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MoJo Articles | Mother Jones Early Monday morning, around 100 University of California police raided a five-acre patch of land owned by UC Berkeley and used occasionally for agricultural research. The raid came three weeks after roughly 200 activists, community members, and students took over a small patch of the land, known as the "Gill Tract," located in the small city of Albany, just north of Berkeley. The group cleared out piles of wild mustard, tilled the soil, planted 15,000 donated seedlings, and set up camp. When the university ordered them to leave, they kept farming. The university responded by cutting off water access, setting up barricades, and then filing a lawsuit against 14 people. On Monday, nine protesters were arrested and part of the farm was bulldozed. Continue Reading » "The Dictator": A Qaddafi-Inspired Rom-Com Filled with Pubic Hair Jokes by Asawin Suebsaeng 16 May 2012 at 3:01am The Dictator If The Dictator were a dictator, it would probably be Chiang Kai-shek: Good in spurts, but excessive and, in the end, unpardonably flawed. The film (directed by Larry Charles) chronicles the politically incorrect misadventures of Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen, the jolly autocrat of the fictional North African republic of Wadiya. The character—actor/satirist Sacha Baron Cohen's latest creation—is a comic pastiche of democracy-killing icons: Aladeen enjoys a flamboyant, sybaritic, rape-abundant lifestyle à la Uday Hussein. He possesses the megalomania and the "Amazonian Guard" of a Moammar Qaddafi. And his regime's nuke-happy, Jew-baiting tendencies are a caricature of today's Iranian hardliners. Mix together those three ingredients, add a dash of Elmer J. Fudd, and you've got yourself one tall, mad Haffaz Aladeen. Continue Reading » WATCH: Romney Plays the VP Vetting Game [Saunders Cartoon] by Zina Saunders 14 May 2012 at 4:10pm Editors' note: Mother Jones illustrator Zina Saunders creates editorial animations riffing on the political news and current events of the week. In this week's animation, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney plays the Vice President vetting game. Who will his VP pick be? Paul Ryan, the darling of the let-them-eat-cake crowd? Chris Christie, who doesn't take orders from anyone who makes less than a million dollars? Or maybe it will be Marco Rubio, the Latino Tea Party favorite? The animation, as always, was written, animated, and acted by Zina Saunders. Why America's Killer Drones Give Our Government Too Much Power by Tom Engelhardt 14 May 2012 at 2:50pm This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. Here's the essence of it: you can trust America's crème de la crème, the most elevated, responsible people, no matter what weapons, what powers, you put in their hands. No need to constantly look over their shoulders. Placed in the hands of evildoers, those weapons and powers could create a living nightmare; controlled by the best of people, they lead to measured, thoughtful, precise decisions in which bad things are (with rare and understandable exceptions) done only to truly terrible types. In the process, you simply couldn't be better protected. And in case you were wondering, there is no question who among us are the best, most lawful, moral, ethical, considerate, and judicious people: the officials of our national security state. Trust them implicitly. They will never give you a bum steer. You may be paying a fortune to maintain their world—the 30,000 people hired to listen in on conversations and other communications in this country, the 230,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security, the 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, the 4.2 million with security clearances of one sort or another, the $2 billion, one-million-square-foot data center that the National Security Agency is constructing in Utah, the gigantic $1.8 billion headquarters the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency recently built for its 16,000 employees in the Washington area—but there's a good reason. That's what's needed to make truly elevated, surgically precise decisions about life and death in the service of protecting American interests on this dangerous globe of ours. Continue Reading » If You Thought Michele Bachmann Was Out There... by Tim Murphy 14 May 2012 at 3:01am Rep. Tim Walz should be in big trouble this November. The Minnesota Democrat's district gave just 51 percent of its vote to Barack Obama in 2008 and the National Republican Congressional Committee is spending big bucks attacking Walz as an out-of-touch lefty. But Walz has two things going for him. The GOP's April nominating convention ended in a stalemate after 23 ballots, meaning the two top candidates have to spend the next three months preparing for the August primary. That, in turn, means Walz stands a decent chance of facing Allen Quist, a 67-year-old soybean farmer and onetime anti-sodomy crusader who believes that humans and dinosaurs may have coexisted in Southeast Asia as late as the 11th century. Quist's platform and ideology bears a close resemblance to another Minnesota conservative with a huge family and a love-hate relationship with modern science—Rep. Michele Bachmann. That's no coincidence. Beginning in the late 1990s, the duo worked together to take down Minnesota's state curriculum standards, which they considered a gateway to a totalitarian society built on moral relativism. He helped make her rise possible; now he wants to join her in Washington. Continue Reading » George of the Fumble by Tim Murphy 14 May 2012 at 3:01am Illustration by Steve BrodnerIn