Max's November 2 California Voting Suggestions

In a few prior elections I’ve provided relatively informal election guides to my friends and family as a small service to those who may not follow the news, and particularly politics, as closely as I do.  Given that these midterm elections on November 2 are shaping up to provide a veritable cornucopia of answers to some of the fascinating open questions bouncing around in our nation’s collective consciousness (Can crazy Tea Partier candidates really win contested seats?  Will the first-time voters that Obama brought out in 2008 return to the polls this year?  Will a 7-1 Republican advantage in spending by third-party groups, fueled by the Supreme Court’s heinous Citizens United ruling dramatically shape the election outcome?  Will Texas oil companies and Koch Industries roll back California’s progress on building a clean energy economy?  Will pot be legal?)

To me, the overarching question facing our nation is whether we will meet the collective challenges we face with courage and a willingness to continue to trod towards the new direction President Obama has outlined for us, or whether we will return to the policies of the previous administration.  Make no doubt about it, this election is about fear versus courage, and the forces that benefit from the continued economic, social, and health-related misery of Americans have been working nonstop to stimulate that fear in our country.  It is about standing up and facing the challenges put before us (climate change, an economic recovery without jobs, ongoing fraud at the highest levels of our financial and banking sectors, resource scarcity, increasing foreign economic competitiveness, etc.) with a clear understanding that setting ourselves up for long-term gains and prosperity may require some short-term sacrifices. 

Okay, so on with the candidates and ballot propositions, with the propositions’ ballot language quoted in the text below:

Ballot Propositions

Prop 19 – Legalizes marijuana under California law but not federal law.  Permits local governments to regulate and tax commercial production, distribution, and sale of marijuana.  YES

This was a tough one for me, because while I’m not wholeheartedly in favor of legalization, as I believe there could be unintended consequences, and I don’t use the stuff personally, so I won’t be directly affected, but nevertheless, there are three reasons I’ll vote for Prop 19.  1) A vote against the “War on Drugs” that has been a massive failure at the federal level; 2) Potential extra tax revenue for the state – whether it’ll really be $2 billion as proponents have claimed is doubtful due to simple supply and demand issues (if there’s more pot available on the market and buyers no longer have to pay a premium to compensate their suppliers for the risks they run, prices will go down) however anything helps California’s budget at this point; 3) A vote against the “incarceration-first, maybe-rehab-later if we have the budget for it” mentality that reigns in this country – once we can treat addictions as the diseases they are, rather than as simple crimes, I believe that will lead towards a far more humane crime control policy.

Prop 20 – Redistricting of Congressional Districts.  Initiative Constitutional Amendment.  YES

Another tough vote, as the political support and opposition to this particular initiative is a by-product of California’s Democratic-heavy political leanings.  In 2008, California voters passed Proposition 11, which instituted a Citizens Redistricting Commission, taking the power to draw the lines of state Assembly and Senate districts out of the hands of the legislators themselves and placing it in the Citizens Commission.  Prop 20 would extend the power of the Citizens Commission to redraw the lines for federal Congressional districts as well – something the Democrats in the state are wholly opposed to, due to the fact that, with non-gerrymandered districts, Democratic seats could be put at risk.  As a Democrat, I’m obviously not terribly interested in seeing Democrats lose seats in Congress; but as a citizen, I believe that we need to force politicians to actually fight for their seats, not just win by virtue of the proportion of registered Democrats to registered Republicans in their districts.  This is an anti-incumbent protection act, and therefore, I wholeheartedly urge a YES vote.  For more on the Proposition 20 opposition’s fairly anti-democratic campaign, see this article from LA Weekly.

Prop 21 – Established $18 annual vehicle license surcharge to help fund state parks and wildlife programs.  Grants surcharged vehicles free admission to all state parks.  Initiative statute.  YES

This one’s fairly straightforward – if we want to have the state supply services, we have to pay for them, plain and simple.  Gov. Schwarzenegger had to cut a lot for our budget to pass this year, and a YES vote on this proposition would help restore some needed services, including state parks.

Prop 22 – Prohibits the state from borrowing or taking funds used for transportation, redevelopment, or local government projects and services.  Initiative Constitutional Amendment.  NO

This is another tough one.  I strongly disagree with the State government swooping in and taking funds that are earmarked for local governments and using them on State priorities, however, I also am opposed to placing more budgetary restrictions on the State government.  The amount of discretionary budget that the State has authority over has shrunken over the years, and I’m afraid that placing more restrictions could have far-reaching implications.  I support local governments wholeheartedly, but sadly, on this one I have to recommend NO.

Prop 23 – Suspends implementation of Air Pollution Control Law (AB32) requiring major sources of emissions to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, until unemployment drops to 5.5% or less for full year.  Initiative statute.  NO

This is the one proposition I”m most concerned about, and I strongly STRONGLY urge a NO vote on it.  The Texas oil companies claim that stopping AB32 would create jobs, when the fact is, oil is a dying industry, particularly in California, where most of the oil has been extracted already.  If our economy is going to grow stronger, we need to ensure that we’re investing in new and innovative technologies, as that’s where the job growth is going to come from.  The LA Times ran an article today that essentially comes down to Valero (the primary oil refiner funding Prop 23) attempting to extort Californians for money: “But whatever the cost [of the regulations], [CEO] Klesse said, "it will all be passed through to the consumer. The companies aren't going to able to absorb this or they're going to go out of business."”  Of course, after being asked what happens if Prop 23 gets defeated, Klesse relents a bit: "We'll let the voters vote," he said."We're in business in California and it'll just continue. And we'll see what the actual regs look like, and then we'll take actions around them."

Let’s vote to stop the oil monopoly over our transportation sector – the oil companies couldn’t threaten us with such economic harm if our energy portfolio were diversified.  Let’s vote to send a message.  NO on 23.

Prop 24 – Repeals recent legislation that would allow businesses to lower their tax liability.  Initiative statute.  YES

Our state needs revenue, and everyone’s got to pay their fair share – yes, even businesses.  California’s already seen as an anti-business state, is this going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for a lot of business owners?  Unlikely.

Prop 25 -  Changes legislative vote requirement to pass budget and budget-related legislation from two-thirds to a simple majority.  Retains two-thirds vote requirement for taxes.  Initiative constitutional amendment.  YES

It’s time to be done with the 2/3 majority for passing the state budget each year.  The process enables the Republican minority in the state Legislature to wield outsize influence in budget negotiations, which leads to individual lawmakers sneaking pet projects in as bargaining chips, and a generally wasteful process.  This proposition should have been on the ballot many years ago, but things are at a point now where it’s long past time to get rid of the special-interest welfare that is the 2/3 budget majority.

Prop 26 – Requires that certain state and local fees be approved by two-thirds vote.  Fees include those that address adverse impacts on society or the environment cause by the fee-payer’s business.  Initiative constitutional amendment.  NO

Reread that proposition again...”Fees include those that address adverse impacts on society or the environment cause by the fee-payer’s business.”  See, this is a backdoor way for big polluters and/or other businesses that may pollute to make it harder for communities that are affected by their pollution to charge them for it.  This reduces the autonomy of local governments and is a way for polluters to sneak in a way to not have to pay for their messes – the way BP was poised to do until President Obama intervened. 

