TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2011
PART 1—KAZIN’S QUESTION: Michael Kazin is a professor at Georgetown—but today, we won’t hold that against him. In Sunday’s New York Times, Kazin wrote an essay which asked a very good question:
“Whatever Happened to the American Left?”
This, the headline on Kazin’s piece, represents the basic question he posed all through his piece. For the record, his question is a bit of a lover’s question. Kazin defines himself as a man of the left.
Kazin has just published “American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation,” a history of the American left. But as he started Sunday’s essay, he wondered about “the relative silence” of the left today. At the end of this, his opening passage, the professor asked his basic question in a second way:
KAZIN (9/25/11): Sometimes, attention should be paid to the absence of news. America's economic miseries continue, with unemployment still high and home sales stagnant or dropping. The gap between the wealthiest Americans and their fellow citizens is wider than it has been since the 1920s.
And yet, except for the demonstrations and energetic recall campaigns that roiled Wisconsin this year, unionists and other stern critics of corporate power and government cutbacks have failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession.
Instead, the Tea Party rebellion—led by veteran conservative activists and bankrolled by billionaires—has compelled politicians from both parties to slash federal spending and defeat proposals to tax the rich and hold financiers accountable for their misdeeds. Partly as a consequence, Barack Obama's tenure is starting to look less like the second coming of F.D.R. and more like a re-run of Jimmy Carter—although last week the president did sound a bit Rooseveltian when he proposed that millionaires should ''pay their fair share in taxes, or we're going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare.''
How do we account for the relative silence of the left?
According to Kazin, the left has “failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession.” How do we explain that relative silence, he asked.
Has the left really been silent—even relatively silent—about the nation’s ongoing economic miseries? Some folk may reject this basic claim as a scurrilous slander. For ourselves, we think Kazin is asking an important question—a question liberals and progressives should be asking themselves much more often, in a much more disciplined way. Beyond that, we think he paints an accurate picture of the modern political discourse—a discourse in which most of the energy, and most of the skillful messaging, can be found on the right.
In truth, Kazin can be a bit annoying when he describes this sad state of affairs. Have the forces of the right taken control of the discourse? We would say that this claim is accurate. But here’s the way Kazin describes their efforts over the past thirty-plus years, a period in which the right has taken the energy away from the left:
KAZIN: In the late 1970s, the grass-roots right was personified by a feisty, cigar-chomping businessman-activist named Howard Jarvis. Having toiled for conservative causes since Herbert Hoover's campaign in 1932, Jarvis had run for office on several occasions in the past, but, like Henry George, he had never been elected. Blocked at the ballot box, he became an anti-tax organizer, working on the belief that the best way to fight big government was ''not to give them the money in the first place.''
In 1978 he spearheaded the Proposition 13 campaign in California to roll back property taxes and make it exceedingly hard to raise them again. That fall, Proposition 13 won almost two-thirds of the vote, and conservatives have been vigorously echoing its anti-tax argument ever since. Just as the left was once able to pin the nation's troubles on heartless big businessmen, the right honed a straightforward critique of a big government that took Americans' money and gave them little or nothing useful in return.
[…]
Like the left in the early 20th century, conservatives built an impressive set of institutions to develop and disseminate their ideas. Their think tanks, legal societies, lobbyists, talk radio and best-selling manifestos have trained, educated and financed two generations of writers and organizers. Conservative Christian colleges, both Protestant and Catholic, provide students with a more coherent worldview than do the more prestigious schools led by liberals. More recently, conservatives marshaled media outlets like Fox News and the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal to their cause.
The Tea Party is thus just the latest version of a movement that has been evolving for over half a century, longer than any comparable effort on the liberal or radical left. Conservatives have rarely celebrated a landslide win on the scale of Proposition 13, but their argument about the evils of big government has, by and large, carried the day.
Our questions: Is Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio program really part of “an impressive set of institutions?” Has Limbaugh’s talk radio program mainly served to “disseminate ideas?” How about the conservative think tanks which have churned endless sets of talking-points designed to disinform the voters? One example out of millions: When these think-tanks convinced the public that the Social Security trust find was just “an accounting fiction,” were they really constructing “arguments” and “ideas”—a “straightforward critique?” Or would it be more accurate to say that they were engaged in disinformation?
Kazin is quite polite in his description of this conservative world—the conservative world which has emerged since the days of Howard Jarvis. He doesn’t mention the mountains of garbage which have emerged from those “think tanks, legal societies, lobbyists, talk radio and best-selling manifestos”—mountains of garbage which have often disinformed the public. On the other hand, not everything from the right has been garbage during this period—and we think Kazin’s basic picture is basically accurate. Starting at some point in the 1960s or 1970s, the conservative world began to build a very successful message machine which has in fact largely “carried the day.” These institutions have been “impressive” in their raw political power. And in the face of this message machine, the left has been rather inept.
Whatever happened to the left? In the fact of this “impressive” onslaught, the left has largely failed.
This basic portrait isn’t new, but progressives need to discuss it more often. Whatever happened to the left? Why has the left been so inept in the political wars of the past forty years? Why does so much of the energy and messaging success lie with the heirs to Howard Jarvis?
What accounts for our relative silence?
In his essay and in this recent interview, we think Kazin is asking good questions. Sadly, major figures of the left are constantly giving us partial answers. Just this week, some of Kazin’s fellow professors are giving us our latest look at some of the ways the left keeps failing. Alas! There is rarely a dearth of damn-fool conduct emerging from folk who represent the left in the eyes of the larger world. The modern left loves to fail, in the dumbest ways possible.
Why has the left been so inept? We think that’s a very good question. Sadly, there are many good answers. We’ll be frisking Kazin’s question in this series all week.
Tomorrow: History takes a long time
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MISSING MOVEMENT WATCH! As the left slept!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
PART 2—HISTORY TAKES A LONG TIME: “Whatever happened to the American left?”
Michael Kazin may be a history professor, but he asked this very good question in Sunday’s New York Times. For the record, Kazin is a man of the left. But in his essay, he painted an unflattering portrait of the left’s role in the current American debate.
Despite the ongoing economic meltdown, the left has “failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession,” Kazin wrote. The tea party right is much more dominant in the current debate, he judged. Then, he asked his question again:
“How do we account for the relative silence of the left?”
We think that’s a very good question. Today, let’s check the professor’s overview of the way we got into this mess.
What accounts for the “relative silence” of the left? In effect, Kazin says this: History takes a very long time—and so does building a movement! The left built a movement a long time ago. But in the past four decades, the work of movement-building has mainly been done on the right.
At one time, the balance was different. In this passage, Kazin states his basic premise—and he recalls the time when the left invested decades in movement-building:
KAZIN (9/25/11): How do we account for the relative silence of the left? Perhaps what really matters about a movement's strength is the years of building that came before it. In the 1930s, the growth of unions and the popularity of demands to share the wealth and establish ''industrial democracy'' were not simply responses to the economic debacle. In fact, unions bloomed only in the middle of the decade, when a modest recovery was under way. The liberal triumph of the 1930s was in fact rooted in decades of eloquent oratory and patient organizing by a variety of reformers and radicals against the evils of “monopoly” and “big money.”
The groundwork for that liberal triumph had been laid over the course of decades, extending back into the nineteenth century. In this passage, Kazin takes us through the basic history. We’ll let you scan the whole chunk:
KAZIN: The seeds of the 1930s left were planted back in the Gilded Age by figures like the journalist Henry George. In 1886, George, the author of a best-selling book that condemned land speculation, ran for mayor of New York City as the nominee of the new Union Labor Party. He attracted a huge following with speeches indicting the officeholders of the Tammany Hall machine for engorging themselves on bribes and special privileges while ''we have hordes of citizens living in want and in vice born of want, existing under conditions that would appall a heathen.''
George also brought his audiences a message of hope: ''We are building a movement for the abolition of industrial slavery, and what we do on this side of the water will send its impulse across the land and over the sea, and give courage to all men to think and act.'' Running against candidates from both major parties and the opposition of nearly every local employer and church, George would probably have been elected, if the 28-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican who finished third, had not split the anti-Tammany vote.
Despite George's defeat, the pro-labor, anti-corporate movement that coalesced around him and others kept growing. As the turn of the century neared, wage earners mounted huge strikes for union recognition on the nation's railroads and inside its coal mines and textile mills. In the 1890s, a mostly rural insurgency spawned the People's Party, also known as the Populists, which quickly won control of several states and elected 22 congressmen. The party soon expired, but not before the Democrats, under William Jennings Bryan, had adopted important parts of its platform—the progressive income tax, a flexible currency and support for labor organizing.
During the early 20th century, a broader progressive coalition, including immigrant workers, middle-class urban reformers, muckraking journalists and Social Gospelers established a new common sense about the need for a government that would rein in corporate power and establish a limited welfare state. The unbridled free market and the ethic of individualism, they argued, had left too many Americans at the mercy of what Theodore Roosevelt called ''malefactors of great wealth.'' As Jane Addams put it, ''the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.''
Amid the boom years of the 1920s, conservatives rebutted this wisdom and won control of the federal government. ''The chief business of the American people is business,'' intoned President Calvin Coolidge. But their triumph was brief, both ideologically and electorally. When Franklin D. Roosevelt swept into the White House in 1932, most Americans were already primed to accept the economic and moral argument progressives had been making since the heyday of Henry George.
Roosevelt didn’t take office waving a wand which magically changed his nation’s thinking. The understandings which helped him proceed were decades in the making. “After years of preparation, welfare-state liberalism had finally become a mainstream faith,” Kazin writes. In this passage, he again describes the building-blocks which help a president prosper:
KAZIN: After years of preparation, welfare-state liberalism had finally become a mainstream faith. In 1939, John L. Lewis, the pugnacious labor leader, declared, "The millions of organized workers banded together in the C.I.O. are the main driving force of the progressive movement of workers, farmers, professional and small business people and of all other liberal elements in the community." With such forces on his side, the politically adept F.D.R. became a great president.
We’d dump the term “welfare state” ourselves. But decades of effort had created the understandings which helped FDR prosper.
Things changed after that, Kazin says. In this passage, he describes a basic change in political energy—a transfer of energy on certain issues from the left to the right:
KAZIN (continuing directly): But the meaning of liberalism gradually changed. The quarter century of growth and low unemployment that followed World War II understandably muted appeals for class justice on the left. Liberals focused on rights for minority groups and women more than addressing continuing inequalities of wealth. Meanwhile, conservatives began to build their own movement based on a loathing of “creeping socialism” and a growing perception that the federal government was oblivious or hostile to the interests and values of middle-class whites.
As liberals turned toward issues of racial and gender justice, conservatives began to develop a movement whose messaging dealt with economic issues. At this point, Kazin describes the rise of the current conservative world, starting with Howard Jarvis and Proposition 13 in 1979. In Kazin’s account, the right has spent the past thirty-plus years building the type of movement the left long ago:
KAZIN: Like the left in the early 20th century, conservatives built an impressive set of institutions to develop and disseminate their ideas. Their think tanks, legal societies, lobbyists, talk radio and best-selling manifestos have trained, educated and financed two generations of writers and organizers. Conservative Christian colleges, both Protestant and Catholic, provide students with a more coherent worldview than do the more prestigious schools led by liberals. More recently, conservatives marshaled media outlets like Fox News and the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal to their cause.
As we noted yesterday, Kazin’s description of that “impressive set of institutions” is extremely polite. But in his view, the right has laid the groundwork for current economic fights over the course of four decades.
There is nothing especially new about this basic analysis. You can read a similar account of the past four decades in Paul Krugman’s book, The Conscience of a Liberal. But Kazin stresses a very important point—like history itself, movement-building take a long time. When it comes to current issues, the “relative silence” of the left has been a long time in the making.
As Kazin notes, the left was doing some very good things during the period under review. Parts of the left were deeply involved in issues of racial and gender justice; major victories were achieved in those areas. But what should the left be doing today to get itself back in the current game, in which voters are asked to consider basic issues of economic justice?
Kazin has some thoughts about that—thoughts he expressed in Sunday’s essay and in this recent interview. Tomorrow, we’ll look at what he has said—though once again, we will suggest that he has been a bit too polite.
Forty years of intellectual struggle preceded President Roosevelt. Decades of slumber and self-indulgence preceded his current successor. That self-indulgence continues apace. In truth, we liberals just aren’t very smart—and lord, how we love to lose!
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
PART 3—KAZIN’S STRANGE SUGGESTION: “How do we account for the relative silence of the left?”
In Sunday's New York Times, Michael Kazin weirdly asked that plainly ridiculous question. Despite the nation’s economic woes, despite the vast rise in inequality, we on the left “have failed to organize a serious movement against the people and policies that bungled the United States into recession,” Kazin improbably said.
Why would Kazin say such things about us, the good pure brilliant smart decent folk of the American left? We’re not sure, but he kept it up all through his lengthy essay. As he continued, he even seemed to say that folk on the right have been kicking our perfect pure butts in the nation’s messaging wars:
“Instead, the Tea Party rebellion…has compelled politicians from both parties to slash federal spending and defeat proposals to tax the rich and hold financiers accountable for their misdeeds,” the professor continued—weirdly suggesting that we on the left might need to improve our game!
According to Kazin, most of the juice has been on the right as the nation tries to deal with its economic miseries. Hence his plainly ridiculous question: “How do we account for the relative silence of the left?”