the six years since he effectively ended his Senate career with the most famous viral video in political history, George "Macaca" Allen has learned one very important lesson: If you can't watch what you say, watch whom you say it to. Which is why, as the former Republican senator from Virginia makes a run for his old seat, he's taking a few precautions. Opposition video trackers are shown the door whenever possible; reporters from magazines named after early-20th-century labor activists are brushed off. Appearances are limited to friendly venues like Washington and Lee University's quadrennial mock Republican convention, where amid a sea of boat shoes, blazers, and swoop cuts, Allen's good-old-boy shtick finds a receptive audience. "He's always kept politics in perspective through the use of sports metaphors," the student introducing him explains. Sure enough, Allen, the author of What Washington Can Learn From the World of Sports and the son of a legendary Washington Redskins coach, peppers his stump speech with enthusiastic, sometimes pained athletic terminology. "Now, folks, all the sports teams here like talking about how 'we're No. 1,'" Allen tells the crowd. "Well, guess what? In energy, America is No. 1." The sports talk spills into his brief media availability afterward. On standardized testing: "You don't guess what the score is in a basketball game; you keep track of it." On failing schools: "If you have a team that loses year after year, sure you can have a lot of injuries or maybe some bad calls from the referees, but it doesn't happen three years in a row." On hiring teachers: "You can bring in better teachers…just like you bring in turnaround coaches for losing franchises." But beyond all the tortured clichés, George Allen has a clear message: He wants back in the game. Allen, whom NBC political correspondent Chuck Todd called "Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush in a blender," was once viewed as a natural successor to the 43rd president. Bush and Allen rose to political prominence at the same time, fighting on the same issues and floating on the self-invented images they'd crafted in the shadow of their famous fathers. At the same time Bush's popularity was waning, Allen's career was derailed when he uttered an obscure racial slur about an Indian American video tracker working for his Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. Continue Reading » Do Toms Shoes Really Help People? by Kiera Butler 14 May 2012 at 3:01am When Toms—a company that, for every pair of shoes you buy, gives a pair to someone in the developing world—was founded in 2006, shoe hoarders rejoiced: A robust collection of kicks was no longer reason for your friends to compare you to a certain Filipina dictator—oh, no! A pile of Toms canvas sneakers and wedge heels actually added to your do-gooder cred. According to its website, by September 2010 Toms had given away more than a million shoes. Toms has since expanded; in addition to shoes it now sells glasses under the same model. Toms isn't the only company founded on the "buy one, give one" model of business. For every watch you buy through WeWood, a tree is planted. Smile Squared sells and donates toothbrushes. So do these companies work? I asked a few aid experts to weigh in. Continue Reading » "Dark Shadows" May Imperil Tim Burton's AC/DC Status by Asawin Suebsaeng 11 May 2012 at 6:25am Dark Shadows In March 2010, CollegeHumor.com debuted a sketch titled "Tim Burton's Secret Formula." The Burton character brainstorms with his team of "weavers of shadowy fantasms" to come up with his next big project. Burton rejects the idea for an original screenplay and declares that they will stick to taking "an old story that was already creepy and make it shitload creepier!" From there, the other elements and usual suspects fall into place: Johnny Depp, Tim Burton's domestic partner, buckets of white make-up, black set design and wardrobe, Danny Elfman score, and haunted everything. Even if you admire, as I do, Burton's directorial output since 1999—which has indeed leaned heavily on rebooting famous old tales—it's hard to argue that this was an unwarranted lampooning. Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, and Alice in Wonderland can be damn-near aesthetically interchangeable. The same goes for Burton's latest, Dark Shadows, a star-studded adaptation of the influential 1960s daytime soap that threw together black magic, werewolves, and vampires—"Satan's favorite TV show," as it was labeled by boycott-happy Christian groups at the time. To his credit, Burton has achieved what I like to call the AC/DC standard: Once popular artists really nail a good formula, they reach a point where it is permissible to abandon the pursuit of originality or innovation. Listening to the albums High Voltage and Highway to Hell back-to-back is much like watching Burton's glut of remakes in rapid succession—the formula feels more like signature style, and you learn to forgive and often embrace the predictability. But the fatal snag with Dark Shadows isn't its lack of originality. It's that halfway through, the film forgets to bring the fun. The result is a thoroughly uneven black comedy that builds to a thunderously unsatisfying conclusion. Continue Reading »