Prop 27 – Eliminates state commission on redistricting.  Consolidates authority for redistricting with elected representatives.  Initiative constitutional amendment and statute.  NO

This is the evil twin of Proposition 20, plain and simple.  This is a ballot measure that was put on the ballot by the folks who have been gerrymandering California political districts for years (see the above LA Weekly article for more) and it is a direct effort by the federal Congressional delegation to wrest power from the hands of the Citizens Redistricting Commission, so they can continue to protect themselves from having to face real competition.  I may be a Democrat, but corruption is corruption.  Definitely vote NO on this one. 

 

Statewide Candidates

Okay, small disclaimer here: I follow politics pretty closely, but I will admit that when it comes to a lot of these candidates, I honestly don’t really know too much about them.  Rather than make statements about candidates, I just say to vote what your conscience tells you.  Below I’ll just run over my reasons for voting for the few statewide races I really DO know something about (and for expediency’s sake, I’ll only do the major-party candidates, so sorry third-partiers, I support your efforts, I really do!)

 

US Senate – Senator Barbara Boxer (D) vs. Carly Fiorina (R)

My Recommendation: Vote Boxer

Here’s the matchup: a longtime liberal California politician against a successful corporate CEO from Silicon Valley.  In this “anti-incumbent” mood the media keeps telling us our country is in, one would expect Californians to go for the businesswoman, right?

Now, what if I told you that that businesswoman had outsourced thousands of jobs while she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard?  Boxer hit this note with what I think is one of the most effective ads that I’ve seen in this LONG campaign season:

What happened to all of those workers laid off due to the merger of HP and Compaq, and those other workers laid off because Fiorina outsourced their jobs?  Well it’s certainly conceivable that they ended up on state unemployment rolls – it’s easy to claim you’re a “fiscal conservative” when you have the state to cover for the destruction you leave in your wake…Fiorina has that attitude in common with Wall Street: privatize the profits, socialize the losses.  And she’s a patriot how exactly?

Boxer, on the other hand, is the Chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, a position that gives her a major hand in shaping our country’s environmental priorities.  She is an avid supporter of a woman’s right to choose and for promoting the common good more generally.  I’ll be proud to vote for Boxer tomorrow. 

Governor – Attorney General Jerry Brown (D) vs. Meg Whitman (R)

My Recommendation: Vote Brown

This is Jerry Brown’s second go-round attempt as California Governor (he was Governor before California voters imposed term limits, so he can try again legally) and I strongly believe he’s a great choice for Governor.  Brown is off-the-cuff, a relatively fiscally conservative Democrat, and he also pioneered some visionary environmental policies in his time as Governor in the 1970s.  As he’s said recently, he’s old, and he’s not running for Governor as a stepping-stone to another office, but as an end unto itself.  This fact in and of itself gives me hope that he’ll be bold in his actions (as he doesn’t need to worry about future voters looking askance at his unorthodox approach to governing) and yet he’ll have the best interests of Californians in mind (again, not running for another office means he doesn’t need to please campaign donors, so he may well upset both the unions and the corporations). 

Beyond all of that, though, Meg Whitman would be a disaster for California.  Why is this woman running for office?  What does she want?  Who the heck is she really?  After spending $140 million of her own money on this campaign, Californians don’t really have any answers to those questions, and that speaks to a fundamental problem with Meg Whitman herself.  Some commentators have said that she hasn’t “connected” with voters, but I think there’s a simple lack of trust from voters, since it’s unclear what she’s even running for – many have suggested that she just wants to give herself and her rich friends a massive tax break by eliminating the California state capital gains tax (estimated at between $8 million and $40 million for eMeg) and it appears she didn’t bother to vote for 28 years of her life.  She’s flip-flopped all over the place in her policies from the Republican primary against Steve Poizner to the general election against Jerry Brown – after winning the Republican nomination, coming out claiming that she’s not that different from Brown on illegal immigration, but after it was revealed that her housekeeper of 9 years (whom she called a “part of the family”) to now last week claiming the maid, Nicky Diaz Santillan, should be deported.  I guess “family” ends when the political going gets rough, eh? 

So enough about this nastiness.  Meg Whitman is just not what this state needs right now, and Jerry Brown, while surely flawed, at least has a sense of public duty after all these years of service, and appears to have the right intentions in his heart.

Lieutenant Governor – Gavin Newsom (D) vs. Abel Maldonado (R)

My Recommendation: Vote Newsom

Secretary of State – Debra Bowen (D) vs. Damon Dunn (R)

My Recommendation: Vote Bowen

Debra Bowen has done some great things as Secretary of State, including attempting to revamp the state’s voting system and implement long-overdue reforms.  This may seem like a random office, but it’s incredibly important for the preservation of democracy and the security of our votes.

 

Controller – Controller John Chiang (D) vs. Tony Strickland (R)

My Recommendation: Vote Chiang

Chiang has shown some surprising backbone in fighting Schwarzenegger’s draconian cuts the past few years, and I think he’s got a good thing going.

 

For Treasurer, Attorney General and Insurance Commissioner, I really can’t say that I know enough about the candidates or their histories to make a strong recommendation either way.  Plus, this posting is getting way too long, and it’s late.  I don’t know if anyone will even bother to read this, but oh well, I wanted to at least get something out there for those who happen across this blog.

Vote well, all.

Foreclosure fraud mess continued

Collusion between the government and the financial sector to cover up the perilous state of the banks’ balance sheets has been a running theme in the current economic crisis.  As I mentioned in my previous posting on the foreclosure fraud mess, it appears that the scale and scope of systemic fraud that has been uncovered by the foreclosure fraud scandal may simply be too great and widespread to be papered over any longer.  In one of the most revealing news segments I’ve seen in a while, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan spoke with blogger Lisa Epstein and savings-and-loan scandal regulator William K. Black this afternoon, and Black gave a rather detailed and fiery explanation of what’s going on these days.  The video is well worth watching through to the end:

Fantastic, do watch if you have the time.

The foreclosure fraud mess – a day of reckoning at last?

The foreclosure fraud case is one of the BIG stories I’ve been trying my best to follow lately.  We learned today that all 50 state Attorneys General have opened an investigation into mortgage industry practices:

The state attorneys general are looking at allegations some banks did not properly review files or submitted false statements to evict delinquent borrowers from their homes during a foreclosure crisis that is one of the most visible wounds of the 2007-2009 recession.

"We are in the fourth year of a housing and economic crisis that was brought on by lax practices of the mortgage lending industry," Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson said in a statement.

"The latest allegations of corner-cutting and slipshod paperwork are troubling, but perhaps not surprising."

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The states are investigating the use of "robo-signers" -- people who sign hundreds of affidavits a day -- by banks and companies that collect monthly mortgage payments. It is alleged they did not properly review the documents they were signing.

"What we have seen are not mere technicalities, as some suggest," Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray said.

So if there was systematic fraud perpetrated throughout the mortgage lending industry, one would hope we’d finally see some of these scoundrels locked up for awhile. 

