clinton strategy, substituting Dirty F**ing Hippies (DFH's, a.k.a. progressive blog readers) for black radicals.

I am tempted to say this is a Sistah Soljah moment, wherein Barack makes it clear to the Villagers that he is not one of the DFH's, despite all their ardent support. Nothing is more associated with us than this issue. It may even make sense on some sort of abstract level. He's obviously decided that he has to run to the right pretty hard to counteract that "most liberal Senator" label.

But while Digby floats this idea as a possibility, she doesn't buy it.

But, I actually have no idea what his motivation is any more than the rest of the Democrats, who seem stuck in some 2004 time warp, fighting the battle of Fallujah with Don Rumsfeld. He may genuinely think the legislation is good or just be afraid that the Republicans will use it against him.

In other words, see stupidity and fear above.

5. Blind obedience to Steny Hoyer

While Nancy Pelosi is nominally the top Democrat in the House, "conservative" Democrats view Pelosi as too liberal for their taste, and line up behind Steny Hoyer instead.

Hoyer isn't actually a conservative on social issues; he's pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-environment, pro-estate tax. But he is "conservative" on what Beltway insiders falsely call "national security" issues, which include Iraq, the Patriot Act, and wiretapping.

And he is also "conservative" on business issues, which allows him to raise large amounts of cash from business lobbyists on K Street. And he eagerly directs that cash to Democrats who will take it and vote for their interests, creating a positive feedback loop that draws "conservative" Democrats ever closer to Big Business.

On Capitol Hill, where campaign cash is God, this is considered "smart" politics. Outside the Beltway, this is considered bribery.

Oddly, we have just started a general election campaign where campaign finance is an important and interesting issue. The battle against corrupting campaign contributions, and for cleaner campaign finance, is central to the political identities of both McCain and Obama.

Moreover, Obama has revolutionized campaign funding through his brilliant Internet campaign, which has enlisted 1.5 million donors, 90% of whom have contributed small amounts under $200. Because he has been so successful at small-donor fundraising, Obama opted-out of public funding so he wouldn't be limited to $85 million, and instead could spend $300 million or more - without selling his political soul to big donors.

And that huge sum of money won't simply elect Obama as President - it will also allow him to run a 50-state campaign that sweeps Democrats into office at all levels. And where there are close races, he can target some of his cash to individual Democrats who need it.

Given this enormous Democratic cash advantage, why would Hoyer sell Democratic souls for corporate cash?

And why would Obama let him - even encourage him, as most bloggers believe he did?

At the end of this long blog, I remain as puzzled as when I began. None of this makes sense - either ideologically or politically.

Something is very wrong inside the Democratic Party. We need to figure out what it is, and we need to change it - before our "leaders" join with hard-core rightwing Republicans to create a neo-Fascist state.

BushDemocrat Endorsement #1: Regina Thomas GA12

Bob Fertik — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:32:55 -0400

I just got off the phone State Senator Regina Thomas, and I can't tell you how excited I am!

Thomas is running against BushDemocrat John Barrow in Georgia's 12th District in a primary on July 15, just 4 weeks away. Barrow voted with George Bush on every issue we track, including Iraq, Iran, habeas corpus, and wiretapping. His district is 45% black, yet he votes like a southern rightwing Republican.

Yesterday, Barrow voted to give Bush $163B more to occupy Iraq. Today, he voted to give Bush unlimited power to wiretap American citizens. But Georgia Democrats do not have to tolerate his rightwing votes. On July 15, they can replace Barrow with Regina Thomas.

I called Thomas for a statement about today's warrantless wiretapping vote, and I was thrilled to discover she is just as angry as we are. Here's what she said:

I was really appalled at the actions of Congress and especially my Congressman from the 12th District in Georgia, John Barrow, for voting in favor of the Bush-Republican surveillance bill that would make it very easy, without a warrant, to wiretap *any* American citizen.

In my opinion, this bill is smoke and mirrors with hidden agendas to allow the government or any other entity to use terrorism as a reason to put surveillance on anyone's telephone, to tape their conversations without any proof, without any investigation, just for them to say FISA gives me the right for you as a telecom company to spy on people.