Kazin attempts to answer that question in his essay. Yesterday, we reviewed one major part of his answer (click here). But sure enough! Due to the fact that Kazin is white, his insidious electoral racism was sure to emerge in the course of his effort! And sure enough! As he neared the end of Sunday’s piece, he began to pretend that those on the left may have done some things imperfectly. As he started this part of his piece, his obvious electoral racism plainly began to emerge:
KAZIN (9/25/11): If activists on the left want to alter this reality, they will have to figure out how to redefine the old ideal of economic justice for the age of the Internet and relentless geographic mobility. During the last election, many hoped that the organizing around Barack Obama's presidential campaign would do just that. Yet, since taking office, Mr. Obama has only rarely made an effort to move the public conversation in that direction.
The left has to “figure out how to redefine the old ideal of economic justice,” but Obama “has only rarely made an effort to move the public conversation in that direction!” Plainly, Kazin would never say such a thing about a sitting white president!
OK, we’ve had some fun. For now, let’s put the snark to the side. For those who care to consider the possibility that we on the left might step up our game, Kazin makes some fleeting suggestions at the end of his essay. We think those suggestions are well worth discussing, although his remarks are brief.
How have progressives won in the past? In the past, progressives have “seldom bet their future on politicians,” Kazin says. Instead, progressives have “fashioned their own institutions,” which have driven the discourse along.
In this, Kazin makes an excellent point. Liberals and progressives can’t expect a politician, even a sitting president, to create miraculous new understandings among the American people. Whether it’s President Clinton or President Obama, a president marches to political war with the economic understandings the public already has. In Kazin’s view, the left has tended to drop the ball in this area over the past forty years. During that period, liberals have “focused on rights for minority groups and women more than addressing continuing inequalities of wealth,” he says. There have been large successes in these areas. (Just look how well Herman Cain is doing!) But the right has tended to fill the vacuum concerning the way the economy works.
What explains our relative silence in that area? What have we on the left perhaps been doing in a slightly imperfect fashion?
We know, we know! In a highly tribalized culture, it’s against the rules to ask such questions—to suggest that one’s own tribe may have failed in some manner. Within our burgeoning pseudo-liberal political world, our multimillionaire cable leaders encourage us to mock The Other. Every night, we’re trained to laugh at how stupid Those People are. (You know? The ones who are kicking our asses?) We must never note the sheer stupidity on vivid display within our own tribe. Criticizing one's own tribe is a break with every known rule!
But as he finished Sunday’s essay, Kazin made a strange suggestion. He suggested that we on the left should take a good look at ourselves!
For our money, this part of his essay could have been expanded—and Kazin did expand on these ideas in a recent interview. But here are the brief suggestions with which he ended Sunday’s piece. We’ll highlight two of his statements:
KAZIN: [T]he left must realize that when progressives achieved success in the past, whether at organizing unions or fighting for equal rights, they seldom bet their future on politicians. They fashioned their own institutions—unions, women's groups, community and immigrant centers and a witty, anti-authoritarian press—in which they spoke up for themselves and for the interests of wage-earning Americans.
Today, such institutions are either absent or reeling. With unions embattled and on the decline, working people of all races lack a sturdy vehicle to articulate and fight for the vision of a more egalitarian society. Liberal universities, Web sites and non-governmental organizations cater mostly to a professional middle class and are more skillful at promoting social causes like legalizing same-sex marriage and protecting the environment than demanding millions of new jobs that pay a living wage.
A reconnection with ordinary Americans is vital not just to defeating conservatives in 2012 and in elections to come. Without it, the left will remain unable to state clearly and passionately what a better country would look like and what it will take to get there. To paraphrase the labor martyr Joe Hill, the left should stop mourning its recent past and start organizing to change the future.
Say what? Current liberal institutions “cater mostly to a professional middle class?” And we on the left need to fashion “a reconnection with ordinary Americans?”
Impossible! Aren’t they the very people we very much like to mock?
What is Kazin talking about? And why is he saying these things about Us? For our money, Kazin has more to say on these topics. Luckily, he said some of those things right here, in a recent interview conducted for Salon.
Tomorrow, we’ll examine some of the ways we on the left—brace yourselves!—may be failing to move the ball. Warning! In his interview, Kazin discusses possible errors being made by us on the left!
We know—the notion is strange on its face! Where do they find the very strange folk who are willing to make such claims?
Tomorrow: Possible errors
Posted by bob somerby on Thursday, September 29, 2011
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THE ABSENCE OF THE PROFESSORS! Disinformation never sleeps!
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
PART 4—NO WAY OUT: If you’re an American voter, it’s amazingly easy to get disinformed about Social Security.
The disinformation campaign has been under way for thirty years—and the campaign continues. Just consider the column by an economics professor in today's Baltimore Sun.
The professor in question is Peter Morici, one of the carnival barker-style professors who get big play on cable news—even on network news programs. Morici is from the University of Maryland; this makes him geographically convenient to cable bookers. And he sports a trademarked, bow-tie conservative look—the look that pre-announces a cable guest as a pseudo-conservative fraud.
When cable guests wear uniforms, viewers can watch the ensuing debates with the sound turned off!
Beyond that, Morici is skilled with his disinformation. This is the way his op-ed column starts in this morning’s Baltimore Sun. We’ll use the headline from our hard-copy paper:
MORICI (9/22/11): Yes, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme
When established in 1935, Social Security made its first payments to Americans age 65. These first recipients never contributed and were paid from contributions made by younger Americans. Those Americans and successive generations believed their contributions were investments, and that they would be paid at retirement by the earnings on those investments.
In fact, those younger Americans were paid by the contributions of successive generations of "investors," as the federal government spent their money to help finance operating deficits. With the ratio of retirees to contributors rising, the Social Security Trust Fund will run out of money by 2036, if not sooner.
Such a scheme could only continue if the working-age population grew more rapidly than the number of retirees, but it hasn't because Americans live longer and the birth rate has declined.
President Barack Obama's claims notwithstanding, Social Security is now a growing burden on federal finances, as the difference between the trust fund's income and what it pays out grows each year. As we approach 2036, either payments will have to be drastically curtailed or the government will have to shut down, on a massive basis, other activities.
Either Social Security fails, or the United States fails.
Let’s be fair. As noted, Morici is a full professor at a major university. For that reason, it’s possible he’s so goddamned dumb that he wrote this piece in good faith.
It’s possible, but we’d call it unlikely. Morici’s piece extends a disinformation campaign which has run for more than three decades. And sure enough! Through this morning’s column, Maryland voters will get disinformed again.
Will other professors speak up in protest? If the thought even enters your head, you must live on the far planet Zarkon. Except for hustlers like Morici and the occasional outlier like Paul Krugman, American professors sold you out a very long time ago.
The professors keep their big traps shut. They’re too busy screwing their graduate students or composing their latest thoughts on Jane Austen’s use of the colon. Other professors will not voice a challenge. That said, consider the standard disinformation Morici has spewed on the land:
“With the ratio of retirees to contributors rising, the Social Security Trust Fund will run out of money by 2036, if not sooner.”
Based on current projections, that is an accurate statement. But such truncated presentations have been a key part of this scam over the past thirty years. After the trust fund runs out of money, Social Security will of course continue to function—but voters don’t understand that fact. Truncated sound-bites of this type are intended to keep the public confused on this point, building the sense of alarm.
“As we approach 2036, either payments will have to be drastically curtailed or the government will have to shut down, on a massive basis, other activities.”
It all depends on what the meaning of what “drastically” and “massive” are! Presumably, Morici has heard of numbers, a fairly well-known recent invention. In this matter, numbers can be used to flesh out this highly alarming statement. In fact, if we make no changes at all to the current system, Social Security will continue to pay perhaps 80 percent of promised benefits after the trust fund runs out. It would have been easy for Morici to include a number like that in his column. But how strange—he never does! The tyranny of disinformation requires its hacks to make imprecise, frightening claims.
We’ll have more to say about that second quotation below. It will have an Yglesias tie-in—but for now, understand this:
Nowhere in this op-ed column does Morici attempt to quantify the alarming terms “drastically/massive.” (On that basis alone, the editor who accepted that column would be on his way out the door in a true journalistic culture.) In a similar vein, Morici fails to tell readers how easy it would be to eliminate that projected shortfall through minor tax increases.
Duh! Kevin Drum explained how easy it is in this September 12 blog post. You may not choose to make the adjustments Drum describes, but if you don’t understand the facts Drum cites, you don’t understand this topic. Presumably, Morici does understand the numbers involved here. True to his role in a long campaign, he just doesn’t want to tell the public about them.
As he continues, Morici decides that private accounts won’t work. His solution to the Ponzi problem is presented in this, the thrilling conclusion to his column. By now, Morici is basically lying—with the acquiescence of an editor at the Sun:
MORICI: In the end, the only way to make the system work is to ask Americans to work longer. If Governor Perry or Mitt Romney wants to fix the system, instead of arguing over terminology, they must address the retirement age. It simply must be raised to something close to 70, with no exceptions but for the truly disabled.
Americans won't like that, but it beats what President Obama is offering. Characteristic to his thinking on economics, he prefers to believe what his liberal ideology, not the facts, require—and incorrectly insists the system is solvent.
Social Security, by the findings of Mr. Obama's own Social Security Administration, is insolvent and hence is indeed a Ponzi scheme. Americans seeking dignity in retirement would be better served by hearing the truth.
Social Security isn't “solvent?” That’s another scary locution—and of course it all depends of what the meaning of “solvent” is! But surely, this professor understands that he’s basically lying when he says this: “The only way to make the system work is to ask Americans to work longer.”
In fairness, that is one of the ways to erase that future shortfall. But plainly, it isn’t the only way. This music man understands that fact. (Presumably, so does the editor.) He is just determined to keep that fact from Maryland voters.
Con men like Morici have been at this game for the past thirty years. Morici has made himself rather famous playing this game in the past few years, even as he has worked to make the nation’s voters dumber. Let’s return to that earlier question:
Should you expect to see pushback from any other professors? Should you expect to see letters from other professors in the Baltimore Sun’s letters column? Should you expect to see other professors denouncing Morici by name on TV?
Will you read a column by some other professor explaining the fact that a disinformation campaign has been running for the past thirty years? That progressives and tea party members alike have been disinformed by this scheme?
Of course you won’t see such actions! The nation’s professors walked away from their obligations as citizens many decades ago. Graduate students have to be screwed—and someone must use that villa in France! You will not see such pushback in the next few weeks. Nor will your mewling career liberal journalists name the names of the horrible people who are running this evil campaign.
To understand the culture within which this campaign has flourished, let’s recall a few things we have looked at this week:
In the late 1990s, the New York Times asked an eminent economics if he wanted to write a twice-weekly column. Luckily, this professor said yes. But in a fascinating profile, Larissa McFarquhar described the reaction from this professor’s colleagues.
Robin Wells is Paul Krugman’s wife. She too is an economist:
MCFARQUHAR (3/1/10): When the Times approached him about writing a column, he was torn. “His friends said, ‘This is a waste of your time,’ ” Wells says. “We economists thought that we were doing substantive work and the rest of the world was dross.” Krugman cared about his academic reputation more than anything else. If he started writing for a newspaper, would his colleagues think he’d become a pseudo-economist, a former economist, a vapid policy entrepreneur like Lester Thurow? Lester Thurow had become known in certain circles as Less Than Thorough. It was hard to imagine what mean nickname could be made out of Paul Krugman, but what if someone came up with one? Could he take it?
Luckily, Krugman took the job. But McFarquhar suggests that the nation’s professors think they’re above such work. Let’s be honest—most of these people couldn’t explain how Social Security works if they tried. (Is the left hand borrowing from the right? They wouldn’t know how to unpack that!) But these professors aren't inclined to try; they don’t accept their duty as citizens. They seem to think it’s a waste of their time to speak to the nation’s rubes.
In 1996, this same professor betrayed a hint of this attitude. By his own account, Krugman was still “sleepwalking” at this point; he too wasn’t bothering himself with mere politics. Presumably, that explains why he wrote a bungled piece for the New York Times Sunday Book Review section, a piece he renounced three weeks later:
KRUGMAN (11/12/96): First of all, a mea culpa of my own. Ignore Galbraith's coyness: I was the economist who went overboard in supporting Pete Peterson's position on entitlements and demographics.
Demographics play a smaller role in Peterson's forecasts, and debatable projections of medical costs a larger one, than I realized when I recently reviewed his book for the New York Times. I broke my own rule that you should always check an argument both with a back-of-the-envelope calculation and by consulting with the real experts, no matter how plausible and reasonable its author sounds. Do as I say and normally do, not as I unfortunately did in this case.
Oof! Still sleepwalking at this point, Krugman behaved like those other professors. Writing on a major topic for a very influential publication, he didn’t bother checking Pete Peterson’s argument. Reason? Peterson sounded so good!
Today, Krugman is our most valuable player. Back then, in that blithe response, he described irresponsible conflict—the type of conduct one can expect from the bulk of the nation’s professors. He also explained how a disinformation campaign has proven to be so successful.
Let’s mention Dean Baker, who wrote a letter to the Times in 1996 challenging Krugman’s review. In 1999, Baker and Weisbrot wrote a very important book, Social Security: The Phony Crisis. Unfortunately, the book is too technical for general use—and no professor, think tank or liberal journal has ever created a simplified, voter-friendly version of this essential information.