Incidentally, one of the last times that all 50 state Attorneys General agreed to pursue a coordinated investigation, guess what the alleged crime was?  Predatory lending.  And guess who took the lead in making the public case for the investigation – then-Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer.  Spitzer came out swinging against the mortgage lending industry and the banks at large in a February 14, 2008 Washington Post piece that is worth excerpting from at length (but well worth a read in its entirety):

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

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Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules. (emphasis mine)

The Bush Administration intervened to stop the states from investigating and enforcing their own predatory lending laws, which I think just might qualify as an egregious breach of the sacredness of “states’ rights” in GOP doctrine, eh?

But as we all now know, hubris brought Spitzer’s gubernatorial reign down (but he’s not out, have you seen him on CNN recently?) with the high-priced call girl scandal he was ensnared in just a few weeks after he wrote his Valentine’s Day article.  Let me make a quick aside at this point and say in no uncertain terms that I am not arguing that what Spitzer did was by any means acceptable.  Now, that being said, could there be any coincidence between his article broadcasting the Bush Administration’s outrageous actions on behalf of predatory lenders and his being outed as a john?  Let’s look a bit further:

Spitzer's fall was all the more stunning because he had been elected in November 2006 with 69 percent of the vote, the most ever in a New York gubernatorial race, and some Democrats even said he could possibly become the country's first Jewish president.

But his life and career began unraveling last week, when federal agents, acting on wiretaps, busted a high-class New Jersey-based prostitution ring, called Emperors Club VIP, and arrested four people. The criminal complaint listed an anonymous "Client 9," who was heard calling the escort service to arrange for a call girl named "Kristen" to meet him for a Feb. 13 tryst at Washington's Mayflower Hotel.

The client allegedly paid for the woman's train fare from New York to Washington and $4,300 for a two-hour session. Law enforcement sources confirmed this week that Client 9 was Spitzer.

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There are also questions about the identities of the other wealthy clients of the Emperors Club VIP. The criminal complaint unsealed last week made reference to 10 clients without naming them; only Spitzer has been identified as Client 9. (all emphases mine)

Interesting that Spitzer was the only client whose name was leaked identified to the press, especially because he was later cleared of all charges:

The details of Mr. Spitzer’s financial transactions — how he took money from his personal accounts and sent it to the prostitution ring’s front company, QAT International — were always the crucial questions in the case. Prosecutors, from the start, were trying to determine whether there was ample evidence to charge Mr. Spitzer with a crime called structuring, which makes it illegal to conduct financial transactions in a way intended to conceal their source and purpose.

Michael Horowitz, another former chief of the public corruption unit in Manhattan, said that it was rare for prosecutors to pursue a structuring charge without a substantive underlying crime like money laundering or drug trafficking. He suggested that a prostitution case, which the government was unlikely to prosecute anyway, was not enough to undergird a structuring charge. (emphasis mine)

So the government knew that Spitzer’s crimes were not going to lead him to prison, and yet it is uncommon for sitting politicians involved in sex scandals to be forced out of office, look at South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, US Senator from Nevada John Ensign, and US Senator from Louisiana David Vitter (who was also caught in a prostitution scandal – the DC Madam case).  None of them were forced out of their jobs; do the rules bend when Republicans are involved, or was Spitzer more the exception to the rule in being forced out?  And why does it appear that some people in high places decided to drop the axe on Spitzer to muzzle him just after he publicly charged that the Bush Administration aided and abetted predatory lenders?

That line of questioning leads us back to the now-unfolding foreclosure fraud situation, explained in great detail here by Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute.  The banks, as we all are well aware, benefited from a massive infusion of taxpayer largess in the form of the bailout (TARP) of October 2008 (remember it was Bush’s bailout folks, no matter what the Tea Party may wrongly claim) and that the bailouts served to rehabilitate a good chunk of the banks’ balance sheets.  But the banks still were forced to contend with the problem of widespread despair in the housing markets, and with the fact that many of the houses that they owned were, in fact, overvalued assets due to the nationwide plunge in home values. 

Because the banks have gotten “too-big-to-fail” (which is what necessitated the bailouts in the first place) as I’ve discussed in a previous posting at length, the government has continued to help prop the banks up, lest the entire financial apparatus collapse entirely.  Programs such as the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) that are ostensibly designed to incentivize banks to help homeowners renegotiate their mortgages on more favorable terms, have been shown to serve the banks’ interests entirely.  From a report by Steve Waldman on a meeting Geithner and other top Treasury officials had with financial bloggers over the summer:

The conversation next turned to housing and HAMP. On HAMP, officials were surprisingly candid. The program has gotten a lot of bad press in terms of its Kafka-esque qualification process and its limited success in generating mortgage modifications under which families become able and willing to pay their debt. Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least. There were murmurs among the bloggers of “extend and pretend”, but I don’t think that’s quite right. This was extend-and-don’t-even-bother-to-pretend. The program was successful in the sense that it kept the patient alive until it had begun to heal. And the patient of this metaphor was not a struggling homeowner, but the financial system, a.k.a. the banks. Policymakers openly judged HAMP to be a qualified success because it helped banks muddle through what might have been a fatal shock. I believe these policymakers conflate, in full sincerity, incumbent financial institutions with “the system”, “the economy”, and “ordinary Americans”. Treasury officials are not cruel people. I’m sure they would have preferred if the program had worked out better for homeowners as well. But they have larger concerns, and from their perspective, HAMP has helped to address those. (all emphases mine)

There you go, policymakers playing kabuki with taxpayers in order to help keep the banks who got us into this mess alive…what a grotesque situation!

And yet, after all of this has happened, some are saying, like former financial executive RJ Eskow, that the foreclosure fraud scandal may just show that the emperor (the banks in this case) has no clothes:

The foreclosure fraud scandal is a big deal (or a big "effin'" deal, as Joe Biden might say). But its real significance is an even bigger deal. Foreclosure fraud is one domino, and if it falls others will follow. The result could be an end to the "invisible bailout" -- the one you never hear about, the one that forces millions of people to subsidize bad lending practices in order to prop up Wall Street.

The invisible bailout is the reason why the government isn't pushing to freeze foreclosures. If the foreclosure process is halted and lending practices are thoroughly investigated, it might eventually force bankers to own up to their own lawlessness -- and write down billions of dollars in artificially inflated assets. How are they going to pay themselves record bonuses if that happens?

This is where it gets really ugly – our somewhat/perhaps/maybe/kinda recovering economy could well be plunged into another, perhaps deeper financial downturn if widespread fraud is in fact found among the banks’ mortgages.  If nobody knows who rightfully holds the title to a home, how could they possibly know its market value?  The entire financial system has been rebuilt (if one could even call it that) after the 2008 financial crisis on a foundation of nearly worthless and potentially fraudulent mortgages, and “irresponsible homeowners” have been to blame for not only their own troubles, but those of the entire financial system.  Eskow continues:

Nobel prizewinner Joseph Stiglitz, who also bears the distinction of having been correct about the housing bubble, thinks it's time for the banks to write down the excess value of these loans. As Stiglitz observes, that will be painful for the banks in the short term, although it would be "nothing in comparison to the suffering they have inflicted on people throughout the rest of the global economy."