This also violates the 4th Amendment right to privacy. And what is this country coming to?

Exactly - what is this country coming to?

Naturally, I was delighted to tell Thomas that she was the first candidate we endorsed for our "Bush Democrats" ActBlue page (http://www.actblue.com/page/bushdemocrats), and in our very first morning we raised over $800. Needless to say, she was most grateful for our support!

In an effort to control my enthusiasm, I asked Thomas about the depressing news that Barack Obama endorsed Barrow and recorded a radio ad, which caused outrage this week on many blogs. Thomas would have none of it. "That's the best thing that happened to me!" she countered. "People are angry about this! Here's a man who has not served his district, and Obama is messing in our local businesss. I'm getting emails from Illinois, Pennsylvania, even Taiwan! A man in his 80's with a small retirement was sending a check to Obama each month, and now he's sending it to me. The response is incredible," she said.

I asked if there were any polls. "We haven't had the money for a poll, but Barrow took a poll and he didn't like the results, because he got Obama to make the ad. He refuses to show up for debates, and is sending surrogates who look like me. But people aren't fooled, they see right through it. Why is he afraid to debate me?" she asked.

I asked if it was true that roughly 70% of the primary voters would be African-American. "That's true," she said. "And voters are very enthusiastic, honking when they drive by, yelling 'we're voting for you! We've got your back! But it's not just African-Americans, it's white voters too," she said.

I'm a white voter, and just from our brief call I can understand why Democrats of all backgrounds would be so excited about Thomas' campaign. If you share my enthusiasm and want to replace a BushDemocrat with an Aggressive Progressive, please contribute to Regina Thomas here:
http://www.actblue.com/page/bushdemocrats

Thank you!

Finding Voters 'Bitter and Frustrated,' Obama is Sounding Like Nader

dlindorff — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:55:21 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I haven’t lived in rural Pennsylvania or in rural Indiana, but I have lived in rural upstate New York, in towns where there are so few Democrats that on some local election ballots, not a single position, from town council to justice of the peace, has a contest. As in China, your option is to vote for the Republican candidate, or to leave that line blank.

And many of the people in these towns, uniformly white, when they talk politics, spend a lot of their time complaining about black people, immigrants (neither of whom can even be found in the vicinity) and the threat to their guns.

Barack Obama is exactly right.

In Hancock, NY and Spencer, NY, there are no factory jobs. There used to be in Hancock, but the companies where hundreds of people used to work have long since folded or moved south of the border, courtesy of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) aggressively promoted and pushed through Congress by Bill and Hillary Clinton during the 1990s. In Spencer, there are no jobs because in the free-for-all bidding by companies for tax giveaways between communities, Spencer had nothing much to offer. The town is so dirt poor that when the library board, of which I was briefly president, got a measure on the ballot to have one extra dollar per taxpayer of school district taxes allocated to support the local little library, which was at that time totally supported by donations, the measure went down to resounding defeat (I was labeled a communist by some for promoting the idea!).

In 1992, neighbors in Spencer told me they were voting for George H. W. Bush—a patrician blue blood if ever there was one—because Bill Clinton, if elected “would take away our guns.”

Of course, he didn’t, and had no intention of doing so, but that didn’t matter.

Don’t get me wrong—the people in Hancock and Spencer are good folks. I'm pretty sure many of them probably give a higher proportion of their meager incomes to charity than do millionaires John McCain and Hillary Clinton. But Obama is right that in their angst and frustration at seeing the good economic times pass them by, at seeing themselves abandoned by the federal government in hard times, and at seeing candidates promise them everything during campaigns, only to ignore them after winning, they are bitter and frustrated.

And they have a right to be, and they should be.