The professors are too lofty for such work. You can explain the sloth of the liberal journals any way you like. That said, let’s return to our first report in this series—to Matt Yglesias’ murky attempt to explain how Social Security works. Thirty years into this endless scam, this is the best description of Social Security our beautiful minds can manage:
YGLESIAS (9/16/11): So to review, roughly speaking we have two kinds of people in America. We have people who are paying Social Security taxes and we have people who are receiving Social Security benefits. For the past several decades, the quantity of tax revenue coming in has exceeded the quantity of benefits being paid out. That is projected to flip around, creating the need to either redirect some additional financial stream into the Social Security system in order to repay the rest of the government’s debt to Social Security or else to reduce Social Security benefits or else to increase Social Security taxes.
The choice among these options is what the Social Security debate is about, if the Social Security debate is about funding Social Security.
That highlighted passage is clear as mud. But thirty years into this endless scam, it’s the best our beautiful minds can produce. Steve Benen made a point of saying how clear that bafflegab was!
The professors have failed you; the children can’t function. That’s the state of the liberal project thirty years into this scam. But people! On Monday, we said the first part of Yglesias’ explanation echoes one of the newer talking-points which are used in this campaign. We said this new point is hard to search for. But we said we’d get back to you on it by the end of the week.
Luckily, Morici folds that talking-point into his scam-heavy column. When Social Security revenues no longer equal the benefits being paid out, will that somehow create the need to “redirect some additional financial stream into the Social Security system in order to repay the rest of the government’s debt to Social Security?” That bafflegab echoed a new talking-point. Here we see a version of same, Professor Morici-style:
MORICI: President Barack Obama's claims notwithstanding, Social Security is now a growing burden on federal finances, as the difference between the trust fund's income and what it pays out grows each year. As we approach 2036, either payments will have to be drastically curtailed or the government will have to shut down, on a massive basis, other activities.
Morici is speaking about the years before the trust fund is exhausted. As he has been instructed to do, he says we will have to shut down other activities, on a massive basis, to make up for the annual shortfalls. (More conventional hustlers add a second option: Or we will have to raise taxes!) That statement is grossly misleading, of course; in the years before the trust fund expires, the shortfall will be covered by the Social Security trust fund. Money borrowed from the trustees will be repaid, just as we’ll repay the money we’ve borrowed from banks in China. Morici is simply creating more confusion about this process, just as it has been written.
In the bafflegab we’ve highlighted, Yglesias seemed tangled up in that talking-point too. Such is the work of the liberal world’s most beautiful minds as this campaign keeps advancing.
The professors don’t care; the careerists can’t function. What should liberals do about this?
We will have to leave that question for another time.
Back to Hacker: For other mordant thoughts about the priorities of the professors, we again recommend the Andrew Hacker/Claudia Dreifus book, Higher Education. The authors write from deep inside the academy they have betrayed.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
BARELY MAKING SENSE OF ANY OF IT - based on high school paper Chase Promerich composed
Some people go through life, cursed, as children, from birth,
With loving, supportive financially comfortable families,
Safe secure households, neighborhoods, and communities,
Wonderful and like-minded family friends who watch out for these cursed children
And know what limits have been set on them
And promptly act when those boundaries are crossed,
Whether or not crossed intentionally or crossed accidentally,
And furthermore, they will report these trespasses to the judge, jury, and executioner
(In most families, these responsibilities are delegated to and hats worn by mother).
Why cursed at first? Because ultimately, LIFE intervenes,
Circumstances are turned topsy-turvy, and
What was once comfortable and familiar, is ripped away,
As if torn from bone like flesh being devoured by jackals, hyenas, and zombies.
And, for all appearances, lost and gone forever,
Despite the honorable, dedicated intentions of father, mother, aunts, uncles,
grand parents, cherished friends, fellow congregants, business associates, etc, etc, etc.
Loss of employment
Death (suicide being the most brutal form to those accursed and left living thereof,
(Something, sadly, was wrong all the long
(We just never saw it coming, until the beloved one is
(Now too far and too long gone to be healed, much less revived).
Loss of health
(Disease knows no socio-economic barriers as the revelers in Edgar All Poe's
(The Mask of Red Death would discover: No racial divides, no gender
(Differentiations. The cursed children of doctors too, and maybe even especially,
(Fall victim to the willful, wanton, in plain sight secret poisoning of our mother earth
(And their own childrens' weakened immunological systems.
(Cancer the indiscriminate killer; the ultimate egalitarian strike force of Death.
(The addicts' poisons of choice – alcohol, heroin, coke or a myriad of others,
(alone, but mostly in combination, especially with alcohol, the great mixer.
(Accidents too, frequently random, SOMETIMES (and tragically, utterly Foreseeable, (but – too late. The AIDS virus took so many unaware, back in the day when
(THE VIRUS was but a rumor printed about and hinted at solely in the gay press.
(Who could have foreseen that an infected blood transfusion
(Administered to save a life Would ultimately take that life, especially
(When the potential devastation of the disease was assuredly NOT a secret
(And such consequences utterly predictable to the health care communities
(That administered their healing efforts to gay men and to intravenous drug users;
(“What? Ask Prez Reagan to worry about those damn junkie homos? Fat chance.”)
The loss of the sacred, secure, safe home – father's castle - the loss of community standing,
The loss of employment, the outright theft of assets by trusted financial advisers,
The sudden and (apparently) inexplicable madness that descends and lingers. Alzheimer's and dementia too, such are these, as if the fates had patiently waited, all the while targeting these cursed children. At least SOME of these tragic events will ultimately befall each and everyone of us, And so, cursed are they as children who are doomed to live for years
Understanding only at the level of intellect, Loss as grave, as tragic, as unbearable,
as these heretofore already mentioned – (mentioning only a few, the numbers are legion) -
Noting only the absence of the presence ff former peers, beloved friends,
who, because of circumstances Beyond their control, are forced to disperse,
Forced to seek out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go
And look for the places only they would know.
And yet, Devin, through all these losses which you have endured
You remained faithful to the one to whom you made your wedding vows
And you never cursed your God, nor the fates, nor asked, even,
The most likely question of all: “Why me, Lord?”
And while some would develop, as a means of self defense, A shell around their heart, a cage around their soul, a minefield around their mind, You only look at people,
and see the good in them. You could have but did not become hard-shelled,
and been forgiven for it, BUT:
You are soft-shelled
You are open-shelled
And because of all this, I give you this gift.
With love to you and ALL YOU LOVE.
A Survivor's Guide to Life – du moi à toi
BLESSED ARE THEY WHO SUFFER YOUNG, EARLY, AND OFTEN, FOR IN THEIR
YEARS OF ABJECT MISERY, THEY SHALL KNOW THE JOY OF COMFORTING THOSE
MUCH LESS FORTUNATE THAN THEMSELVES WHOSE MULTITUDES ARE LEGION.
JUST AS ONE DAY THE CHILDREN OF IRELAND'S PROTESTANTS AND CATHOLICS WILL
SING, DANCE, LAUGH AND PLAY WITH ONE ANOTHER, AS ARE BEGINNING TO SO DO
THE GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDCHILDREN OF AMERICAN SLAVE OWNERS AND
THE GREAT-GREAT GRANDCHILDREN OF AMERICAN SLAVES, AS WILL THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS
OF THE PALESTINIANS WILL TOO WITH THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE ISRAELI JEWS.
Click and Clack and Play War 27 Sep. 2011 by Jeff Huber
More biting, stinking humor in criticism of US military and foeign policy by the acerbic tongued, old salty dog commander Jeff Huber (USNR)
I’ve said for some time that the biggest casualty of our woebegone Ism Wars may be our national cognizance. The lines between intelligence, news, gossip, rumor and brainwash have faded like a hangover at happy hour, and the gap between reality and perception has never been greater. Big Media has been the dutiful echo chamberlain for Big War for so long that it may never again be possible for Americans, by now hopelessly addicted to the slime from their TV sets, to clearly conceptualize the causes and consequences of our fist-first foreign policy.
Leon Panetta and Mike Mullen
testify before the Senate.
During an INFOWAR opportunity last week, Leon “Uncle Leo” Panetta and Mike “Moon” Mullen, the Pentarchy’s Click and Clack, told the Senate Armed Services Clodhoppers that the recent attacks on the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan were the evildoing of a terror networks relationship with the intelligence service of Pakistan.
Senator Lindsey Graham
has always relied on the kindness
of campaign contributors in
the defense industry.
Mullen, the son of a Hollywood publicity agent, followed standard operating procedure and weasel wordsmithed his way out of presenting anything anyone could call, strictly speaking, a “lie.” He told Blanche Graham and Joe Liebfraumilch and Senator Ex-Prisoner of War that the Hagqani terrorist network “acts as” a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Internal Services Intelligence Agency aka “ISI.” You can drive the flat earth theory through that kind of wiggle room.
Mullen didn’t offer any proof to back his claims other than to cite “credible intelligence.” Hey, Abbott. At what point since 9/11 have we had “credible” intelligence, civilian or military, in this country? U.S. intelligence is to intelligence what McDonalds is to food. Our intelligence consists of bribing or beating sources into telling us what we want to hear and/or weaving facts out of air molecules and selling them to Congress and the public in packages designed by Mullen’s bull-feather merchant marines.
Mullen is invoking a variation on Don Rumsfeld’s one-percent doctrine. If one percent of anything the likes of Mullen says is true—and one can reasonably infer that yes, Pakistan’s ISI is up to things they’d rather we didn't know about—then we have to buy the other 99 per-cent of their message too. It’s kind of like the colossus cosmetics company that only allows retailers to carry its top-of-the-line products if said retailers also display said colossus cosmetics company’s crud-ola. We only have one military, and if we don't allow it to defend us from the 99 percent of our enemies that they manufacture, they won’t protect us from the one percent that are real.
Uncle Leo hurled a healthy helping of hamana hem-and-haw onto the heap about how “we should put as much pressure as we can” on Pakistan, and then he cut to the chase and said that if Congress forces the Pentagon to cut its budget it will cause “catastrophic damage to the military.” Uncle Leo didn’t bother to explain what “catastrophic damage” meant any more than Moon troubled himself to clarify what a “veritable arm” might be or how it might “act as” anything.
When you take a fire hose to Click and Clack's cockamamie presentations, you get "we need more money so we can continue to send American troops to third world countries that pose no genuine threat to us to act as targets for our enemies there who increase in number every day we keep American troops in their countries." Neither Click nor Clack nor anyone in Congress nor the newspapers bother to point out the obvious truth that thee enemies who are killing our troops would stop being enemies the moment we took our troops out of their country. The only way they can kill our troops is if we deliver our troops to their doorstep. Despite what young Mr. Bush's spin physicians used to tell us, the only way they can fight us over here is if they manage to jump or swim across the oceans.
Let's play war!
Panetta and Mullen are engaged in something I identified in Bathtub Admirals as “play war.” Intelligence weenies tell bathtub admirals and sandbox generals what they want to hear so they can play war, and fight among themselves for control of the toy ships and tanks and airplanes and melting plastic soldiers, and to see who can suck up to the bedroom politicians the most and become master of the known universe (aka “become King David Petraeus”). Play war assumes many guises, from stacked “battle experiments” whose purpose is to prove the need for the newest and costliest weapons systems to wars against countries that don’t have militaries to toys and games that the warmongery fashions to make war seem no more real than reality television programming.
The latest play war toy to surface in the “real world” is something called the “Obama Kills Osama” (aka “OKO”) action figurine. It was supposedly cooked up by some kooks in China to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The figurine is cheesy to the point of obscenity. The keyboard commandos who populate Military.com object to the figurine, but not because of its repellant portrayal of violence. They don’t like it because it gives Obama credit for killing bin Laden, and not SEAL Team Six. The repellent violence part they actually kind of like.
On that note, here is a snippet from the work in progress on Sandbox Generals:
Calling the “enemy” World Wide Evil (aka WWE) was Flip’s idea and he stole it from World Wide Entertainment, the fake professional wrestling franchise. The subconscious association Flip created exploited Americans' latent tendency to think of war the same way they thought of professional wrestling: as an entertainment. The main difference between the two was that though Americans knew professional wrestling was fake they managed to sufficiently suspend their disbelief to respond to it emotionally as if it were real. Americans knew that war, on the other hand, was real, but they tended to regard it as entertainment, and attached little emotion at all to it. Even graphic pictures of babies horribly burned by sulfur bombs seldom moved Americans, whose minds had come to equate the war violence they observed in the news with the special effects they saw in movies and television and video games.
We have met the barbarians, and they are us.
I’ve said for some time that the biggest casualty of our woebegone Ism Wars may be our national cognizance. The lines between intelligence, news, gossip, rumor and brainwash have faded like a hangover at happy hour, and the gap between reality and perception has never been greater. Big Media has been the dutiful echo chamberlain for Big War for so long that it may never again be possible for Americans, by now hopelessly addicted to the slime from their TV sets, to clearly conceptualize the causes and consequences of our fist-first foreign policy.
Leon Panetta and Mike Mullen
testify before the Senate.