But the administration's reluctant to do that. That's why we heard such tepid remarks from the White House about the foreclosure fraud scandal over the weekend. If the foreclosure fraud issue is pursued too aggressively, it throws 41% of all expected housing sales into question. It raises even more questions about the ownership of millions of loans in good standing, potentially giving homeowners leverage to renegotiate based on the actual market value of their homes. And it reopens the issue of "writedowns."

Illegal submission of foreclosure documents was part of a larger cover-up. People need to be arrested for it -- but that, of course, would open up a larger can of worms. The legal process could very well reveal the extent of the title problem, as well as other potentially widespread criminal practices.

So there you have it folks, the states are now going after the big Wall Street fish again, perhaps following up on the forestalled investigations they were set to launch back in 2003 when all of this mortgage madness could have been nipped in the bud.  In case you are in any doubt about just what was produced by the collusion between government and Wall Street, Ezra Klein interviewed financial analyst Janet Tavakoli last week, and here’s her response when being asked what this all means for the banks (after calling this crisis “the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets”):

When we had the financial crisis, the first thing the banks did was run to Congress and ask for accounting relief. They asked to be able to avoid pricing this stuff at the price where people would buy them. So no one can tell you the size of the hole in these balance sheets. We’ve thrown a lot of money at it. TARP was just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve given them guarantees on debts, low-cost funding from the Fed. But a lot of these mortgages just cannot be saved. Had we acknowledged this problem in 2005, we could’ve cleaned it up for a few hundred billion dollars. But we didn’t. Banks were lying and committing fraud, and our regulators were covering them and so a bad problem has become a hellacious one. (emphases mine)

As Eskow said above, the bankers just want to make it seem that they’ve actually produced some semblance of profits for their shareholders so they can continue to collect their exorbitant bonuses.  That greed leads the bankers to convince regulators to help them avoid realizing the losses they should rightfully incur for such terrible investments.  That dynamic then leads to continued uncertainty in the market, which causes the banks not to lend to businesses, individuals, or even to each other. Greed has never run so rampant in the streets, and it is now manifestly clear that it is the greed of the privileged few that is genuinely handcuffing any sort of economic recovery for the rest of us.  Government regulators have bought into this system for years – when Eliot Spitzer began to make a stink, he was publicly disgraced and muzzled quickly, lest his accusations about the rotting core of the financial system lead people to look too closely so that the house of cards fell. 

Government has been complicit in this scheme since day one, which is the real reason none of the fraudsters have been put in prison yet – the circle would likely extend too widely and might ensnare some of those who are supposed to be on the “good” team.  We can’t have change in this country until we have an honest accounting of the mistakes of the past, and I surely hope that the state Attorneys General are allowed to run their investigations as they see fit, with no White House interference.  The President’s actions in confronting this crisis, including the actions of his deputies, will show just how committed to change he really is. 

New layout, and some good reading

I’m experimenting with a new site layout to try and make my blog more reader- and user-friendly (and more orange!)  Please feel free to comment and/or make suggestions about the design in the comments section if you’re so inclined.

While I have a more substantive post in the works concerning my personal suggestions for the upcoming November 2 elections here in California to be posted later this week, I figured I’d throw some great articles/blog posts I’ve been reading out there in case people are interested.

Election Polling: For the past couple months this election season I’ve been closely following DailyKos’ Steve Singiser for his nightly Polling and Political Wrap.  As I’ve noted previously, there is no doubt that DailyKos is a liberal site, but the fact is, Singiser provides an invaluable service in collecting the day’s polling data and providing some analysis of the results in an easy-to-read format.  From what I can tell, Singiser posts the Wrap each evening (aside from weekends) around 7-8PM PST, so if you’re excited about/dreading the elections this year and you’d like to follow the polling action as it develops, I can’t recommend a better source.

Speaking of election polling, the Pew Research Center for People & the Press released a groundbreaking study today documenting the fact that many pollsters rely on a fairly outdated polling methodology that tends not to contact voters whose sole telephone in their home is a cell phone (including yours truly and many other young voters).  This may be skewing polling data in favor of Republicans by 4-6 percentage points according to Pew’s research.  Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo picks up the thread:

I would strongly recommend that Democratic enthusiasts not start adjusting the polls they're seeing by a 4-6 point margin. I will, shall we say, believe this one when I see it. It's also important to note that a number of national pollsters are already incorporating cell phones. Where the real vulnerability comes is in state and district polls and robo-pollsters -- like Rasmussen, PPP and SurveyUSA.

Again, in the past the differences usually seemed too small to figure significantly into the prediction equation. But this could be the cycle where that changes.

So yes, we’ll see what happens this election, and if pollsters have to make major alterations to their sampling models going forward.  It may seem trivial, but there’s nothing like polling to set the tone of an election season, and if those polls are incorrect (think Dewey defeats Truman) people could stay home because they think their team will lose, when in fact the opposite may be true.

Is another global food crisis in the offing?

Just a quick note that I noticed a news piece yesterday that struck fear into my heart for the vulnerable populations of the world: Corn rallies to two-year high after crop forecast

Corn and other grains futures shot up Friday after a U.S. Department of Agriculture report pointed to the tightest supply and demand balance for corn in 14 years.
The Agriculture Department on Friday forecast a 2010-11 corn crop 3.8% smaller than government expectations just a month ago, as a hot Midwest summer preceded by floods in June takes its toll.
The Agriculture Department said it now expects corn production to reach 12.66 billion bushels, from 13.16 billion forecast in September. September’s forecast itself had been a downgrade from August.
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The corn surplus by late next summer, the end of the 2010-11 corn crop season, is expected to fall below 1 billion bushels, the least since the 1995-96 crop. The ratio between stockpiles and demand for corn would be 6.7%.
“That means a very, very small margin of error for the 2010-11 crop,” said Darin Newsom, a senior commodities analyst at DTN Telvent in Omaha.
Following flooding in June, the Corn Belt suffered from a hot summer and, more importantly, warmer-than-usual nights that interfered with corn’s ability to pollinate as it normally would, he said.
The rally in corn, widely used as feed and biofuel, also pushed up prices for soybeans and wheat and drove up shares of fertilizer and agricultural-equipment companies. Livestock producer shares fell.

This prompted me to fear that widespread food shortages worldwide will result, just like what happened in 2007-8’s global food crisis.  This year we’ve already seen riots over food in Mozambique, and Russia’s weak wheat crop due to global warming abnormally high temperatures and drought that caused Russia to ban wheat exports, further driving up prices globally.  But this morning, even the Financial Times picked up on this theme, sounding an alarm: Soaring prices threaten new food crisis

In Chicago, the prices of agricultural commodities jumped so sharply that they hit limits imposed on daily movement by the city’s futures exchange, the biggest in the world.
Traders, unable to use futures contracts because of the limits on trading, bid indicative corn prices to $5.65 a bushel in the options market, a rise of 13.3 per cent on the day.
In Paris, European wheat prices rose 10 per cent, while the cost of other commodities including soyabeans, sugar, cotton, barley and oats soared.
The rise in prices sent the Reuters-Jefferies CRB commodities index to a two-year high.