One response to that bitterness and frustration is that they are open to the charlatans in both parties, and especially the Republican Party, who have played on their basest fears. It’s Republicans who have whispered the poison in their ears that their high taxes are because “the Blacks” are getting all that welfare money and are getting all the jobs through “quotas.” It's the Republicans who have warned them about "hoards" of Mexicans coming across the border to steal their jobs. It’s the Republicans who have been warning them that Democrats are going to take their hunting rifles and shotguns away. It’s the Republicans and their Christian fundamentalist front men who have been saying that the Democrats have been causing the nation’s decline by supporting licentiousness and a “gay” agenda. And it's Republicans and Democrats who have been hyping the bogus issue of national defense to keep people from focusing on the deliberate dismantling of the US economy that is underway. (Over years of Republican and Democratic administrations, the tax contribution of US corporations to the national budget has fallen from 50% in 1940 to just 14% today. Between 1996 and 2000, 61% of all corporations and 39% of large corporations paid no taxes at all, and that situation has only gotten worse in the Bush years.)

Anything but the real issue, which is how to provide funds so that the children in places like Spencer and Hancock can get a decent education without bankrupting the local taxpayers, how those communities can get jobs again, so that their children won’t have to move out, how to ensure that everyone in town can have health insurance and access to medical care.

Barack Obama is right. I've seen it in person. The people in rural America are bitter and frustrated, and after years of being played by politicians, they fall victim to the charlatans who tell them it’s all because of “the Blacks,” or the immigrants, or who tell them that their guns are in danger. Or they turn to religions that preach division or apocalypse—a concept that offers the chance of a final, delicious revenge against the rich and the powerful oppressors on Wall Street and in Washington.

Now I don’t know what Obama has in mind to try and turn things around for these good people, but it’s a start that he’s at least talking to them, not down, but honestly.
His talk in response to attacks on his statement about rural residents being “bitter and frustrated” is as good as anything Ralph Nader has said about the power and mendacity of the ruling political elite in America.

As he put it, to wild applause at a rally in Terra Haute, Indiana, explaining the difficulty of appealing to the rural working class voters in Pennsylvania:

“For the last 25 years they’ve seen jobs shift overseas, they’ve seen their economies collapse, they have lost their jobs, they’ve lost their pensions, they’ve lost their health care. And for 25-30 years, Democrats and Republicans have come before then and said we’re gonna make your community better. We’re gonna make it right.
“And nothing ever happens. And of course they’re bitter, and of course they’re frustrated. You would be too, in fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing has happened across the border in Decatur. (Wild applause) The same thing has happened across the country. Nobody’s looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you.

“And so people end up, they don’t vote on economic issues, because they don’t expect anybody’s gonna help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns—you know are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. You know, they, they take refuge in their faith, and their communities, their families—things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.

“So here’s what’s rich. Sen. Clinton says, `Well I don’t think people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know I think Barack’s being condescending.’ And John McCain says, `Oh how can he say that? How can he say that people are bitter? You know he obviously is out of touch with the…’”
“Out of touch? Out of touch! I mean, John McCain, it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he’s saying I’m out of touch?”

“Sen. Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt, after taking money from the financial services companies and she says I’m out of touch?

“No, I’m in touch. I know exactly what’s going on. I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania, I know what’s going on in Indiana. I know what’s going on in Illinois. (Standing ovation) People are fed up! They’re angry, and they’re frustrated and they’re bitter and they want to see a change in Washington, and that’s why I’m running for president of the United States of America!”

Now who knows whether this is all talk too. Maybe Obama is just one more political charlatan.

What is clear though is that this was a speech that we have not heard from a Democratic politician for decades, and it sure sounded good to hear it.

If Obama sticks to this rhetorical approach in the coming weeks, he will nail this nomination in spite of a concerted attack on him by the corporate media and by the combined forces of the Clintons and McCain.

And if he does win the nomination, and resists the siren calls of the Democratic Party leadership to “move to the middle,” and instead hones this populist message, he will go on to win the presidency.

That’s when the real challenge will come, for an aroused citizenry, in those rural communities and in the larger cities across that nation, to make a President Obama and a Democratic Congress deliver on these words.

For now, they’re pretty powerful words, and just hearing them coming from a Democratic Party frontrunner is an exciting change.
____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. He lived with his family in Spencer, NY from 1986-1992 and has had a home in Hancock, NY since 1984. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

On Waking Sleeping Giants

dlindorff — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:27:26 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

During my six-year sojourn in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, one of the things I came away with was a sense of how generally un-nationalistic and non-patriotic the Chinese people were.