During an INFOWAR opportunity last week, Leon “Uncle Leo” Panetta and Mike “Moon” Mullen, the Pentarchy’s Click and Clack, told the Senate Armed Services Clodhoppers that the recent attacks on the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan were the evildoing of a terror networks relationship with the intelligence service of Pakistan.
Senator Lindsey Graham
has always relied on the kindness
of campaign contributors in
the defense industry.
Mullen, the son of a Hollywood publicity agent, followed standard operating procedure and weasel wordsmithed his way out of presenting anything anyone could call, strictly speaking, a “lie.” He told Blanche Graham and Joe Liebfraumilch and Senator Ex-Prisoner of War that the Hagqani terrorist network “acts as” a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Internal Services Intelligence Agency aka “ISI.” You can drive the flat earth theory through that kind of wiggle room.
Mullen didn’t offer any proof to back his claims other than to cite “credible intelligence.” Hey, Abbott. At what point since 9/11 have we had “credible” intelligence, civilian or military, in this country? U.S. intelligence is to intelligence what McDonalds is to food. Our intelligence consists of bribing or beating sources into telling us what we want to hear and/or weaving facts out of air molecules and selling them to Congress and the public in packages designed by Mullen’s bull-feather merchant marines.
Mullen is invoking a variation on Don Rumsfeld’s one-percent doctrine. If one percent of anything the likes of Mullen says is true—and one can reasonably infer that yes, Pakistan’s ISI is up to things they’d rather we didn't know about—then we have to buy the other 99 per-cent of their message too. It’s kind of like the colossus cosmetics company that only allows retailers to carry its top-of-the-line products if said retailers also display said colossus cosmetics company’s crud-ola. We only have one military, and if we don't allow it to defend us from the 99 percent of our enemies that they manufacture, they won’t protect us from the one percent that are real.
Uncle Leo hurled a healthy helping of hamana hem-and-haw onto the heap about how “we should put as much pressure as we can” on Pakistan, and then he cut to the chase and said that if Congress forces the Pentagon to cut its budget it will cause “catastrophic damage to the military.” Uncle Leo didn’t bother to explain what “catastrophic damage” meant any more than Moon troubled himself to clarify what a “veritable arm” might be or how it might “act as” anything.
When you take a fire hose to Click and Clack's cockamamie presentations, you get "we need more money so we can continue to send American troops to third world countries that pose no genuine threat to us to act as targets for our enemies there who increase in number every day we keep American troops in their countries." Neither Click nor Clack nor anyone in Congress nor the newspapers bother to point out the obvious truth that thee enemies who are killing our troops would stop being enemies the moment we took our troops out of their country. The only way they can kill our troops is if we deliver our troops to their doorstep. Despite what young Mr. Bush's spin physicians used to tell us, the only way they can fight us over here is if they manage to jump or swim across the oceans.
Let's play war!
Panetta and Mullen are engaged in something I identified in Bathtub Admirals as “play war.” Intelligence weenies tell bathtub admirals and sandbox generals what they want to hear so they can play war, and fight among themselves for control of the toy ships and tanks and airplanes and melting plastic soldiers, and to see who can suck up to the bedroom politicians the most and become master of the known universe (aka “become King David Petraeus”). Play war assumes many guises, from stacked “battle experiments” whose purpose is to prove the need for the newest and costliest weapons systems to wars against countries that don’t have militaries to toys and games that the warmongery fashions to make war seem no more real than reality television programming.
The latest play war toy to surface in the “real world” is something called the “Obama Kills Osama” (aka “OKO”) action figurine. It was supposedly cooked up by some kooks in China to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The figurine is cheesy to the point of obscenity. The keyboard commandos who populate Military.com object to the figurine, but not because of its repellant portrayal of violence. They don’t like it because it gives Obama credit for killing bin Laden, and not SEAL Team Six. The repellent violence part they actually kind of like.
On that note, here is a snippet from the work in progress on Sandbox Generals:
Calling the “enemy” World Wide Evil (aka WWE) was Flip’s idea and he stole it from World Wide Entertainment, the fake professional wrestling franchise. The subconscious association Flip created exploited Americans' latent tendency to think of war the same way they thought of professional wrestling: as an entertainment. The main difference between the two was that though Americans knew professional wrestling was fake they managed to sufficiently suspend their disbelief to respond to it emotionally as if it were real. Americans knew that war, on the other hand, was real, but they tended to regard it as entertainment, and attached little emotion at all to it. Even graphic pictures of babies horribly burned by sulfur bombs seldom moved Americans, whose minds had come to equate the war violence they observed in the news with the special effects they saw in movies and television and video games.
We have met the barbarians, and they are us.
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now.
at 10:10 PM
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4 comments:
jpwhite said...
You've got to admit that's an amazing likeness of Obama (the Osama character isn't quite as accurate, seeing as how he's still got an intact face). The MIC Gadget people should rethink their limited edition, one-to-a-customer policy, as the DNC will probably be placing orders in bulk.
Would the keyboard commandos be objecting if that were Bush standing there instead of Obama (with a bottle of Jack in his belt instead of the Blackberry)? Somehow, I think not.
Any hints on the ETA for the new novel? Maybe I'm reading too much into the excerpts, but it sounds like it's going to be more serious in tone than the first one.
9:53 AM
Jeff Huber said...
Hah! Bult orders indeed, JP. The novel is at least a year away from the shelves, maybe two. It's more serious in the sense that it's much more of an Orwellian dystopia satire, but trust me, there's plenty of Mel Brooks for all the comedy fans. thanks for asking.
No, I don't reckon they'd mind if it was Bush in the vignette. Bring 'em on!
1:50 PM
dickerson3870 said...
RE: Mullen...told Blanche Graham and Joe Liebfraumilch and Senator Ex-Prisoner of War that the Hagqani terrorist network “acts as” a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Internal Services Intelligence Agency aka “ISI.” ~ Huber
MY COMMENT: Right! And back before the invasion of Iraq, ye old stovepiper extraordinare, Douglas Feith, assured Pretend-President George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had a "mature symbiotic relationship".
G-d only knows what Bush thought "symbiotic" meant. Something to do with Gog and Magog, perhaps? And I'm certain Bush would not dare ask anyone what "symbiotic" meant, or go to the gargantuan effort of looking it up in a dictionary. But then, I imagine that was precisely why Feith used that term. And perhaps because it provided beaucoup 'wiggle room' so as allow Feith to later deny responsibility for his fallacious assessment.
P.S. Good-ness gray-cious! Sen-a-tuh Gray-yam certainly does look fetching in J. Edgar's favorite party dress. Those Carolina bois are way hot!
Be still my heart!
3:45 AM
Jeff Huber said...
I'd like to get a feel for how badly the intelligence communities are getting pressured to cook intel now versus then, Dickerson. I suspect everybody who would object retired or resigned long ago.
Quote to Ponder
"There is always something to do.
There are hungry people to feed,
naked people to clothe,
sick people to comfort and make well.
And while I don't expect you to save the world
I do think it's not asking too much for you to
love those with whom you sleep,
share the happiness of those whom you call friend,
engage those among you who are visionary
and remove from your life those who offer you
depression, despair and disrespect."
- Nikki Giovanni
There are hungry people to feed,
naked people to clothe,
sick people to comfort and make well.
And while I don't expect you to save the world
I do think it's not asking too much for you to
love those with whom you sleep,
share the happiness of those whom you call friend,
engage those among you who are visionary
and remove from your life those who offer you
depression, despair and disrespect."
- Nikki Giovanni
The Republican Assault on the Antiquities Act War on the Monuments by GEORGE WUERTHNER
SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
Congressman Denny Rehberg’s legislation “The Montana Land Sovereignty Act”, as well as similar legislation with identical goals introduced by Utah and Idaho representatives, is a cynical attempt to shackle the President’s prerogative to create national monuments. Collectively these bills represent an effort to undermine the 1906 Antiquities Act which history has shown to be a valuable tool for land protection. The Act gives the President authority to designate national monuments on federal lands without local or Congressional approval.
Many of these monuments are later proven to be so popular they are upgraded to national park status by Congress. Some of our most cherished national parks were originally established by Presidential decree using the Antiquities Act. They include Grand Canyon, Arches, Death Valley, Olympic, Glacier Bay, Saguaro, Lassen Volcano, Joshua Tree, Petrified Forest, Zion, Kenai Fiords, Wrangell St Elias, Gates of the Arctic, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Bryce Canyon, Great Basin, Grand Teton, among others. In nearly all instances, there was local opposition to designation of these national monuments. If it had been left to local approval for designation we would not now be enjoying many of these parks and monuments.
For instance, Teddy Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act in 1908 to designate an 800,000 acre Grand Canyon National Monument over the objections of local miners, loggers, and ranchers. Arizona’s Congressional delegation responded to Roosevelt’s action by blocking any appropriations for the new monument, and later succeeded in shrinking the size of the monument. But by the 1990s attitudes towards the Grand Canyon had changed dramatically such that when the federal government was shut down by intransigence in Congress, Arizona official pleaded to keep the Grand Canyon National Park operating , even volunteering to pay with state funds the salaries of rangers and other employees.
Similarly after President Franklin Roosevelt designated a portion of what is now the Grand Tetons National Park as a national monument, Wyoming’s Congressional delegation introduced legislation to abolish the monument. It was only Roosevelt’s veto that saved the monument which was later incorporated into Grand Teton National Park.
Locals in Jackson predicted the creation of the national monument would so harm the area’s economy that Jackson would become a “ghost town.” Some Jackson residents openly questioned why anyone would pay good money to come look at a bunch of mountains. We know today that lots of people are willing to pay good money to look at a bunch of mountains, and that Grand Teton National Park is one of the economic engines of Wyoming. Such is the lack of imagination that often resides among locals who have a very narrow perspective on the value of natural lands.
We can find many other examples of the short-sighted perspective of local residents. When President Jimmy Carter designated Kenai Fiords as a national monument in 1978, locals in Seward Alaska at the entrance to the new monument burned him in effigy. Go to Seward today and you will find that nearly all locals either economically dependent upon or at least glad that Kenai Fiords was established as a national monument and later a national park.
National Monument designation by executive order has proven to be a valuable conservation tool and any attempts to modify it should be opposed.
George Wuerthner of Helena, Montana is an ecologist, writer and photographer. He is the author of 35 books, many dealing with national parks.
Congressman Denny Rehberg’s legislation “The Montana Land Sovereignty Act”, as well as similar legislation with identical goals introduced by Utah and Idaho representatives, is a cynical attempt to shackle the President’s prerogative to create national monuments. Collectively these bills represent an effort to undermine the 1906 Antiquities Act which history has shown to be a valuable tool for land protection. The Act gives the President authority to designate national monuments on federal lands without local or Congressional approval.
Many of these monuments are later proven to be so popular they are upgraded to national park status by Congress. Some of our most cherished national parks were originally established by Presidential decree using the Antiquities Act. They include Grand Canyon, Arches, Death Valley, Olympic, Glacier Bay, Saguaro, Lassen Volcano, Joshua Tree, Petrified Forest, Zion, Kenai Fiords, Wrangell St Elias, Gates of the Arctic, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Bryce Canyon, Great Basin, Grand Teton, among others. In nearly all instances, there was local opposition to designation of these national monuments. If it had been left to local approval for designation we would not now be enjoying many of these parks and monuments.
For instance, Teddy Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act in 1908 to designate an 800,000 acre Grand Canyon National Monument over the objections of local miners, loggers, and ranchers. Arizona’s Congressional delegation responded to Roosevelt’s action by blocking any appropriations for the new monument, and later succeeded in shrinking the size of the monument. But by the 1990s attitudes towards the Grand Canyon had changed dramatically such that when the federal government was shut down by intransigence in Congress, Arizona official pleaded to keep the Grand Canyon National Park operating , even volunteering to pay with state funds the salaries of rangers and other employees.
Similarly after President Franklin Roosevelt designated a portion of what is now the Grand Tetons National Park as a national monument, Wyoming’s Congressional delegation introduced legislation to abolish the monument. It was only Roosevelt’s veto that saved the monument which was later incorporated into Grand Teton National Park.
Locals in Jackson predicted the creation of the national monument would so harm the area’s economy that Jackson would become a “ghost town.” Some Jackson residents openly questioned why anyone would pay good money to come look at a bunch of mountains. We know today that lots of people are willing to pay good money to look at a bunch of mountains, and that Grand Teton National Park is one of the economic engines of Wyoming. Such is the lack of imagination that often resides among locals who have a very narrow perspective on the value of natural lands.
We can find many other examples of the short-sighted perspective of local residents. When President Jimmy Carter designated Kenai Fiords as a national monument in 1978, locals in Seward Alaska at the entrance to the new monument burned him in effigy. Go to Seward today and you will find that nearly all locals either economically dependent upon or at least glad that Kenai Fiords was established as a national monument and later a national park.
National Monument designation by executive order has proven to be a valuable conservation tool and any attempts to modify it should be opposed.
George Wuerthner of Helena, Montana is an ecologist, writer and photographer. He is the author of 35 books, many dealing with national parks.