Ah yes, the USDA’s estimate of lower corn yield lead directly to speculators rushing in to buy up commodity futures contracts and further exacerbating the rise in prices, which will, at some point in the not-too-distant future, lead to a rise in street prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, etc. worldwide.  When corn rose significantly in 2006-7, Mexico went through what was then called the “Tortilla Crisis” in which tight corn supplies (largely due to increased use of corn to produce ethanol in the Midwest US) led to, again, increased prices on the street:

There is almost universal consensus in Mexico that higher demand for ethanol is at the root of price increases for corn and tortillas.
Ethanol, which has become more popular as an alternative fuel in the United States and elsewhere because of high oil prices, is generally made with yellow corn. But the price of white corn, which is used to make tortillas, is indexed in Mexico to the international price of yellow corn, said Puente, the Mexico City economist.
A combination of tortilla-maker organizations, farming groups and members of the Mexican Congress are clamoring for an investigation into alleged monopolies, commodity speculation and price fixing.

Sound familiar?  The truly awful thing about corn ethanol (aside from the fact that it’s eco-friendliness is manifestly unclear) is that corn ethanol growers generally use corn that is specially bred to be non-edible by humans to produce the ethanol, so it’s not as though when corn prices rise and the prospect of a global food crisis appears on the horizon those corn stocks can just be released onto the market for consumption by starving humans; that corn field’s output is locked in for use as fuel through at least the next growing season.
But it’s the speculators that have me concerned, as it is truly a nefarious development of our modern world that food is being traded in the same way as any other stock or bond, decoupling the actual substantial item used for nourishment of living beings from the item being traded in the market in Chicago or other commodities markets.  Similar sentiments were expressed at a September 24th emergency meeting of the UN to discuss the impending food crisis:

Green MP Caroline Lucas called for tighter regulation of the food trade. "Food has become a commodity to be traded. The only thing that matters under the current system is profit. Trading in food must not be treated as simply another form of business as usual: for many people it is a matter of life and death. We must insist on the complete removal of agriculture from the remit of the World Trade Organisation," she said.

It’s simply a question of morals and concern for the most vulnerable members of world society triumphing over greed.   Economist Jayati Ghosh, whom I have written about before, continues to make the case that financial speculation is directly responsible for millions starving:

Ghosh argued that the “historic” rise in food prices was driven by speculation on commodity prices and deregulation by the U.S. Ghosh described the use of speculation as highly volatile.
According to Ghosh, the food crisis in developing countries is “intimately related” to the current financial crisis.
The deregulation resulted from the passing of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000. According to Ghosh, the act allowed financial companies into futures market which allowed banks to influence the prices of food.
According to Ghosh, a popular explanation for the increase in prices is increased demand from China and India. However, Ghosh added that India and China have consumed less, leading her to conclude that the increase in food prices was not caused by regular supply and demand. (emphasis mine)

When prices are not linked to supply and demand issues, there is financial manipulation occurring.  When those manipulations concern the basic staples needed for humans to live and prosper, something must change, lest millions more suffer needlessly.  Mother Nature has dealt us some heavy blows this summer (perhaps a warning of more human-induced climate destruction to come?) that are driving our global food system to the brink of failure, and yet we allow the richest and most powerful financiers among us to exacerbate, indeed to accelerate the level of misery of our poorest fellow humans?  This is just wrong, wrong, wrong, “economic efficiency” be damned.

Why all the fuss about social justice?

Above is an infamous clip from earlier this year of Glenn Beck arguing that “social justice” should not be a part of a church’s mission, and that if his listeners found that their churches promote “social justice” then they should leave that church:

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them ... are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.

Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Beck’s statement caused quite an uproar among Christian communities of faith around the country, as it is, on many levels, clearly antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, which call on Christians to aid those in need. 

And so we come on Thursday to Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, arguing against President Obama’s selection of Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) which was originally her idea: (hat tip: Joan McCarter)

Gregg, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a senior member of the Banking Committee, expressed dismay at President Obama's decision to tap Warren as a key "adviser" to help set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency established in the Wall Street reform bill.

"My concern is that she would use the agency for the purpose of promoting social justice," Gregg said on ABC's "Top Line" webcast. The agency, Gregg said, should promote improving access to credit, as well as other financial services.

As McCarter rightfully notes, it seems absurd that a new agency expressly designed to protect consumers from predatory lending and other ills of the financial system should not, in Gregg’s view, work at shielding consumers from unscrupulous lenders, but should rather aid consumers in getting access to more credit, and hence, debt.  It has been widely noted that easy access to credit was one of the primary drivers of the financial and economic crisis we are now in, with banks holding billions in toxic mortgages due to their overly-relaxed lending rules and marketing products such as “liar loans” to those who couldn’t afford them, and yet Gregg thinks consumers need more, not less debt?  Ridiculous.

However, the more interesting point to me is that in Sen. Gregg’s worldview, a government agency created to protect consumers (meaning predominantly middle-class folks who qualify for and use credit) should absolutely NOT “promote social justice.”  Why is it a negative in Gregg’s book that there is finally one solitary agency devoted to protecting consumers in the financial sector?  But furthermore, why is “social justice” assumed to be so clearly negative in the right’s modern political discourse? 

In thinking about this issue, it occurs to me that there is a common thread one can trace from Sarah Palin’s demonization of then-Presidential candidate Obama for working as a community organizer, to Glenn Beck’s call to boycott churches that ascribe to a vision of social justice, to Sen. Gregg’s misplaced concern that the CFPB might (horrors!) do its job and protect the middle and lower classes.  The common thread I see is that in all three instances, you have those who sit at the head of the American social, political and economic hierarchies casting efforts to aid the underclass in gaining its rightful power and generating wealth (or at least not to hemorrhage that power and wealth any further) as illegitimate and “anti-American.”  We are all supposed to be seeking the American Dream, however when groups of people who have been systematically shut out from that dream attempt to reduce their barriers to entry, that becomes a Problem for the powers-that-be, and those groups’ efforts must be marginalized.  For the true aim in ginning up fear of the underclasses fighting for their place at the table in the name of “social justice” is to divert attention from the much greater miscarriage of justice that has been taking place in our wallets for years.  One is allowed to strive for economic power on an individual level, but when a concerted effort is made to point out that the game is rigged against those on the bottom and to change that fact, those on the top scoff at and denigrate that push for equality. 

If you look at the raw CBO figures, they show that a full tenth of the national income has shifted since 1979 to the top 1% of the country. The bottom quintiles have each given up a bit more than two percentage points each, and that adds up to 10% of all earnings. That 10% has flowed almost entirely to very tippy top of the income ladder.

Is the middle class worse off because of this? Of course they are. Income matters even if plasma TVs are cheaper than they used to be or if CPI mismeasures middle class consumption or if average households now contain 2.6 members instead of 2.7. If this massive income shift hadn't happened, middle class earnings would be higher, they'd be able to buy more stuff, and they probably wouldn't be in debt as much. And the top 1% wouldn't have quite so much idle cash lying around to do stupid things with.