Caught up in the struggle first to simply survive and then, in the mid-90s, to try and grab onto the moving train that was China’s new Great Leap into Capitalism, average mainland Chinese, whether out in the remote farmlands of western Anhui Province or in the rundown houses lining the hutongs of Shanghai or Beijing, had no time for patriotic displays or nationalistic concerns.

When Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing would beat the drum of nationalism over Taiwanese independence efforts in the 1990s, it evoked mostly yawns among average Chinese people, and in fact, to Beijing’s embarrassment, a popular computer game featured a war-game in which Taiwan defeated the People’s Liberation Army.

That all started to change when the US, early in the first term of President George W. Bush, taunted the Chinese by flying a spy plane into Chinese airspace, damaging a Chinese fighter jet that flew up to intercept it, and getting forced down itself on Hainan Island. That incident aroused a lot of anger among ordinary Chinese who felt that the US was pushing their country around, and who felt pride at their country’s willingness and ability to stand tough and take the American plane hostage.

Now, the Tibet uprising, which has garnered global support, particularly in Europe and the US, has further inflamed Chinese nationalism, with most Chinese seeing Tibet as part of China’s historic imperial realm, and the global backing for Tibet nationalists as a throwback to 19th Century and early 20th Century imperialist attacks on China by the West.

In a way, the Tibetan riots have been a golden opportunity for China’s sclerotic Communist Party leadership, which has been feeling growing pressure to open up the political system, but which can now ride a wave of unthinking nationalism and push those democratic pressures aside, at least for a time (much as 9-11 allowed Bush and Cheney to do the same to democratic traditions and the rule of law in the US).

The 2008 Olympics set for Beijing, which many Chinese democrats had hoped would force China to open up space for them, thanks to the wave of western tourists and journalists and all the global media attention that they would bring to the country, will now be held under tight police guard on the largely trumped-up excuse of threats of Tibetan terrorism.

There is a lesson here for America, though I doubt that the policymakers in Washington are of a mind to take it. That lesson applies to Iran.

The neoconservatives who have dominated the Bush administration, and who appear to be gaining the ear of Republican presidential presumptive nominee John McCain, and whose neoliberal relatives in the Democratic Leadership Council also seem to have Hillary Clinton in their pocket, all talk of taking a hard line with Iran over its alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Bush and Vice President Cheney talk openly of attacking Iran, and indeed Cheney may have been preparing for just such a disastrous action with his so-called “peace trip” to the Middle East last month (a trip that was followed by a nationwide five-day mobilization in Israel, and by calls from the Saudi government for preparations for a possible wave of nuclear fallout to hit that country). McCain, meanwhile, has entertained supporters by bastardizing a Beach Boys hit and singing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb! Bomb Iran!” Hillary Clinton, for her part, signed on to a war-mongering piece of legislation sponsored a few months ago by Senate warmonger-in-chief Joe Lieberman (D-CT), which gratuitously designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a “global terrorist” organization—an open invitation for Bush to order an attack on military bases in Iran.

The problem with this mad strategy of attacking Iran is that its effect would be to galvanize the Iranian people, who like the Chinese, currently have little love for their repressive theocratic government, and little interest in nationalist heroics, not to mention little innate hostility towards America, and to turn them into super-patriots ready to fight and die for their country.

Like China, Iran is an ancient and proud civilization, and one of the oldest continuous polities in the world today. Its culture, thousands of years old, helped to engender what we today call Western civilization. Its writers, poets, musicians, scientists and artists have produced ideas and creations to rival those of any other nation on the globe.

If the US were to attack Iran—even if that attack were carefully targeted at only government buildings, nuclear facilities and military bases—the country’s largely apolitical population would predictably stand together as one to rally in defense of their nation. Just as the Chinese people have rallied ‘round the flag as China is attacked—in this case from within by Tibetan separatists and from without by supporters of a Free Tibet—Iranians would rally ‘round the flag if their country came under attack—especially if that attack came from the same country which undermined and overthrew their popular democratically elected government half a century ago, installing the hated Shah.