Dim the Lights, the Party's Over The US Position in the Middle is Disintegrating by MICHAEL BRENNER
SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
The United States’ strategic position in the greater Middle East is disintegrating. The repercussions of the Arab Spring have undercut the tacit alliance among Washington, Cairo, Riyadh, Amman and Jerusalem with auxiliary members in Yemen and Tunisia among other peripheral states. Mubarak is gone while his former military cohorts sap the revolution’s zeal through symbolic acts that include untying their bonds to Israel while cultivating an alliance with Turkey. Both pillars of the regional sub-system are animated by deepening anti-American feelings among their populace that are spreading across the Islamic world. In Ankara, moreover, the Erdogan government now has its own calculated view of a diplomatic field that no longer has the United States as its hub. The House of Saud is so badly rattled that it is turning on Washington as the cause of its new-found sense of vulnerability. Iraq’s sectarian Shi’ite leadership spurns the idea of a special relationship with us while incrementally building structures of cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran will not bend the knee in response to our relentless campaign of shunning and sanctioning it – leaving Washington with the bleak choice of war or an indefinite period of tense onfrontation – in the absence of any readiness to speak seriously with its leaders about the terms of a modus vivendi.
Farther afield, Afghanistan is an endless slog with the vain hope of turning that ill-starred land into a Western oriented, pro-American country fading like the swirls of smoke from a lost pipe dream. Pakistan is now pronounced our enemy condemned routinely by our belligerent leaders as the source of all that stymies us in both places. Levels of anti-Americanism are so high as to leave those with favorable views of America within a statistical margin of error that reaches to 00.0. The country’s political elite is unifying around the hard position of giving a blunt ‘no’ in response to bellicose demands from Washington that it do our bidding. Everywhere we look, never has America’s standing been so weak, its authority so low, it credibility in such tatters, and its judgment so suspect.
Little of this registers in official Washington, or in the ante-chambers of power that is unofficial Washington. We continue to bluster and fume, we issue ukase, make declarations, scold and instruct, cast our failures as incidents in the mythic pageant of illusory triumphs from Baghdad to Kandahar to Somalia. The echo chamber keeps reality at bay. Each of these myriad failures has its own saga of hubris, incompetence, willful ignorance and flawed thinking. Iraq stands out only for the brazen deceit and mindlessness that were its hallmark from the inception.
The kaleidoscope of shards that depicts the broken remnants of the American position in the greater Middle East convey incoherence and fragmentation. This is one common element. It is the Israel/Palestine issue – more specifically, Washington’s progressive subordination of its own interests to the compulsions of Israel’s cynical rulers. It has grown from being a dark shadow that casts suspicions over American actions in the regime to a fatal flaw that has eaten away our authority to act as underwriter, our reputation for integrity and our protestations of concern for the well-being and interests of all peoples. Thus, it aggravates relations, inflames radicalism and sows distrust about Washington’s intentions. Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations last week confirmed the worst fears of doubters and skeptics. America no longer was just Israel’s protector; it was now Israel’s shill. The President of the United States acted as the shameless mouthpiece for an unsavory client. Obama declared before all the world that he placed his personal electoral advantage above the values and interests of the country – still the potentially most influential state on the face of the earth. His abject behavior humiliated the United States in a way that leaves American diplomacy throughout the Islamic world – and beyond – severely compromised.
Predictably, these tragic consequences were little noted nor will they be long remembered among a political class whose insularity from the realities of the world is surpassed only by their insularity from the realities of their own nation.
Michael Brenner is a Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
The United States’ strategic position in the greater Middle East is disintegrating. The repercussions of the Arab Spring have undercut the tacit alliance among Washington, Cairo, Riyadh, Amman and Jerusalem with auxiliary members in Yemen and Tunisia among other peripheral states. Mubarak is gone while his former military cohorts sap the revolution’s zeal through symbolic acts that include untying their bonds to Israel while cultivating an alliance with Turkey. Both pillars of the regional sub-system are animated by deepening anti-American feelings among their populace that are spreading across the Islamic world. In Ankara, moreover, the Erdogan government now has its own calculated view of a diplomatic field that no longer has the United States as its hub. The House of Saud is so badly rattled that it is turning on Washington as the cause of its new-found sense of vulnerability. Iraq’s sectarian Shi’ite leadership spurns the idea of a special relationship with us while incrementally building structures of cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran will not bend the knee in response to our relentless campaign of shunning and sanctioning it – leaving Washington with the bleak choice of war or an indefinite period of tense onfrontation – in the absence of any readiness to speak seriously with its leaders about the terms of a modus vivendi.
Farther afield, Afghanistan is an endless slog with the vain hope of turning that ill-starred land into a Western oriented, pro-American country fading like the swirls of smoke from a lost pipe dream. Pakistan is now pronounced our enemy condemned routinely by our belligerent leaders as the source of all that stymies us in both places. Levels of anti-Americanism are so high as to leave those with favorable views of America within a statistical margin of error that reaches to 00.0. The country’s political elite is unifying around the hard position of giving a blunt ‘no’ in response to bellicose demands from Washington that it do our bidding. Everywhere we look, never has America’s standing been so weak, its authority so low, it credibility in such tatters, and its judgment so suspect.
Little of this registers in official Washington, or in the ante-chambers of power that is unofficial Washington. We continue to bluster and fume, we issue ukase, make declarations, scold and instruct, cast our failures as incidents in the mythic pageant of illusory triumphs from Baghdad to Kandahar to Somalia. The echo chamber keeps reality at bay. Each of these myriad failures has its own saga of hubris, incompetence, willful ignorance and flawed thinking. Iraq stands out only for the brazen deceit and mindlessness that were its hallmark from the inception.
The kaleidoscope of shards that depicts the broken remnants of the American position in the greater Middle East convey incoherence and fragmentation. This is one common element. It is the Israel/Palestine issue – more specifically, Washington’s progressive subordination of its own interests to the compulsions of Israel’s cynical rulers. It has grown from being a dark shadow that casts suspicions over American actions in the regime to a fatal flaw that has eaten away our authority to act as underwriter, our reputation for integrity and our protestations of concern for the well-being and interests of all peoples. Thus, it aggravates relations, inflames radicalism and sows distrust about Washington’s intentions. Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations last week confirmed the worst fears of doubters and skeptics. America no longer was just Israel’s protector; it was now Israel’s shill. The President of the United States acted as the shameless mouthpiece for an unsavory client. Obama declared before all the world that he placed his personal electoral advantage above the values and interests of the country – still the potentially most influential state on the face of the earth. His abject behavior humiliated the United States in a way that leaves American diplomacy throughout the Islamic world – and beyond – severely compromised.
Predictably, these tragic consequences were little noted nor will they be long remembered among a political class whose insularity from the realities of the world is surpassed only by their insularity from the realities of their own nation.
Michael Brenner is a Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
How to Annoy the Ruling Class 13 Ways to Look at the Occupation of Wall Street by CHARLES M. YOUNG
SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
1) I had brunch on Sunday in Chinatown with a friend who works in local television news. He complained that the Occupy Wall Street people had sent over video that they said showed demonstrators getting maced. It didn’t show any such thing, my friend insisted. After brunch I walked over to occupied Zuccotti Park (two blocks north of Wall Street) and told somebody at the Media table that they had to be careful about claiming more for their video than it actually showed. Then I went home and looked at the video, and it clearly showed several young women, who presented no physical threat, getting wrapped up by police in a plastic net and pepper sprayed in the face.
2) My friend’s other complaint about Occupy Wall Street was that they didn’t have a list of demands. Nobody knows what they want, said my friend. It is true that they don’t have a policy statement yet, nothing to spoonfeed the corporate press. But they are trying. On Saturday night, I sat through their General Assembly meeting in the park and heard the report of the One Demand Working Group. Basically, they wanted to demand that other autonomous groups in other cities join them. Most of the General Assembly pointed their hands down and wiggled their fingers, meaning disapproval (in a supportive way). Several people said that you can’t demand solidarity from an autonomous group, you can only encourage it. And everyone seemed to think the language wasn’t “provocative” or “funny,” which meant it had way too much Process jargon and not enough Anglo Saxon monosyllables. It was suggested (not decided) that the One Demand Working Group try another draft and perhaps combine their efforts with the Principles of Solidarity Working Group.
3) The Process is how stuff gets worked out when you don’t have leaders, only Facilitators who facilitate group decisions. There are lots of Facilitators, so the police can’t nail anyone as a leader, not that anyone would want a leader anyway.
4) The Ad Hoc Caucus of Non-Male Identified Individuals wanted help writing a letter to Stephen Colbert, who had done a report that focused on a Non-Male Identified Individual who was in a state of disrobe while protesting Wall Street on the sidewalk. The report featured only interviews with Male Identified Individuals commenting on the naked Non-Male Identified Individual. The Ad Hoc Caucus of Non-Male Identified Individuals wanted Colbert to rectify this imbalance. Male Bodied Individuals, who were not wholly Male Identified, were welcome at the meeting of the Ad Hoc Caucus of Non-Male Identified Individuals.
5) I think that the corporate press has a difficult time understanding Occupy Wall Street because, like 99% of Americans, they have no experience with democracy. They spend most of their time enslaved by large totalitarian collectives known as “corporations” and have never once decided anything for themselves as a group of equal workers. Instead they follow orders and write about elections, which are big puppet shows financed and scripted by Wall Street.
6) Most journalists wouldn’t know democracy if it bit them on the ass.
7) In 1991, Charles Bufe wrote a great book called Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? (See Sharp Press). Bufe found the 12 Steps unacceptably irrational with their emphasis on God, but he strongly endorsed the 12 Traditions as a model of anarchist organization. After all, AA has been around since 1935, it has millions of dysfunctional members, it very self consciously has no leaders, and it is by far the largest anarchist group in the world. Zuccotti Park is a lot like a big AA meeting for the purpose of sweeping Wall Street into the dustbin of history.
Occupy Wall Street is living proof that people can organize around egalitarian principles and do things for themselves, thereby demonstrating in real time that the moguls who cook numbers in the skyscrapers around them are at best useless and at worst lethally dangerous. Just look at the guy from the Sanitation Working Group who zips around on his skateboard sweeping cigarette butts into the dustbin of history. Nobody ordered him to do it, and the sidewalk is remarkably clean.
9) No Woodstock-esque mountain of garbage for this generation.
10) At the southeast corner of Zucotti Park, there’s a four-story red/orange sculpture built with I-beams. It looks like a giant Nazi tank trap on the beach at Normandy. At the northwest corner, there’s a cherry-picker with a bullet-proof cab on top, which takes cops up and down to observe the park. It seems useless, since the park is surrounded by cops who can see everything, anyway. Maybe the cops use the cherry-picker to take naps. They seem pretty bored amidst all their paddy wagons, flashing lights and high tech anti-terrorist doodads. It makes for a vibe just outside the park that is a cross between1984 and War of the Worlds. Inside the park, rumors abound about when the police might clear the place. So far, Mayor Bloomberg appears to think he can wait them out by making life as uncomfortable as possible (No tents! No structures of any kind! No writing in chalk on the sidewalk!).
11) I met a couple who drove from North Carolina to be part of the protest. I met a “student and seasonal worker” from Oregon who bought a one-way plane ticket to New York. I met a drummer with a Masters degree in urban planning, a lot of debt and no job. I met a topless Non-Male Identified Individual who had wrapped a python around herself. I met a lot of people from the surrounding neighborhood who were bringing food and money and a desire to chat. People from overseas were phoning in orders of pizza for everybody (a neat trick from the occupation in Madison). Everything was transparent except for last names. Last names weren’t cool. You didn’t want informers figuring out who to target for arrest.
12) If you want to make a ruckus and annoy the ruling class, I would suggest you go to Zuccotti Park during the day. If you want some wonderful free entertainment at night, I’d suggest you go at 7 p.m. and catch the General Assembly. Then wander around and talk to people who want to change the world. If you get arrested, call the National Lawyers Guild at 212-679-6018. Write that number on your arm, because the police take all your stuff when they put you jail.
13) On Sunday night I saw a terrific band (Megafaun) at Mercury Lounge and walked down Broadway for my second trip of the day to Zuccotti Park. Nice warm night. No rain. A few hundred people in little groups around the park. Very little noise in the Wall Street area at that time, just the hum of intense conversation. If you want to talk about something that matters, this is probably the best place in America.
“I hitchhiked here from Maine,” said Troy Thibodeau (last name used by permission) under the giant Nazi tank trap sculpture. He was 47 years old, had long hair, shapeless jeans and dried paint on his sneakers. It was about 2 a.m. “If the police think we’ll go home just because they’re making things difficult, then the police don’t know how difficult things are at home. I’m eating better here, with all the donations and stuff. Back in 2008, I was so depressed that I wanted to kill myself. The only thing that stopped me was I couldn’t figure out how to do it without hurting my family. You don’t want to leave people with that thought about you.
“I was a handyman in Ft. Lauderdale for 24 years. All the work dried up in 2008 when the economy collapsed, and somebody stole my drum kit. I used to play in a band, Spontaneous Combustion, and be out all night, then get up after an hour’s sleep and dig post holes all day. Didn’t think anything about it, until it all just ended. Finally, I called my brother and said, ‘I got nothing. I’m on the street.’ He let me move into his attic in Maine, and he let me use a computer, for the first time ever. Oh man, I went down every rabbit hole doing research on that computer, learned the truth about the scumbags who work in these office buildings. Now I spend every nickel I got on making DVDs and printing flyers, trying to get the word out. In a couple days, I’m going back to Maine for the Harvest Festival. Then I’ll go to Washington on October 6 for that demonstration, or come back here. If you’re depressed, protesting is the best possible thing to do. This is how I’m going to spend the rest of my life. The only way I could be happier right now is if I was getting a blow job.”