This income shift is real. We can debate its effects all day long, but it's real. The super rich have a much bigger piece of the pie than they used to, and that means a smaller piece of the pie for all the rest of us. You can decide for yourself if you think this is something we should just shrug our shoulders and accept. (emphasis mine)

I’ve grown up believing that America roots for the underdog, but the recent turn in rhetoric against those who would organize and advocate on behalf of justice, no matter what kind, speaks of a wide swath of the American public giving in to their meaner side – just as our puppeteers intended.  They keep us all divided on social issues while they sneak their billions out the back door with their carried-interest tax breaks and loopholes for overseas earnings - the better to distract us from the fact that class warfare is alive and well, and the moneyed side always wins.  Meanwhile, those of us in the bottom 90% are fighting the wrong wars against the wrong enemies: ourselves.  Look up the economic ladder for a major source of our country’s troubles – the speculative rich and the rich politicians who make up their constituency (yes, in that order) and don’t denigrate the efforts of the courageous ones on the bottom who strive to help their fellow humans out of their collective misery. 

To return to the theme that started off this post, if you want to see the true roots of social justice in a Western religious context, Jesus gives you all the context you need in the following parable:

"But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will tell those on his right hand, 'Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in; naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?'

"The King will answer them, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Then he will say also to those on the left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn't give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn't take me in; naked, and you didn't clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn't visit me.'

"Then they will also answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn't help you?'

"Then he will answer them, saying, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn't do it to one of the least of these, you didn't do it to me.' These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Matthew 25:31-46 (emphases mine).

P.S. – Just to make it clear, politicians’ captivity to moneyed interests is most definitely a bipartisan and self-serving game, evidenced quite clearly when retiring Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana was interviewed by NBC’s Chuck Todd on Friday (hat-tip again to Joan McCarter):

TODD: Yesterday, the Census came out and said one in seven Americans are living below the poverty line. Do you look at that story today — you know, you open up your USA Today, right, and you see that story — and you see Washington is debating the tax rates for the wealthy, and you sit there and say, isn’t that a disconnect in America right now?

BAYH: It is a disconnect, Chuck. What we need to be focused on is growth, how do we create jobs, how do we expand businesses. That needs to be job one right now. And all these other issues involving, oh, fairness and things like that can wait. (emphasis in the original)

Ain’t gonna miss that guy in the Senate one bit.  He’ll be back soon enough as a lobbyist anyways, so really, his advocacy on behalf of extending the Bush tax cuts for his rich campaign donors and Wall Street buddies is ultimately a nice little deal to try and line his own pockets with more money that could have gone towards his pet  interest of deficit reduction.

On the events at the Lincoln Memorial today

There was no irony:

Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008 and a potential White House contender in 2012, and Beck repeatedly cited King and made references to the Founding Fathers.

Cited King? 

Palin likened the rally participants to the civil rights activists from 1963. She said the same spirit that helped them overcome oppression, discrimination and violence would help this group as well.
"We are worried about what we face. Sometimes, our challenges seem insurmountable," Palin said. "Look around you. You're not alone."

Yes, those Tea Partiers must overcome the terrible unjust yoke of white privilege and better-than-average personal wealth in order to take back America!  Because the fact that between 78,000 and 96,000 more-conservative-than-your-average-Republican (oh, excuse me, independents, some) largely rode public transit to a national park while being protected by Park Rangers and local first responders to exercise their First Amendment rights clearly shows that their freedoms (as typically white, upper-middle-class, over the age of 50, married folk) are being impinged upon mercilessly. 

When did white people become the underclass?  When did white conservatives of better-than-average means begin to feel their staggering hegemony over our economy (and hence, our media, and hence, our society) slip from their grasp?  Are they worried that, horror of horrors, some of the economic and racial inequalities that have plagued our society from its inception might be even slightly realigned during the course of the Obama Administration? 

The ever-present cries of “wealth redistribution” are nothing more than dog whistles during a period of historically low tax rates, designed to gin up old reptilian-brain images of the mythical welfare queen who somehow manages to not only live and feed her child(ren) off of the hundreds of dollars a week that welfare provides, but to save up enough for a Cadillac.  Only if an entire segment of the voting population had absolutely no connection to the rampant destitution of inner city life in this country could they be hoodwinked so badly…and Reagan’s folks made the correct political calculation, one that resonated so deeply with the ids of white America that Newt Gingrich trotted out the same specter again to further cut the legs out from single mothers of a minority background everywhere with welfare reform.  Family values:

A recent study by the Children's Defense Fund reveals that the number of children in single-mother families living in extreme poverty went up 27 percent in the first year after welfare reform legislation was enacted. "Extreme poverty" is defined as income less than half the federal poverty line -- or less than $6,401 a year for a family of three. Reports from the states show a significant number of former welfare recipients who have subsequently been unable to buy food, pay rent or keep up with their utility bills.

 

And then ACORN.  Somehow a group that seeks to get low-income voters registered and to their polling places on Election Day “stole the election”? 

With more than 450,000 member families nationwide — 14,000 in Florida — ACORN is a grass roots advocacy group focused on health care, wages, affordable housing and foreclosure.

Hmm, seem like pretty decent folks to me.

This year, ACORN signed up 1.3-million voters nationwide and about 152,000 in Florida, mostly in Orange, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. ACORN estimates it flagged 2 percent of its Florida registrations as problematic because they were incomplete, duplicates or just plain bogus.
That's enough to give headaches to election officials and to provide ammunition to Republican activists.

 

You see, the only way the other side won’t call foul, is as long as all of those poor people living on the margins of society don’t show up to claim their constitutionally-mandated right to cast a vote in an election.  If they do, well, they’ll make sure they have to jump some hurdles to do it:

 

Because the only way to really ensure the continued hegemony of our economic overlords (and to further reduce the 16.6% average tax rate of the 400 highest-earning folks in America, who earned at least $139 million each in 2007 – the average tax rate of the same group was a slightly more conscionable 30% in 1995) is to keep the underclasses poor, disillusioned and without a solid stake in society.  Because if they were to gain a stake in society, then they might become afraid of losing it, and that might drive them to do the one thing that makes all American (wo)men equal: vote. 
And so I come to the question of the week, and perhaps of the entire Obama Administration: did you read the New Yorker article? 

In April, 2009, Melissa Cohlmia, a company spokesperson, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Party, saying that Americans for Prosperity is “an independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.” Later, she issued a statement: “No funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, or Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.” David Koch told New York, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”

At the lectern in Austin, however, Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!”  She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channeled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”

 

You see, when average Americans say they’re going to “take back America” they may very well be truly concerned citizens upset about the way our country is going (or they might be part of the 18% of Americans who are wrongly convinced that our President is a Muslim…well which is it, did he have a pastor who preached that dangerous Christian “black liberation theology,” that was fanned into a fury by his primary and general election opponents, or did he not?  The “liberal” American media is having such a field day painting the man and his family as “Other” they’re mixing their memes up) but when one of the richest men in America has one of his loyal puppets saying the same thing, well, that just means they want a more malleable person in the White House, one who won’t try to do more than give lip service to reforming the financial markets and the tax code…their guy didn’t win last time.  Hence why you have these whining billionaires who have gotten so used to running the show in D.C. to their liking that now they’re throwing tantrums publicly about the prospect of their marginal tax rates being returned to where they were under Clinton.  They looted and stole from us, and their hubris made what was already a bad economic situation even worse in the end.  Worker productivity has steadily risen for years, and yet our wages have remained essentially flat:

 