Now talk about stupid policies!

I agree that China has no business owning Tibet—any more than the US should own Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, or the lands it stole from the indigenous peoples of America. And I agree that the mullahs who rule Iraq with an iron hand are a despicable bunch of bigots and misogynous sociopaths who should go back to their mosques and stay out of politics—just as bone-headed fundamentalist church leaders should stay out of politics here. But threatening these countries, as America did with its spy plane flights near China in 2001 and with its current rhetoric about “regime change” in and war against Iran, is not the way to achieve those ends.

If China ultimately lets Tibetans have self-determination or independence, it will be because the Tibetans demanded it and because the Chinese people agreed to let them have it—or it will be because central authority in China, and with it control over its boundaries—has collapsed, as it historically has done a number of times.

Similarly, the if Iran ultimately ousts its theocratic leadership and returns to the democratic path so abruptly derailed by the CIA two generations ago, it will be because its own long-suffering people made that change, not because of the American military and America’s blustery leaders. In fact, American politicians and generals can only delay that day by their threats and by any actual ill-conceived military action.
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Dave Lindorff, a Philadelphia-based journalist, was a two-time Fulbright Scholar in China, and majored in Chinese language at Wesleyan University. He has lived in Shanghai, Xian, Hong Kong and in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Why BlueDog Democrats Make Me Sick

Bob Fertik — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:38:56 -0500

Matt Stoller blogs about Democrat Bill Foster's special election campaign in IL-14 for the open seat vacated by Denny Hastert. For some unfathomable reason, Foster is embracing the Blue Dogs because he thinks they stand for "deficit reduction":

Paying down this debt must be the first order of business. I intend to work with the Blue Dog Democrats in congress -- a group dedicated to curing this by making the hard decisions necessary -- as well as any other groups that make deficit reduction their top priority. I'm sure that I'll be at odds with the Blue Dogs on more than a few issues - for example mortgage industry reform - but when it comes to deficit reduction, we all agree that we have to get our house in order.

Personally, I'm a rock-ribbed fiscal conservative - I don't want government at any level to waste a penny on anything.

And the most wasteful government expenditure in the history of the world is Iraq, which has cost $500 billion so far and will cost $3 trillion unless we bring our troops home.

Below are the 48 Blue Dogs. How many of them voted against the latest blank check for $70 Billion on 1/16/08? Exactly none.

Michael Arcuri NY24
Joe Baca CA43
John Barrow GA12
Melissa Bean IL08
Marion Berry AR01
Sanford Bishop GA02
Dan Boren OK02
Leonard Boswell IA03
Allen Boyd FL02
Dennis Cardoza CA18
Christopher Carney PA10
Ben Chandler KY06
Jim Cooper TN05
Jim Costa CA20
Bud Cramer AL05
Lincoln Davis TN04
Joe Donnelly IN02
Brad Ellsworth IN08
Gabrielle Giffords AZ08
Kirsten Gillibrand NY20
Bart Gordon TN06
Jane Harman CA36
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin SD00
Baron Hill IN09
Tim Holden PA17
Steve Israel NY02
Nick Lampson TX22
Tim Mahoney FL16
Jim Marshall GA08
Jim Matheson UT02
Mike McIntyre NC07
Charlie Melancon LA03
Michael Michaud ME02
Dennis Moore KS03
Patrick Murphy PA08
Collin Peterson MN07
Earl Pomeroy ND00
Mike Ross AR04
John Salazar CO03
Loretta Sanchez CA47
Adam Schiff CA29
David Scott GA13
Heath Shuler NC11
Zachary Space OH18
John Tanner TN08
Gene Taylor MS04
Mike Thompson CA01
Charles Wilson OH06

BlueDogs aren't fiscal conservatives - they are whores for the Military Industrial Complex.

And that's why they make me sick.

Obama and Progressive Change

dlindorff — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:57:07 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

I don’t want to overstate the case for Barack Obama, who has been fairly circumspect about his intentions if elected. While saying he is against the Iraq War, he has not acted very forcefully to help bring it to an end. And he certainly has not called for any downsizing of America’s bloated military budget or any end to its imperialist foreign policy—absolutely essential if there is to be any progressive change of consequence in the US.