CHARLES M. YOUNG is a founding member of ThieCantBeHappening!, the new independent alternative online newspaper.
1) I had brunch on Sunday in Chinatown with a friend who works in local television news. He complained that the Occupy Wall Street people had sent over video that they said showed demonstrators getting maced. It didn’t show any such thing, my friend insisted. After brunch I walked over to occupied Zuccotti Park (two blocks north of Wall Street) and told somebody at the Media table that they had to be careful about claiming more for their video than it actually showed. Then I went home and looked at the video, and it clearly showed several young women, who presented no physical threat, getting wrapped up by police in a plastic net and pepper sprayed in the face.
2) My friend’s other complaint about Occupy Wall Street was that they didn’t have a list of demands. Nobody knows what they want, said my friend. It is true that they don’t have a policy statement yet, nothing to spoonfeed the corporate press. But they are trying. On Saturday night, I sat through their General Assembly meeting in the park and heard the report of the One Demand Working Group. Basically, they wanted to demand that other autonomous groups in other cities join them. Most of the General Assembly pointed their hands down and wiggled their fingers, meaning disapproval (in a supportive way). Several people said that you can’t demand solidarity from an autonomous group, you can only encourage it. And everyone seemed to think the language wasn’t “provocative” or “funny,” which meant it had way too much Process jargon and not enough Anglo Saxon monosyllables. It was suggested (not decided) that the One Demand Working Group try another draft and perhaps combine their efforts with the Principles of Solidarity Working Group.
3) The Process is how stuff gets worked out when you don’t have leaders, only Facilitators who facilitate group decisions. There are lots of Facilitators, so the police can’t nail anyone as a leader, not that anyone would want a leader anyway.
4) The Ad Hoc Caucus of Non-Male Identified Individuals wanted help writing a letter to Stephen Colbert, who had done a report that focused on a Non-Male Identified Individual who was in a state of disrobe while protesting Wall Street on the sidewalk. The report featured only interviews with Male Identified Individuals commenting on the naked Non-Male Identified Individual. The Ad Hoc Caucus of Non-Male Identified Individuals wanted Colbert to rectify this imbalance. Male Bodied Individuals, who were not wholly Male Identified, were welcome at the meeting of the Ad Hoc Caucus of Non-Male Identified Individuals.
5) I think that the corporate press has a difficult time understanding Occupy Wall Street because, like 99% of Americans, they have no experience with democracy. They spend most of their time enslaved by large totalitarian collectives known as “corporations” and have never once decided anything for themselves as a group of equal workers. Instead they follow orders and write about elections, which are big puppet shows financed and scripted by Wall Street.
6) Most journalists wouldn’t know democracy if it bit them on the ass.
7) In 1991, Charles Bufe wrote a great book called Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? (See Sharp Press). Bufe found the 12 Steps unacceptably irrational with their emphasis on God, but he strongly endorsed the 12 Traditions as a model of anarchist organization. After all, AA has been around since 1935, it has millions of dysfunctional members, it very self consciously has no leaders, and it is by far the largest anarchist group in the world. Zuccotti Park is a lot like a big AA meeting for the purpose of sweeping Wall Street into the dustbin of history.
Occupy Wall Street is living proof that people can organize around egalitarian principles and do things for themselves, thereby demonstrating in real time that the moguls who cook numbers in the skyscrapers around them are at best useless and at worst lethally dangerous. Just look at the guy from the Sanitation Working Group who zips around on his skateboard sweeping cigarette butts into the dustbin of history. Nobody ordered him to do it, and the sidewalk is remarkably clean.
9) No Woodstock-esque mountain of garbage for this generation.
10) At the southeast corner of Zucotti Park, there’s a four-story red/orange sculpture built with I-beams. It looks like a giant Nazi tank trap on the beach at Normandy. At the northwest corner, there’s a cherry-picker with a bullet-proof cab on top, which takes cops up and down to observe the park. It seems useless, since the park is surrounded by cops who can see everything, anyway. Maybe the cops use the cherry-picker to take naps. They seem pretty bored amidst all their paddy wagons, flashing lights and high tech anti-terrorist doodads. It makes for a vibe just outside the park that is a cross between1984 and War of the Worlds. Inside the park, rumors abound about when the police might clear the place. So far, Mayor Bloomberg appears to think he can wait them out by making life as uncomfortable as possible (No tents! No structures of any kind! No writing in chalk on the sidewalk!).
11) I met a couple who drove from North Carolina to be part of the protest. I met a “student and seasonal worker” from Oregon who bought a one-way plane ticket to New York. I met a drummer with a Masters degree in urban planning, a lot of debt and no job. I met a topless Non-Male Identified Individual who had wrapped a python around herself. I met a lot of people from the surrounding neighborhood who were bringing food and money and a desire to chat. People from overseas were phoning in orders of pizza for everybody (a neat trick from the occupation in Madison). Everything was transparent except for last names. Last names weren’t cool. You didn’t want informers figuring out who to target for arrest.
12) If you want to make a ruckus and annoy the ruling class, I would suggest you go to Zuccotti Park during the day. If you want some wonderful free entertainment at night, I’d suggest you go at 7 p.m. and catch the General Assembly. Then wander around and talk to people who want to change the world. If you get arrested, call the National Lawyers Guild at 212-679-6018. Write that number on your arm, because the police take all your stuff when they put you jail.
13) On Sunday night I saw a terrific band (Megafaun) at Mercury Lounge and walked down Broadway for my second trip of the day to Zuccotti Park. Nice warm night. No rain. A few hundred people in little groups around the park. Very little noise in the Wall Street area at that time, just the hum of intense conversation. If you want to talk about something that matters, this is probably the best place in America.
“I hitchhiked here from Maine,” said Troy Thibodeau (last name used by permission) under the giant Nazi tank trap sculpture. He was 47 years old, had long hair, shapeless jeans and dried paint on his sneakers. It was about 2 a.m. “If the police think we’ll go home just because they’re making things difficult, then the police don’t know how difficult things are at home. I’m eating better here, with all the donations and stuff. Back in 2008, I was so depressed that I wanted to kill myself. The only thing that stopped me was I couldn’t figure out how to do it without hurting my family. You don’t want to leave people with that thought about you.
“I was a handyman in Ft. Lauderdale for 24 years. All the work dried up in 2008 when the economy collapsed, and somebody stole my drum kit. I used to play in a band, Spontaneous Combustion, and be out all night, then get up after an hour’s sleep and dig post holes all day. Didn’t think anything about it, until it all just ended. Finally, I called my brother and said, ‘I got nothing. I’m on the street.’ He let me move into his attic in Maine, and he let me use a computer, for the first time ever. Oh man, I went down every rabbit hole doing research on that computer, learned the truth about the scumbags who work in these office buildings. Now I spend every nickel I got on making DVDs and printing flyers, trying to get the word out. In a couple days, I’m going back to Maine for the Harvest Festival. Then I’ll go to Washington on October 6 for that demonstration, or come back here. If you’re depressed, protesting is the best possible thing to do. This is how I’m going to spend the rest of my life. The only way I could be happier right now is if I was getting a blow job.”
CHARLES M. YOUNG is a founding member of ThieCantBeHappening!, the new independent alternative online newspaper.
Censoring Penguin Family Values Return of the Book Banners by WALTER BRASCH Parents demanded it be banned.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
School superintendents placed it in restricted sections of their libraries.
It is the most challenged book four of the past five years, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
“It” is a 32-page illustrated children’s book, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, with illustrations by Henry Cole. The book is based upon the real story of Roy and Silo, two male penguins, who had formed a six-year bond at New York City’s Central Park Zoo, and who “adopted” a fertilized egg and raised the chick until she could be on her own.
Gays saw the story as a positive reinforcement of their lifestyle. Riding to rescue America from homosexuality were the biddies against perversion. Gay love is against the Bible, they wailed; the book isn’t suitable for the delicate minds of children, they cried as they pushed libraries and schools to remove it from their shelves or at the very least make it restricted.
The penguins may have been gay—or maybe they weren’t. It’s not unusual for animals to form close bonds with others of their same sex. But the issue is far greater than whether or not the penguins were gay or if the book promoted homosexuality as a valid lifestyle. People have an inherent need to defend their own values, lifestyles, and worldviews by attacking others who have a different set of beliefs. Banning or destroying free speech and the freedom to publish is one of the ways people believe they can protect their own lifestyles.
During the first decade of the 21st century, the most challenged books, according to the ALA, were J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, apparently because some people believe fictionalized witchcraft is a dagger into the soul of organized religion. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series was the 10th most challenged in 2010. Perhaps some parents weren’t comfortable with their adolescents having to make a choice between werewolves and vampires.
Among the most challenged books is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the vicious satire about firemen burning books to save humanity. Other books that are consistently among the ALA’s list of most challenged are Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), The Chocolate War (Robert Cormier), Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou), Forever(Judy Blume), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), regarded by most major literary scholars as the finest American novel.
Name a classic, and it’s probably on the list of the most challenged books. Conservatives, especially fundamental religious conservatives, tend to challenge more books. But, challenges aren’t confined to any one political ideology. Liberals are frequently at the forefront of challenging books that may not agree with their own social philosophies. The feminist movement, while giving the nation a better awareness of the rights of women, wanted to ban Playboy and all works that depicted what they believed were unflattering images if women. Liberals have also attacked the works of Joel Chandler Harris (the Br’er Rabbit series), without understanding history, folklore, or the intent of the journalist-author, who was well-regarded as liberal for his era.
Although there are dozens of reasons why people say they want to restrict or ban a book, the one reason that threads its way through all of them is that the book challenges conventional authority or features a character who is perceived to be “different,” who may give readers ideas that many see as “dangerous.”
The belief there are works that are “dangerous” is why governments create and enforce laws that restrict publication. In colonial America, as in almost all countries and territories at that time, the monarchy required every book to be licensed, to be read by a government official or committee to determine if the book was suitable for the people. If so, it received a royal license. If not, it could not be printed.
In 1644, two decades before his epic poem Paradise Lost was published, John Milton wrote a pamphlet, to be distributed to members of Parliament, against a recently-enacted licensing law. In defiance of the law, the pamphlet was published without license. Using Biblical references and pointing out that the Greek and Roman civilizations didn’t license books, Milton argued, “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable create [in] God’s image,” he told Parliament, “but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God.” He concluded his pamphlet with a plea, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
A century later, Sir William Blackstone, one of England’s foremost jurists and legal scholars, argued against prior restraint, the right of governments to block publication of any work they found offensive for any reason.
The arguments of Milton and Blackstone became the basis of the foundation of a new country, to be known as the United States of America, and the establishment of the First Amendment.
Every year, at the end of September, the American Library Association sponsors Banned Book Week, and publishes a summary of book challenges. And every year, it is made more obvious that those who want to ban books, sometimes building bonfires and throwing books upon them as did Nazi Germany, fail to understand the principles of why this nation was created.
Walter Brasch’s latest book is Before the First Snow, a story of America’s counterculture as seen through the eyes of a “flower child” and the reporter who covered her life for three decades.
School superintendents placed it in restricted sections of their libraries.
It is the most challenged book four of the past five years, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
“It” is a 32-page illustrated children’s book, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, with illustrations by Henry Cole. The book is based upon the real story of Roy and Silo, two male penguins, who had formed a six-year bond at New York City’s Central Park Zoo, and who “adopted” a fertilized egg and raised the chick until she could be on her own.
Gays saw the story as a positive reinforcement of their lifestyle. Riding to rescue America from homosexuality were the biddies against perversion. Gay love is against the Bible, they wailed; the book isn’t suitable for the delicate minds of children, they cried as they pushed libraries and schools to remove it from their shelves or at the very least make it restricted.
The penguins may have been gay—or maybe they weren’t. It’s not unusual for animals to form close bonds with others of their same sex. But the issue is far greater than whether or not the penguins were gay or if the book promoted homosexuality as a valid lifestyle. People have an inherent need to defend their own values, lifestyles, and worldviews by attacking others who have a different set of beliefs. Banning or destroying free speech and the freedom to publish is one of the ways people believe they can protect their own lifestyles.
During the first decade of the 21st century, the most challenged books, according to the ALA, were J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, apparently because some people believe fictionalized witchcraft is a dagger into the soul of organized religion. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series was the 10th most challenged in 2010. Perhaps some parents weren’t comfortable with their adolescents having to make a choice between werewolves and vampires.
Among the most challenged books is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the vicious satire about firemen burning books to save humanity. Other books that are consistently among the ALA’s list of most challenged are Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), The Chocolate War (Robert Cormier), Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou), Forever(Judy Blume), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), regarded by most major literary scholars as the finest American novel.
Name a classic, and it’s probably on the list of the most challenged books. Conservatives, especially fundamental religious conservatives, tend to challenge more books. But, challenges aren’t confined to any one political ideology. Liberals are frequently at the forefront of challenging books that may not agree with their own social philosophies. The feminist movement, while giving the nation a better awareness of the rights of women, wanted to ban Playboy and all works that depicted what they believed were unflattering images if women. Liberals have also attacked the works of Joel Chandler Harris (the Br’er Rabbit series), without understanding history, folklore, or the intent of the journalist-author, who was well-regarded as liberal for his era.