But it serves the financial titans of the world very well to have those of us who constitute the “other 95%” bickering amongst ourselves, responding to race-baiting and baseless rumor and innuendo with rage and disgust while they make off like the bandits they are.  While we bicker, the moneyed class of tax evaders have convinced the political class (through strategic, bipartisan campaign donations, surely) that a deficit commission is what is needed right now, despite the fact that weak consumer demand is the true driver of this recession, and cutting spending is the exact opposite way to deal with that problem, unintuitive as that may sound when compared to one’s household budget.  What are the aims of this deficit commission?  Well, one of the most prominent members, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is regarded as a “serious thinker” amongst the Republicans on budget issues, has a Roadmap for getting our country onto a sustainable fiscal path.  That Roadmap would increase taxes on the bottom 90% of the population, while slashing taxes for the top 10%, slash and/or privatize entitlements, and would lead to rapidly ballooning deficits along the way.  Sounds swell.  The other big news out of the deficit commission this week that you may have heard is that one of the co-chairs, Alan Simpson, former Senator from Wyoming, referred to Social Security as a “milk cow with 310 million tits (sic).”  Simpson has made no secret of his distaste for Social Security, despite the fact that it remains the sole remaining income for many Americans whose other retirement savings have been wiped out by the stock market crash.  I know that on a personal level I certainly hope to have Social Security waiting for me when I retire, as subjecting the entirety of my savings for my golden years to the vagaries of the constantly-manipulated stock market is not something I’m terribly interested in doing. 

And so, my final plea to the world is this: don’t let yourself be hoodwinked!  Don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes!  If you’re vaguely upset about what’s happening in the world and you have the urge to do something about it, I beg of you, turn off Fox News, turn off your TV entirely, and read a newspaper, any paper, or get your news online, say from a news aggregator like Google News, which collects the news feeds from many different sources and presents them for you…as for the reason you feel upset, fearful, angry generally, but without a particular direction except at our President and anything remotely “liberal” or “progressive,” ask yourself what are your specific concerns?  What policies that have been passed are you upset about?  Why?  Does your response use the word “mandate” in it?  Well I suggest you read up on what else the various laws have in them, as in regards to the health care reform bill, there’s a reason it was 2000+ pages long – it achieves quite a lot of stuff, none of which involve “death panels,” for the record.  Here’s the perfect example of how Fox News hoodwinks its viewers, knowingly, and with virtual impunity:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Parent Company Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

 

The overlords keep things purposely vague, so that those who take their marching orders from FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity are more open to malleability.  For instance, if the Tea Partiers are so angry about the bank bailouts, why, when a coalition of unions, the unemployed, and small business owners very publicly protested on Wall Street earlier this year, no Tea Party members showed up?  Could it be that such a display by the Tea Party would have been against the interests of those who fund their Astroturf grassroots rallies?  Steve Benen of Washington Monthly continues the theme:

MOVEMENTS ARE ABOUT SOMETHING REAL…. I tried to keep up on today's festivities at the Lincoln Memorial, but as the dust settles, I find myself confused.

For a year and a half, we've seen rallies and town-hall shouting and attack ads and Fox News special reports. But I still haven't the foggiest idea what these folks actually want, other than to see like-minded Republicans winning elections. To be sure, I admire their passion, and I applaud their willingness to get involved in public affairs. If more Americans chose to take a more active role in the political process, the country would be better off and our democracy would be more vibrant.

But that doesn't actually tell us what these throngs of Americans are fighting for, exactly. I'm not oblivious to their cries; I'm at a loss to appreciate those cries on anything more than a superficial level.

This is about "freedom."

Well, I'm certainly pro-freedom, and as far as I can tell, the anti-freedom crowd struggles to win votes on Election Day. But can they be a little more specific? How about the freedom for same-sex couples to get married? No, we're told, not that kind of freedom.

<snip>

Labor unions created a movement. Women's suffrage was a movement. The fight for civil rights is a movement. The ongoing struggle for equality for gays and lesbians is a movement. In each case, the grievance was as clear as the solution. There was no mystery as to what these patriots were fighting for. Their struggles and successes made the nation stronger, better, and more perfect.

The folks who gathered in D.C. today were awfully excited about something. The fact that it's not altogether obvious what that might be probably isn't a good sign.

 

Bob Herbert is right, America is better than this.  As Dr. King himself said 47 years ago (yesterday):

 

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

 

Who brings soul force to the Tea Party?  What in their message is not divisive and mean-spirited?  What raises us up to our truer calling of brother and sisterhood if Mrs. Palin slants all of her messages only to “real Americans”?  What if the majority of Americans view the night that President Obama was elected, not as the beginning of a slide into national dishonor, as the Beck/Palin worldview appears to believe, but as the heretofore unparalleled peak of our country’s national honor?  Would that shared sense not speak of the better angels among us?

Turn off these merchants of hate and division, and ask yourself what you fear, and why, and be honest about it.  All I’m saying is, if you’re upset and want to vote all the bums out this November (and please, do vote!) at least do it because you’ve come to your own conclusions and done your own research, not because your vote suits the agendas of those running the show from behind the curtain.

Honoring our fallen heroes

Image by Beverly & Pack via Flickr

It was a poignant moment for me, if a bit flustering.  My grandfather and I were sitting at breakfast last Monday morning, Memorial Day, following a cousin's wedding over the weekend, and my grandfather asked me why the news never shows videos of flag-draped caskets returning our fallen soldiers from battle anymore?  His remark was a simple one, that those soldiers deserve to be honored for their sacrifices, and that it seems that everyone has forgotten that we're still at war these days.  I didn't have a good response for him, beyond my wholly unsatisfying initial reaction that most likely the news media didn't see any profits in devoting airtime to returning caskets from our wars overseas.  My grandfather asked me that I do some investigation into the matter, and that I post whatever I found on my blog, since he's a subscriber, and would be interested to see what I dug up.

First, a bit of background.

My grandfather, William G. Moir, or "Fahtie," as we grandchildren know him, is a Navy veteran who served in the Pacific theater in WWII.  Like many veterans, Fahtie has never spoken much about his experience in the war, or at least, he has never volunteered information about his service.  Since my childhood I have always felt as though he was a man who served his country proudly and bravely, but that when he returned to civilian life, he dedicated himself to providing a good life for his family (which later grew to 7 children) and never much sought to relive his experience through retelling it to his offspring.  More likely, Fahtie just never had the time nor inclination to turn his personal war story into a shared family story; working as a traveling salesman, raising many children, putting himself through night school for an MBA from the University of Chicago...it sounds like he had plenty else to do.

But nevertheless, the sheer lack of Fahtie's war story over the course of my childhood created a situation where even his glancing references to his experience, or to topics surrounding the military, elicit a feeling of import, of significance, for me.

And so it was this past Monday morning; Fahtie's seemingly simple question as to why we never see images of the fallen returning home from war struck me to the quick, and I felt...shame.  Shame for our consumerist modern culture that has neither the time nor the attention span to honor those who have sacrificed on our collective behalf; shame for the fact that a solemn event has been politicized in our hyper-partisan world.  I wanted to honor the fact that Fahtie had entrusted me with his feeling of outrage at the lack of honor accorded to our fallen heroes, to somehow find a way to redeem his faith in modern America, and thereby to redeem my own and future generations in his eyes as we collectively move further away from the historical and proper treatment of the war dead...but there was no way to do it.  Our world, our culture as it is constructed today, can never offer the kind of respect and dignity that is deserved by those who sacrificed all, and yet, I believe that we're doing slightly better these days.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Tonight I began searching around online to find out what exactly the story was behind President Obama's decision to allow the media to film returning caskets when they arrive at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.  What began as a simple Google search has taken me far beyond what I initially had imagined.