That said, those who believe that the Democratic Party is firmly in the hands of a malignant and self-serving corporate and political elite have to explain why “their” candidate, Hillary Clinton, seems to be sinking.

Meanwhile, it must be acknowledged that the Obama phenomenon is a real thing. That is to say, whatever his personal politics, his candidacy is genuinely igniting a wave of passionate support across the nation among people—particularly the young, and more recently African Americans—who had for years been ignored by, and consequently disinterested in the political process.

It might be that this is all the result of the magic of charisma, a winning smile and a good turn of phrase. But even so, it would be a mistake for the jaded left, myself included, to dismiss this phenomenon as meaningless, and to ignore it or its potential.

Indeed, I want to suggest here that Obama may at this point have the proverbial tiger by the tail, in that his clarion calls for “hope” and for “change” may be stirring up hopes and expectations for those very things in a way that will not easily be denied should he succeed. (In this he does resemble Jack Kennedy, whose own politics tended to be conservative and Establishment, but whose rhetoric helped stir a generation to political idealism, and may have contributed to the era of '60s activism.)

I would also suggest that while Sen. Obama may well be part of the party Establishment—with a record as a safe backer of the status quo—if he succeeds in winning the nomination, and especially if he goes on and wins the White House, it will be because he has aroused a huge pool of voters in this country who had until now been cynically staying away from politics. It will be because he has transcended the racial divide that has stymied real political change for so long.

And the forces that are propelling him toward the nomination, and toward the White House, are forces that will not easily be denied if they succeed.

That is to say, a President Barack Obama, whatever his own political beliefs (and we don’t really know much about the man), could well find himself, thanks to the movement that puts him in power, freed from the shackles of the Democratic Leadership Council and the army of advisors of stasis and corporatism that cling to most Democratic political figures like barnacles to a rotting pier.

For this to happen, Obama will first have to reach out beyond his current base of support, to rank-and-rile workers—both unionized and non-union--to Latinos and other minority groups, and to older Americans. He’ll have to reach out, that is, to the groups that have thus far still been backing Hillary Clinton and the party Establishment. He need not win all those groups over to his side—in fact it would be better if he didn’t. He needs only to win over the disaffected within those groups—the people who recognize that they have been betrayed by the two parties and by the System.

Should this happen—and it probably will have to happen for this first serious black candidate for the presidency to successfully beat back the Clintonians and the DLC, who will try to kill off his candidacy before the convention—Obama will have been, perhaps in spite of himself, or perhaps because there is in him still some spark of insurgency, transformed into a real agent of progressive change.

None of this means that a President Obama would be a new Franklin Roosevelt. The pressures on any president to “cool it” and play the game of supporting the big moneyed interests that have been undermining and hollowing out America for decades are enormous. But certainly an alternative reality is also possible—namely that an aroused and newly empowered bloc of voters, in bringing a black politician to the pinnacle of power in America, could tip the balance and free that new president from outside of the White Establishment to follow his better instincts. (Franklin Roosevelt himself, remember, was no Franklin Roosevelt when he ran for office; the movement that installed him in office made him into the transformative New Deal figure he became.)

Progressives cannot be naive about this. Even if I’m right, for a Barack Obama administration to become the dawn of a genuine progressive era, it would demand tremendous organizing and continuous political campaigning after Election Day. There will surely be a serious effort by the political Establishment—both on Wall Street and inside the Beltway—to rein in both a new president and the forces that put him there. And Obama himself—clearly no visceral radical--will need to be convinced that the path to a second term lies through heeding his populist base, not through reaching accommodation with the sclerotic old guard.

That is a call-to-arms, though, not a reason to ignore this possibility.

What I’m suggesting here is that Barack Obama’s campaign, by its very rhetoric of change, may be creating something bigger than Barack Obama, and that Barack Obama may never have intended: a powerful constituency for real change.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in paperback edition). His work can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net

I'm Going to Make a Prediction Here: Hillary's Toast

dlindorff — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:36:52 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

For two years now, I have been telling people who insisted that Hillary Clinton would be the next Democratic candidate for president that they were wrong. I even put it in writing a few times.