Although there are dozens of reasons why people say they want to restrict or ban a book, the one reason that threads its way through all of them is that the book challenges conventional authority or features a character who is perceived to be “different,” who may give readers ideas that many see as “dangerous.”
The belief there are works that are “dangerous” is why governments create and enforce laws that restrict publication. In colonial America, as in almost all countries and territories at that time, the monarchy required every book to be licensed, to be read by a government official or committee to determine if the book was suitable for the people. If so, it received a royal license. If not, it could not be printed.
In 1644, two decades before his epic poem Paradise Lost was published, John Milton wrote a pamphlet, to be distributed to members of Parliament, against a recently-enacted licensing law. In defiance of the law, the pamphlet was published without license. Using Biblical references and pointing out that the Greek and Roman civilizations didn’t license books, Milton argued, “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable create [in] God’s image,” he told Parliament, “but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God.” He concluded his pamphlet with a plea, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
A century later, Sir William Blackstone, one of England’s foremost jurists and legal scholars, argued against prior restraint, the right of governments to block publication of any work they found offensive for any reason.
The arguments of Milton and Blackstone became the basis of the foundation of a new country, to be known as the United States of America, and the establishment of the First Amendment.
Every year, at the end of September, the American Library Association sponsors Banned Book Week, and publishes a summary of book challenges. And every year, it is made more obvious that those who want to ban books, sometimes building bonfires and throwing books upon them as did Nazi Germany, fail to understand the principles of why this nation was created.
Walter Brasch’s latest book is Before the First Snow, a story of America’s counterculture as seen through the eyes of a “flower child” and the reporter who covered her life for three decades.
Mace in the Face Is the US a Police State? by JOHN GRANT
SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
Honorable people like to debate whether the United States of America is a “police state,” but when it comes to shutting down the expression of ideas on the political left, there’s little room for argument.
We are inundated in this country with propaganda boilerplate about being the greatest democracy in the world. No, we’re not a police state like our friends in Saudi Arabia or our former friends, and current enemies, in Iran. Our police agencies have figured out how to accomplish police state repression in a “softer,” more sophisticated manner.
Look at the video in the September 26 report by Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC on what he describes as a “violent burst of chaos” caused by armed “troublemakers” from the New York Police Department.
It was a peaceful demonstration against Wall Street greed. At least it started out that way. All evidence suggests it was, then, sent careening into chaos by the police strong-arming of young protesters who had done nothing but express their views in public.
In one incident, young women on the sidewalk observing the arrest of a young man in the street are corralled by cops using orange plastic nets. White-shirted Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, then, walks up, un-holsters his pepper spray gun and shoots one of the women full in the face. He re-holsters his weapon and walks away. Another video shows him doing the same thing indiscriminately to others in a clear violation of NYPD rules that say the spray is only authorized to disable someone resisting arrest. Over 100 people were arrested in the melee.
The MSNBC video also shows a young man with a camera being violently slammed into a parked Volvo for videotaping the actions of the police. As O’Donnell emphasizes, videotaping cops is a completely legal activity. In fact, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month on exactly this situation in a case involving a man who videotaped cops beating a man in Boston Commons. (For a PDF of the ruling, go to:www.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/10-1764P-01A.pdf )
The case is instructive. It began with a federal lawsuit brought by Simon Glik, a Russian immigrant who had become a lawyer in the US. He saw cops beating a man and took out his cell phone to videotape them. He was told to stop and he refused. Police arrested him, confiscated his phone and deleted the video. They charged him with illegal wiretapping since his recording included audio.
The district court scoffed at the wiretapping charge and concluded just because “officers were unhappy they were being recorded during an arrest … does not make a lawful exercise of First Amendment rights a crime. … [The] First Amendment right publicly to record the activities of police officers on public business is established.”
The City of Boston and the individual police officers involved appealed the ruling, and the 1st Circuit upheld the district court. The justices pointedly demolished the notion often used by police officers that the law on the matter is unclear.
As to whether videotaping cops beating people on a public street is constitutionally protected behavior, they wrote: “Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.”
And this protection applies to everyone – including “bloggers” and other private citizens with cameras or cell phones. Again, contrary to what police agencies like to say when confronted with cameras in embarrassing situations, one does not have to be a credentialed mainstream media journalist with a government-obtained “press badge” to qualify for First Amendment protection.
As to citizens making their displeasure about police actions known, the 1st Circuit cites a Houston case from 1987: “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principle characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.” That is, one has a clear right to make faces or express disfavor at police actions – as long as one doesn’t physically interfere with those actions.
The justices emphasized “the fundamental and virtually self-evident nature of the First Amendment’s protections in this area.” Citing another 1st Circuit ruling from 2009, they wrote: “We thus have no trouble concluding that ‘the state of the law at the time of the alleged violation gave the defendants [the police officers] fair warning that their particular conduct was unconstitutional.’ ”
The court is saying all this is so clear cops should know slamming a man against a Volvo for videotaping is a violation of law.
In the Wall Street melee, white-shirted commanders popped up a lot in videos as the worst abusers. As leaders, these officers should be informing their subordinates that this sort of “police state” activity is culpable behavior and, as frustrating as it may be, cops simply have to learn to live under the gaze of citizens’ cameras.
MSNBC’s O’Donnell was dogged in his coverage of the story. About the man with the video camera being slammed against the Volvo by a white-shirted commander, he said: “There’s a very brave man in this picture and it’s not the guy in the white shirt.”
Thanks to all the coverage, the NYPD has had to back off its initial dismissals that all the pepper spraying was “appropriate” and declare it will open an investigation, especially of Deputy Inspector Bologna. O’Donnell was rightfully skeptical such an investigation would be anything but a traditional whitewash.
What’s going on here?
The best explanation for all this is in a 1990 book called The Police Mystique: An Insider’s Look At Cops, Crime and the Criminal Justice System by Anthony Bouza, a man who served in a host of leadership roles in the NYPD, closing his career as chief of police in Minneapolis. The “mystique” he describes involves the ironic power of the cops at the bottom of the police hierarchy and the great discretion extended to them to accomplish their mission.
Here’s some of Bouza’s insights gained from 36 years managing cops:
“[Police] work is peculiar in that the greatest power and autonomy exists at the lowest rank level. … The system, in order to accommodate the need for action, is notably understanding of the errors that are bound to occur. Thus cops develop the sense that they can exercise power without too great a risk of being called too strictly into account for its use.”
… Their temptation to cow those whose behavior they’re trying to control into compliance often proves irresistible.”
“Cops don’t take real or imagined assaults on their authority lightly. … A favorite ploy [of experienced cops] is to provoke an angry citizen into sufficiently loud outbursts to justify an arrest for disorderly conduct. The challenge is to push the target over an imaginary line that instinct will tell him or her constitutes a breach of something. The ability to maneuver the unwary into a trap is well known to cops but rarely realized by outsiders.
“[Cops have] the additional comfort of being able to rely on the substantial tolerance of a system that wants action and knows that it must be willing to tolerate errors in order to get it.”
“Police power assumes its most formidable aspect when cops deal with the underclass. This is the group they’ve been pressured, implicitly, to control. … A society, for example, that permits scores of millions to be undereducated and unemployed will not be patient with those who call upon it to attack these ills with more equitable distributions of wealth, social programs, and other ‘liberal’ schemes. … The overclass prefers to see the problems attacked through the highly visible ‘law-and-order’ methods that promise easy solutions.”
“The people’s power, normally hard to define and difficult to see, can be a fearful thing once unleashed, particularly when aimed at the police department.”
Watch the MSNBC video again and you’ll see all of this played out in the streets near Wall Street.
When Deputy Inspector Bologna walks up and, absolutely unprovoked, sprays a young woman bystander in the face with pepper spray, besides any personal unsavory and sadistic impulses he might have harbored, he is undertaking a variant of the “favorite ploy” to provoke that Chief Bouza describes.
In fact, the whole Monday melee can be seen as a case of cops poking and shoving citizens to “cow” them and “push the target over an imaginary line” — using rude provocation to turn a peaceful protest into a scene of chaos and havoc that, then, can be blamed on the “underclass.” In this case, that underclass is young, non-affluent Americans fed up with the direction of their society and the absence of venues to do anything about it — and courageous enough to speak out in public.
The result is a peaceful protest is turned into a melee justifying arrests.
How did we get to this place?
Anthony Bouza wrote his book in 1990, a much more “innocent” time of relative peace after the fall of the Soviet Union and before the Gulf War. Then came the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration’s declaration of a Global War On Terror (“You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”) and the astonishing rise of a globally based Homeland Security apparatus noted for the unprecedented linkage of military forces, civilian contractors and federal, state and local police agencies into a massive and frightening leviathan that operates in secret and is totally out of control.
On Sunday September 25th, 60 Minutes, a journalistic enterprise that more and more does shameless flak for the Pentagon and the Homeland Security leviathan, did a piece on NYPD Chief Raymond Kelly and the department’s vast anti-terrorism capacities. The story was the exact opposite in tone from Chief Bouza’s honest realism. Chief Kelly and his police were national heroes working to secure New Yorkers from another horror like 9/11. No questions about civil liberty issues were raised.
In such a climate of military/police paranoia, it’s not surprising that the day after the 60 Minutes fluff piece the NYPD is seen whacking citizens around for expressing views contrary to the flag-waving norm.
Those on the top in this society are trying desperately to hold onto all the power and wealth they’ve accumulated. They’re like deer caught in the headlights of history. So it’s not surprising to see NYPD cops who, by now, must be so thoroughly brainwashed in post-9/11 paranoia they’re ready to play out the things Chief Bouza speaks of on a scale he could not have imagined in 1990. We see NYPD cops near Wall Street attacking harmless, peaceful street protesters simply expressing a desire for economic justice. When have we seen a right wing Tea Party demonstration calling for an end to taxes and programs for the poor attacked like this?
Which takes us back to the opening of this story. Whether a society is seen as a “police state” depends entirely on whose ox is being gored. To cite an egregious example, the powerful and elite in Guatemala during the 1970s and ‘80s did not see their society as a police state – at least not in a critical way. Instead, this class saw what the police and military were doing (in this case, slaughtering and “disappearing” thousands) as necessary for their security, necessary to keep a massive, poor Native American population and their leftist supporters in check.
Right wing police defenders might take this as a reason to praise this country. See! Our police and military are not slaughtering people by the thousands. That’s because, again, we’re a sophisticated, “soft” police state. But the identical dynamic works here: The police use the power they have and the discretion they are given, as Chief Bouza makes clear, to do what cops feel is necessary to check “the group they’ve been pressured, implicitly, to control.”
Chief Bouza clearly sympathizes with cops in how they are placed by society between a rock and a hard place. Some cops clearly take personal joy in abusing leftists who would publicly demand justice. But cops are necessary in a society, and the job is not an easy one. Most cops are decent working men and women simply caught in the vice. That seems to have been the case in New York, with a few cops stirring things up to create a chaotic situation good cops were, then, compelled to address.
But it’s also tough being a leftist in America. The media is bought and sold by huge, cold-blooded, profit-making corporations and money runs our democracy to the point we have a government dominated by bullshitters and panderers. When a concerned citizens has had enough and takes to the streets, these days he or she is corralled and humiliated by a range of sophisticated and well-funded police agencies. Marginalization is assured.
What’s an American leftist to do?
What the young activists in New York are doing is a good model. You turn into Howard Beal and declare, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Everybody gets cameras and puts quotes from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on posters or t-shirts. You realize the poor slob in uniform in front of you with the can of pepper spray is also a working man or woman and it’s him breaking the law when he pepper sprays you or slams you into a Volvo for using your First Amendment rights.
Since it’s against the law to employ your own pepper spray, you just have to take it like a Gandhi would. There’s no such thing as self-defense when it comes to cops, even when they are blatantly breaking the law.
The political left in America is on the ropes, and contrary to what some leftists would like to see, revolution does not seem on the horizon in America. That said, something is indeed happening, and the world is seeing more examples of bottom up expression.
Here’s what I think: The only thing that can save the United States of America from a dismal future the political right wants to lock us into is to rigorously debunk the slander of the left so the nation can begin to create a more healthy, economically just structure. That goes for ending the bankrupting state of endless war these same forces have collared us with.
Such a shift will do two important things: It will empower working people with health care and jobs so they’ll have security and money to spend, which will re-energize a capitalist engine; and in the spirit of a mixed economy, it will also mean a much needed injection of socialism into the economy – the sort of things Franklin Roosevelt had the courage to do.
Even one of the right wing’s most revered free-market economic gurus, Friedrich Hayek, conceded the healthy nature of a mixed economy in his famous 1944 polemic, The Road To Serfdom.
“There is no reason why,” he wrote, “in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom.” He defined that security as “security against severe physical deprivation (and) the certainty of a given minimum of sustenance for all.” He went on further to say: “[S]ome minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody. … [T]he case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.”
Hayek’s view of a balanced economy sounds almost reasonable today and shows how very far to the right current thinking has gone after his beloved free market economy was driven into a ditch by greedy Wall Street pirates.
I plan to stand up for more economic justice with others in Washington DC starting on October 6th in Freedom Plaza, three blocks from the White House. Like others, I’ll have my camera with me. I hope DC cops don’t feel it’s necessary to slam me into a Volvo or shoot me in the face with pepper spray.
But if that’s how it has to be, that’s the cost of living free in a US police state.