First, CNN's initial report announcing President Obama's decision from February 2009:

The Pentagon will lift its ban on media coverage of the flag-draped coffins of war victims arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.

But the families of the victims will have the final say on whether to allow the coverage, he said. President Obama asked Gates to review the policy, and Gates said he decided after consulting with the armed services and groups representing military families to apply the same policy that is used at Arlington National Cemetery.

"I have decided that the decision regarding media coverage of the dignified transfer process at Dover should be made by those most directly affected -- the families," he said at a news conference.

The report mentions the controversy surrounding the decision to lift the ban and covers both sides, but further searching revealed a nuanced article from the Columbus Dispatch:

The arrival of war dead at Dover has long pitted free-speech advocates against the government, which had been accused of using the ban to hide the horror of war from the public.

In 2004, Vice President Joe Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, said, "The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong."

This year, the Obama administration sought a middle ground. Defense Secretary Robert Gates lifted the ban but said families should decide whether the media cover the homecomings of the fallen: "We ought not presume to make that decision in their place."

The fact that military families are now at least afforded a choice of whether they wish for media to be allowed to cover the arrival of their loved one appears to me to be a step in the right direction, however with the lifting of the ban, the expectations for media coverage appear to have left some families slightly surprised:

So Gloria Crothers of Edgewood, Md., was a little taken aback when just two news crews appeared for the arrival of the bodies of her son, Army Sgt. Michael Heede, and another soldier from Maryland. She wasn't so much disappointed as surprised, she said. "I was told there could be quite a few" news crews.

But a few is the norm, said Maj. Carl Grusnick, an Air Force spokesman. Often the only professional journalist is a lone AP photographer. 

"The feeling is that somewhere there is a hometown, a family, a newspaper for whom the homecoming of the soldier is very important news," said Paul Colford, an AP spokesman. "So we have made the commitment to covering each and every one of those at Dover."

The AP is doing an honorable thing, covering each and every arrival (that they are allowed to) which is as much of a public service as anything else.  Further searching turned up the AP's online archives of all of their images of caskets returning from overseas - they refer to them as "casualty returns." The images are there for commercial purchase and use, but as a rough guide to the procedures and ceremonies around the casualty returns, they are quite poignant.

Continuing from there, the Columbus Dispatch ends its article on a far more upbeat note that I believe sums up exactly why we ought to film the casualty returns in the first place:

Since the media ban was lifted, the military also started paying for families to travel to Dover to welcome their loved ones home. More than 70 percent of families have made the trip.

That's what mattered to Shane Wilhelm of Plymouth, Ohio: being there for the quiet, white-gloved military rite. Wilhelm said it made him feel proud of his 19-year-old son, Army Pvt. Keiffer Wilhelm, and of his country.

"It was representative of the United States, that's the way I viewed it," he said. "It shook me to the bone, but it made me feel proud instead of having all that grief. All these people are here all because of my son."

The ritual, the honor afforded to the dead is presumably a key element in a family's grieving process, and if it helped Mr. Wilhelm to be able to attend his son's arrival in person, then that would appear to be a great addition to the military's services to surviving family members.

But all that aside, why aren't we seeing more coverage on TV, as Fahtie asked me to investigate?  A CNN article ominously entitled "Interest in photographing return of war dead to U.S. wanes" gives some insight:

Of those 472 (casualty returns), about 260 -- or 55 percent -- have been open to media coverage, according to statistics from the Mortuary Affairs office. And over the past year, the media attendance has dropped off to a trickle.

"Those numbers reflect that the interest in covering the story diminishes as the story becomes repetitive," said Ralph Begleiter, a former network correspondent and now professor of communications at the University of Delaware....

...Many major news organizations rely on the fact that The Associated Press is covering these events, and will keep the images as they are brought in, but often they are still not used.

"Just because things are covered does not mean the public sees it. Lots and lots of things are covered [by news organizations] but then never actually end up on the air," Begleiter said.

So we see that the majority of families are opting to have their loved ones' arrivals open to media coverage, yet the media isn't covering the arrivals beyond perhaps buying the AP's photos of the event.  My hunch, borne out by the facts over the last 9 years of war, is that there is not a shared sense of loss among the public because there is not a shared burden from the wars we are fighting among the public.  In the days of an all-volunteer military, with the prospects of a draft being negligible (barring catastrophe,) the vast majority of the suffering and the hardships of war will fall on those families whose loved ones chose to serve.  And yet, there are striking reminders of the private tolls endured by families out there in the world if one looks for them.

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If it's not apparent, all throughout this article I've been interspersing links to various other websites, photo archives, and news reports, and those various resources out there led me to the conclusion I've finally come to: while our society may be too stratified, too hectic, too narcissistic in the aggregate to honor our returning war dead in the unified way we used to when there were only three major news networks, the sheer volume of information and resources out there far exceed what was possible in the Vietnam era.  Beyond that, there are amazing communities of people who gather online (and in person, naturally) to share stories, remembrances, and to honor the dead, far more than I have represented here.

And just to show that the world is full of "surprises," I would like to make note that at the infamous liberal website DailyKos.com (itself founded by Markos Moulitsas, a military veteran) there is an ongoing series of diary posts entitled "IGTNT" meaning "I got the news today," which honor those who have died serving in our armed forces.  The description of the IGTNT series follows below (note that there are a number of online avatars/usernames sprinkled throughout, which makes for awkward sentences if you're not familiar with the use of avatars):

I Got the News Today is a diary series intended to honor, respect and remind. This series, which was begun by i dunno, is currently maintained by Sandy on Signal, noweasels, monkeybiz, silvercedes, MsWings, greenies, blue jersey mom, Chacounne, Wee Mama, twilight falling, labwitchy, moneysmith, joyful, roses, SisTwo, Avila,a girl in MI and me, SpamNunn.

These diaries are heartbreaking to write, but, we believe, an important service to those Americans who have died, and to our community’s respect for and remembrance of them. If you would like to volunteer, even once a month, please contact Sandy on Signal, monkeybiz, or noweasels.

As you read this diary, please consider that the families and friends of those profiled here also may read it and that many members of our community have served in the Armed Services of the United States of America.  I hope that our comments tonight will demonstrate our respect for the sacrifices of our fallen military and our compassion for their families, whatever our personal or political feelings about the current war or any war happen to be.

While the vast majority of DailyKos users oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this just goes to show that even peaceniks can rally around our troops and honor their sacrifices.  A particularly touching diary post is here, about the recently-identified remains of two WWII pilots who were lost over Germany.

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So ultimately, Fahtie, I don't have a good answer for you.  I've spent quite a few hours working on this blog posting now, and I suppose the topic of how we honor our war dead, and why it is different than before, will be one I will have to investigate further and return to in the future.