Now I'm going to really put it out there: Hillary Clinton is Toast. She is not going to be the Democratic nominee.

The reason I always figured she wouldn't make it across the primary finish line was that she was too calculatingly conservative for primary voters.

For years, it has been the case that Democratic primary voters have been more liberal than the broader spectrum of registered Democratic voters. That is because progressive voters have generally been better educated and also more motivated to try to have an impact on the decisions of "their" party than other voters who just mechanically, or out of habit, checked the Democratic box when they registered to vote. Then you have to add to the mix the reality that independents, who vote in the primaries of many of the 50 states, are often, contrary to conventional wisdom, way more "liberal," or better, anti-Establishment, on many issues than are Democrats.

Clinton, meanwhile, is the quintessential Establishment candidate. She has honed her resume, she has cautiously calculated the impact of every critical vote in the Senate. Even as Mr. Bill's unofficial adviser, she played the role of making sure that White House decisions hewed to the center-right, as for example when she pressed him to defund welfare, or to gut habeas rights for death penalty prisoners. Her craven authorship in the Senate more recently for a flag-burning law (it narrowly failed to pass), and her vote in support of the mortally dangerous Kyle-Lieberman bill last year (which would, if passed in its original form, have declared Iran's main armed force, the Revolutionary Guard, to be a "global terrorist organization," thus giving President Bush all the authorization he thinks he needs to attack that country), epitomize her politics.

Moreover, while it does sometimes appear that the Democratic Party has a death wish, I've never subscribed to that theory. I think that party leaders do want to win the White House and to keep control of Congress, not because they want to reform the system, but because they want all the perks, patronage and payola that go to the winner. And I think they all are acutely aware that Hillary cannot win in November against a candidate like John McCain. Indeed, she probably could not win against any of the main Republican hopefuls for president.

My guess is that they'll watch what happens over the next month, and if Barack Obama doesn't keep advancing in the polls and the delegate count, they'll do something to sink her candidacy, which we'll see happen when the so-called Super Delegates--the party "ins" and big-wigs--jump to Obama. The talk at the Democratic National Committee about holding caucuses in Michigan and Florida (the two states that held early primaries against party rules and had their delegations ruled unseatable at the Convention), instead of letting them ultimately be seated, is a direct indication that the Party doesn't want the contest going to Clinton. Clinton won both those primaries, which were held before the Obama surge really got going. If the delegations as voted in the primaries were allowed to be seated at the convention, Clinton would be way out front right now.

I predict they won't be. Those delegates will be reallocated at caucuses at which Obama's people will be dominant.

So for my money, it looks like Obama v. McCain in November.

And a good thing that is, because Clinton v. McCain would have resulted in President McCain.

Obama's "change" rhetoric may be ludicrously empty, but it sounds more real coming from his mouth than from his imitators, including Clinton, and that's enough to bring primary voters, who sure enough do want change, over to his column.

You read it here.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

They're Scaring Us to Death

dlindorff — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:21:38 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Well, now we know. Scientists have documented that the Bush/Cheney administration has been a greater threat to Americans’ health and safety than Osama Bin Laden and his terror band.

Specifically, The New York Times, in its science section today, reports that a new study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry has found that while the risk to Americans of dying at the hands of a terrorist was roughly equal to the chance of “drowning in a toilet,” the risk of cardiovascular disease among people who are frightened about the threat of terrorism is 300-500% higher than for people who are not worried.

What this means is that the Bush/Cheney administration, by constantly hyping the nation’s fears of terror through the use of everything from daily color-coded terror alerts, to absurd inspection procedures at airline terminals and parcel post restrictions, is actually scaring some of us to death.

And for what?

From the moment those planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon back in September 2001, Bush, Cheney and their allies—Republican and Democrat—in Congress and the media have been peppering us with warnings that the “bad guys” are out to kill us, to destroy our way of life, and to defeat America.