JOHN GRANT is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, a new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported online alternative newspaper.
Honorable people like to debate whether the United States of America is a “police state,” but when it comes to shutting down the expression of ideas on the political left, there’s little room for argument.
We are inundated in this country with propaganda boilerplate about being the greatest democracy in the world. No, we’re not a police state like our friends in Saudi Arabia or our former friends, and current enemies, in Iran. Our police agencies have figured out how to accomplish police state repression in a “softer,” more sophisticated manner.
Look at the video in the September 26 report by Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC on what he describes as a “violent burst of chaos” caused by armed “troublemakers” from the New York Police Department.
It was a peaceful demonstration against Wall Street greed. At least it started out that way. All evidence suggests it was, then, sent careening into chaos by the police strong-arming of young protesters who had done nothing but express their views in public.
In one incident, young women on the sidewalk observing the arrest of a young man in the street are corralled by cops using orange plastic nets. White-shirted Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, then, walks up, un-holsters his pepper spray gun and shoots one of the women full in the face. He re-holsters his weapon and walks away. Another video shows him doing the same thing indiscriminately to others in a clear violation of NYPD rules that say the spray is only authorized to disable someone resisting arrest. Over 100 people were arrested in the melee.
The MSNBC video also shows a young man with a camera being violently slammed into a parked Volvo for videotaping the actions of the police. As O’Donnell emphasizes, videotaping cops is a completely legal activity. In fact, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month on exactly this situation in a case involving a man who videotaped cops beating a man in Boston Commons. (For a PDF of the ruling, go to:www.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/10-1764P-01A.pdf )
The case is instructive. It began with a federal lawsuit brought by Simon Glik, a Russian immigrant who had become a lawyer in the US. He saw cops beating a man and took out his cell phone to videotape them. He was told to stop and he refused. Police arrested him, confiscated his phone and deleted the video. They charged him with illegal wiretapping since his recording included audio.
The district court scoffed at the wiretapping charge and concluded just because “officers were unhappy they were being recorded during an arrest … does not make a lawful exercise of First Amendment rights a crime. … [The] First Amendment right publicly to record the activities of police officers on public business is established.”
The City of Boston and the individual police officers involved appealed the ruling, and the 1st Circuit upheld the district court. The justices pointedly demolished the notion often used by police officers that the law on the matter is unclear.
As to whether videotaping cops beating people on a public street is constitutionally protected behavior, they wrote: “Basic First Amendment principles, along with case law from this and other circuits, answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.”
And this protection applies to everyone – including “bloggers” and other private citizens with cameras or cell phones. Again, contrary to what police agencies like to say when confronted with cameras in embarrassing situations, one does not have to be a credentialed mainstream media journalist with a government-obtained “press badge” to qualify for First Amendment protection.
As to citizens making their displeasure about police actions known, the 1st Circuit cites a Houston case from 1987: “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principle characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.” That is, one has a clear right to make faces or express disfavor at police actions – as long as one doesn’t physically interfere with those actions.
The justices emphasized “the fundamental and virtually self-evident nature of the First Amendment’s protections in this area.” Citing another 1st Circuit ruling from 2009, they wrote: “We thus have no trouble concluding that ‘the state of the law at the time of the alleged violation gave the defendants [the police officers] fair warning that their particular conduct was unconstitutional.’ ”
The court is saying all this is so clear cops should know slamming a man against a Volvo for videotaping is a violation of law.
In the Wall Street melee, white-shirted commanders popped up a lot in videos as the worst abusers. As leaders, these officers should be informing their subordinates that this sort of “police state” activity is culpable behavior and, as frustrating as it may be, cops simply have to learn to live under the gaze of citizens’ cameras.
MSNBC’s O’Donnell was dogged in his coverage of the story. About the man with the video camera being slammed against the Volvo by a white-shirted commander, he said: “There’s a very brave man in this picture and it’s not the guy in the white shirt.”
Thanks to all the coverage, the NYPD has had to back off its initial dismissals that all the pepper spraying was “appropriate” and declare it will open an investigation, especially of Deputy Inspector Bologna. O’Donnell was rightfully skeptical such an investigation would be anything but a traditional whitewash.
What’s going on here?
The best explanation for all this is in a 1990 book called The Police Mystique: An Insider’s Look At Cops, Crime and the Criminal Justice System by Anthony Bouza, a man who served in a host of leadership roles in the NYPD, closing his career as chief of police in Minneapolis. The “mystique” he describes involves the ironic power of the cops at the bottom of the police hierarchy and the great discretion extended to them to accomplish their mission.
Here’s some of Bouza’s insights gained from 36 years managing cops:
“[Police] work is peculiar in that the greatest power and autonomy exists at the lowest rank level. … The system, in order to accommodate the need for action, is notably understanding of the errors that are bound to occur. Thus cops develop the sense that they can exercise power without too great a risk of being called too strictly into account for its use.”
… Their temptation to cow those whose behavior they’re trying to control into compliance often proves irresistible.”
“Cops don’t take real or imagined assaults on their authority lightly. … A favorite ploy [of experienced cops] is to provoke an angry citizen into sufficiently loud outbursts to justify an arrest for disorderly conduct. The challenge is to push the target over an imaginary line that instinct will tell him or her constitutes a breach of something. The ability to maneuver the unwary into a trap is well known to cops but rarely realized by outsiders.
“[Cops have] the additional comfort of being able to rely on the substantial tolerance of a system that wants action and knows that it must be willing to tolerate errors in order to get it.”
“Police power assumes its most formidable aspect when cops deal with the underclass. This is the group they’ve been pressured, implicitly, to control. … A society, for example, that permits scores of millions to be undereducated and unemployed will not be patient with those who call upon it to attack these ills with more equitable distributions of wealth, social programs, and other ‘liberal’ schemes. … The overclass prefers to see the problems attacked through the highly visible ‘law-and-order’ methods that promise easy solutions.”
“The people’s power, normally hard to define and difficult to see, can be a fearful thing once unleashed, particularly when aimed at the police department.”
Watch the MSNBC video again and you’ll see all of this played out in the streets near Wall Street.
When Deputy Inspector Bologna walks up and, absolutely unprovoked, sprays a young woman bystander in the face with pepper spray, besides any personal unsavory and sadistic impulses he might have harbored, he is undertaking a variant of the “favorite ploy” to provoke that Chief Bouza describes.
In fact, the whole Monday melee can be seen as a case of cops poking and shoving citizens to “cow” them and “push the target over an imaginary line” — using rude provocation to turn a peaceful protest into a scene of chaos and havoc that, then, can be blamed on the “underclass.” In this case, that underclass is young, non-affluent Americans fed up with the direction of their society and the absence of venues to do anything about it — and courageous enough to speak out in public.
The result is a peaceful protest is turned into a melee justifying arrests.
How did we get to this place?
Anthony Bouza wrote his book in 1990, a much more “innocent” time of relative peace after the fall of the Soviet Union and before the Gulf War. Then came the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration’s declaration of a Global War On Terror (“You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”) and the astonishing rise of a globally based Homeland Security apparatus noted for the unprecedented linkage of military forces, civilian contractors and federal, state and local police agencies into a massive and frightening leviathan that operates in secret and is totally out of control.
On Sunday September 25th, 60 Minutes, a journalistic enterprise that more and more does shameless flak for the Pentagon and the Homeland Security leviathan, did a piece on NYPD Chief Raymond Kelly and the department’s vast anti-terrorism capacities. The story was the exact opposite in tone from Chief Bouza’s honest realism. Chief Kelly and his police were national heroes working to secure New Yorkers from another horror like 9/11. No questions about civil liberty issues were raised.
In such a climate of military/police paranoia, it’s not surprising that the day after the 60 Minutes fluff piece the NYPD is seen whacking citizens around for expressing views contrary to the flag-waving norm.
Those on the top in this society are trying desperately to hold onto all the power and wealth they’ve accumulated. They’re like deer caught in the headlights of history. So it’s not surprising to see NYPD cops who, by now, must be so thoroughly brainwashed in post-9/11 paranoia they’re ready to play out the things Chief Bouza speaks of on a scale he could not have imagined in 1990. We see NYPD cops near Wall Street attacking harmless, peaceful street protesters simply expressing a desire for economic justice. When have we seen a right wing Tea Party demonstration calling for an end to taxes and programs for the poor attacked like this?
Which takes us back to the opening of this story. Whether a society is seen as a “police state” depends entirely on whose ox is being gored. To cite an egregious example, the powerful and elite in Guatemala during the 1970s and ‘80s did not see their society as a police state – at least not in a critical way. Instead, this class saw what the police and military were doing (in this case, slaughtering and “disappearing” thousands) as necessary for their security, necessary to keep a massive, poor Native American population and their leftist supporters in check.
Right wing police defenders might take this as a reason to praise this country. See! Our police and military are not slaughtering people by the thousands. That’s because, again, we’re a sophisticated, “soft” police state. But the identical dynamic works here: The police use the power they have and the discretion they are given, as Chief Bouza makes clear, to do what cops feel is necessary to check “the group they’ve been pressured, implicitly, to control.”
Chief Bouza clearly sympathizes with cops in how they are placed by society between a rock and a hard place. Some cops clearly take personal joy in abusing leftists who would publicly demand justice. But cops are necessary in a society, and the job is not an easy one. Most cops are decent working men and women simply caught in the vice. That seems to have been the case in New York, with a few cops stirring things up to create a chaotic situation good cops were, then, compelled to address.
But it’s also tough being a leftist in America. The media is bought and sold by huge, cold-blooded, profit-making corporations and money runs our democracy to the point we have a government dominated by bullshitters and panderers. When a concerned citizens has had enough and takes to the streets, these days he or she is corralled and humiliated by a range of sophisticated and well-funded police agencies. Marginalization is assured.
What’s an American leftist to do?
What the young activists in New York are doing is a good model. You turn into Howard Beal and declare, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Everybody gets cameras and puts quotes from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on posters or t-shirts. You realize the poor slob in uniform in front of you with the can of pepper spray is also a working man or woman and it’s him breaking the law when he pepper sprays you or slams you into a Volvo for using your First Amendment rights.
Since it’s against the law to employ your own pepper spray, you just have to take it like a Gandhi would. There’s no such thing as self-defense when it comes to cops, even when they are blatantly breaking the law.
The political left in America is on the ropes, and contrary to what some leftists would like to see, revolution does not seem on the horizon in America. That said, something is indeed happening, and the world is seeing more examples of bottom up expression.
Here’s what I think: The only thing that can save the United States of America from a dismal future the political right wants to lock us into is to rigorously debunk the slander of the left so the nation can begin to create a more healthy, economically just structure. That goes for ending the bankrupting state of endless war these same forces have collared us with.
Such a shift will do two important things: It will empower working people with health care and jobs so they’ll have security and money to spend, which will re-energize a capitalist engine; and in the spirit of a mixed economy, it will also mean a much needed injection of socialism into the economy – the sort of things Franklin Roosevelt had the courage to do.
Even one of the right wing’s most revered free-market economic gurus, Friedrich Hayek, conceded the healthy nature of a mixed economy in his famous 1944 polemic, The Road To Serfdom.
“There is no reason why,” he wrote, “in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom.” He defined that security as “security against severe physical deprivation (and) the certainty of a given minimum of sustenance for all.” He went on further to say: “[S]ome minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody. … [T]he case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.”
Hayek’s view of a balanced economy sounds almost reasonable today and shows how very far to the right current thinking has gone after his beloved free market economy was driven into a ditch by greedy Wall Street pirates.
I plan to stand up for more economic justice with others in Washington DC starting on October 6th in Freedom Plaza, three blocks from the White House. Like others, I’ll have my camera with me. I hope DC cops don’t feel it’s necessary to slam me into a Volvo or shoot me in the face with pepper spray.
But if that’s how it has to be, that’s the cost of living free in a US police state.
JOHN GRANT is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, a new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported online alternative newspaper.
Diversion - theme and variations 'round the child's playful question: just why DID the chidken cross the road?
Patti Shanaberg
THIS IS HILARIOUS (thanks Amy Stuart Guido) NOW WHO CAN SPEAK FOR STEVE JOBS?
Why DID the chicken cross the road???
SARAH PALIN: The chicken crossed the road because, gosh-darn it, he's a
maverick!
BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for change! The
chicken wanted change!
...
JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized
the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the
other side of the road.
HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little
chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to
ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it
deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.
GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We
just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The
chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.
DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?
COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite
image of the chicken crossing the road.
BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken.
AL GORE: I invented the chicken.
JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now
against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the
chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.
AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens up in
here.
DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he
must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after
the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him
realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his current problems before
adding new problems.
OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he
wants to cross this road so badly. So instead of having the chicken learn from
his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this
chicken a NEW CAR so that he can just drive across the road and not live his
life like the rest of the chickens.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we
have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.
NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it
in his eyes and the way he walks.
PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.
MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going.
I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price
dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.
DR. SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes,
the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.
JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain
truth? That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken
is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we
boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the Liberal media
whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side.' That
chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.
GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody
told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.
BARARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be
listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of
how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish it's
lifelong dream of crossing the road.
ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in
peace.
BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2011, which will not only cross
roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your
checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2011. This new
platform is much more stable and will never reboot.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move
beneath the chicken?
COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?
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