It has been a ludicrous idea from the start. The idea that small gang of guys from the Middle East could bring the mightiest nation that the world has ever known to its knees, or even significantly threaten the safety and security of the people of the United States is simply absurd and laughable. Why, even the detonation of a small smuggled nuclear device in or near an American city, should such a thing ever come to pass, would be less of a threat to the nation as a whole than the eruption of one of our many active volcanoes—say Mt. Rainier or Mt. Hood, or the Yellowstone caldera—or an 8 or 9-point earthquake in San Francisco or Los Angeles. And those natural disasters are probably more likely than the explosion of a terrorist nuke.

Yet Bush, Cheney and other charlatans like Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and the former senator and now Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Rick Santorum continue to do the scare routine, warning that we are in grave danger—from Al Qaeda or Iran getting The Bomb, to Venezuela buying military aircraft from Brazil, to Cuba manufacturing dangerous biological weapons.

I have been stunned at the response of my fellow Americans to this blatant nonsense. Shortly after the Twin Towers went down, my local school district announced the cancellation for the entire year of all school trips! There was a fear among parents and members of the local school authorities that the buses carrying them to museums or the zoo might pose tempting targets for terrorists! Our kids were also treated to scary “intruder lockdowns” where they’d be locked with their teachers in their classrooms while local cops dressed in black SWAT gear and armed with assault rifles played army in the hallways looking for imaginary terrorists.

I’ve gone on plane flights where I’ve had to wait in line for an hour while Transportation Security Administration guards check the tiny shoes of six-month-old infants to make sure they weren’t shoe bombs, and have had to surrender countless bottles of mouthwash and drinking water and tubes of toothpaste, all suspected of being smuggled explosives. (I was also honored with an “S” mark on my boarding pass a couple of times, which meant I was pulled aside for special inspection for fear I might be a terrorist myself.)

All of this nonsense, however, is coming with a price. I can laugh because I know it’s nonsense. But some people aren’t laughing. They’re living in fear. And that fear is causing them to suffer cardiovascular disease, according to this new study.

Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, really, when it comes to the cost of the Washington terror scam.

American businesses have spent literally tens of billions of dollars—maybe hundreds of billions of dollars—on security measures, fearing terror attacks on their installations, or on their communications, or on Wall Street. Thousands of foreign science students and scientists have been banned from the US—or even deported--for fear they might be terrorists in training. Municipalities and states have spent billions in taxpayer dollars on security that they simply don’t need. My little town of Upper Dublin, just north of Philadelphia, with just some 26,000 people, has its own police SWAT team, for Pete’s sake, complete with a large gray SWAT vehicle—a panel truck loaded with heavy combat firepower capable of repelling a small third-world army. I wonder how many teachers that money could have hired? Maybe they wouldn’t have had to let the elementary music program go down the tubes.

I haven't mentioned the whole $1-2 trillion War in Iraq, which was all the result of presidential and vice presidential scare mongering.

And of course, that’s just the financial cost of scare mongering. We’ve also given up most of our Bill or Rights, and even some more ancient rights, like the right of Habeas Corpus. And we’re about to give up our entire right to privacy if the government gets its way and introduces a national identity card. How far away are we from having to get injected with identity chips?

All this panic and fear, and yet we still sing this national anthem that calls America “the home of the brave”?

I don’t think so. "Home of the scared shitless" might be more appropriate.

The good news is that maybe this new report on the health threat posed by government scare mongering will cause people to do something about it. If there’s one thing Americans get worked up about, it’s threats to their health. Look how anxious people get about Bird Flu, West Nile Virus, Anthrax, Bubonic Plague, AIDS, etc. Maybe now that we’re learning that worrying about terror can kill us, we’ll demand that officials and politicians in Washington just shut the hell up about it.

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t think about terrorists. The chances that I’m going to be the victim of a bombing, plane hijacking or mall attack is so minimal it can’t be measured.

I’m much more worried that the country that I grew up in has been hijacked by a bunch of power-mad war-mongers bent on destroying the Constitution and bringing to an end the free and free-wheeling society we’ve been building for over 200 years.

I hope that worrying doesn’t end up giving me a heart attack…
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net