In These Times On April 21, The New York Times reported that Wal-Mart de Mexico paid $24 million in bribes to local land use officials in exchange for allowing the company to build stores in virtually every corner of the country, and to make environmental objections vanish. Although its top executives apparently approved of and helped conceal the bribery scheme -- in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act -- the chances that any of them will face criminal prosecution is remote. It's not that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) doesn't criminally prosecute people who pay bribes to avoid land-use restrictions on their property. Rather, the feds prefer to bring such cases against people who don't have access to corporate lobbyists -- or even to private lawyers. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, just one in five felony defendants has private counsel. Consider the case of Dumitru Curescu, a former janitor who recently faced two federal trials for the crime of paying $10,000 to an expediter for help obtaining a permit to build two additional garden apartments in his 13-unit building on Chicago's North Side. Curescu, an immigrant from communist Romania who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1988, was advised by his architect in 2006 to hire the expediter Catherine Romasanta, when he did his first renovation project. But when he called her again in 2007, she was working as an informant for the feds and recording their calls. In the fall of 2007, Curescu paid Romasanta the agreed-upon fee and received his building permit. Seven months later, with the renovations nearly complete, federal agents arrested Curescu and his wife Lavinia and seized their building. The feds charged both husband and wife with five counts of bribery and conspiracy. Financially ruined, the couple chose to fight the case; I was Curescu's court-appointed counsel. During a three-week jury trial, federal prosecutors played tapes of Curescu's negotiations with Romasanta and argued to the jury that he and Lavinia knowingly passed a bribe through Romasanta to a city official to get around Chicago's zoning restrictions. The jury acquitted Lavinia on all charges but failed to reach a verdict on her husband. The government decided to try again. At the retrial, the prosecutors elicited false testimony from Romasanta about the number of apartments Dumitru Curescu had added during his first renovation project in 2006, thereby making a tape-recorded comment by Curescu about the fees he had paid her sound like a comment about a bribe payment. The prosecutors then falsely argued to the jury that this comment was proof that Curescu knew that his expediter bribed officials. Curescu was convicted on two of five counts and sentenced to six months in prison. On March 21, Curescu's appeal was denied. In a groundbreaking opinion authored by Judge Richard Posner, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that federal prosecutors may present false testimony to prove their case "hoping the error would not be caught" as long as they can establish on appeal that the "error [did not] reduce the defendant's likelihood of being acquitted." "Judges are not to use reversal to punish governmental misconduct," Posner declared. New York Times columnist James B. Stewart has written extensively about corporate executives at companies such as Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods, which regularly pay bribes to avoid troublesome regulations. In his recent column about the Wal-Mart scandal, Stewart reports that he "couldn't find a case of an executive at a major American-based, publicly traded company who was successfully prosecuted and sent to jail." Yet the feds spared no expense or ethical restraints to make sure that Curescu went to jail, despite the testimony of his architect that the former janitor had "no knowledge" about the permitting process. On April 2, after two lengthy and expensive federal trials and an unsuccessful appeal, Curescu entered a federal prison in Oxford, Wis. Three weeks later his bank sent notice that it is foreclosing on the Curescus' home where Lavinia lives with their three children. Meanwhile, in a recent SEC filing, Wal-Mart predicted its bribery scandal will not have a "material adverse effect on [its] business ... or cash flows." Norman Solomon?s Quest for Congress by Theo Anderson 15 May 2012 at 3:16pm Norman Solomon isn't the typical candidate for Congress. And that's a compliment -- he might actually be one of the most promising candidates ever, from a progressive standpoint. Solomon is running for the House seat currently held by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a reliable progressive who represents California's Second Congressional District. Woolsey is retiring. The district, recently redrawn, now consists of a narrow strip of land that extends along the coast from the Golden Gate Bridge to Oregon's southern border. The Second District is among the most left-leaning in the nation, so there's no doubt that a Democrat will replace Woolsey. The question is: What kind of Democrat? Solomon became an activist for progressive causes in his early teens and has stayed true to that path for nearly half a century. His policy positions include support for legalizing marijuana, for single-payer healthcare, for public financing of elections, and for ending corporate personhood by constitutional amendment. But the most unusual fact about him, given the current political context, is that he doesn't accept money from political action committees or lobbyists. Instead, his campaign is funded solely by relatively small donations -- about $100, on average -- from thousands of individuals. The frontrunner in the race, Jared Huffman, bills himself as "one of the state's top environmental leaders" and has served three terms in the California State Assembly. His great advantage is name recognition. As an Assembly member, he represents more than half the population of the redrawn district. He also has the endorsement of the state's political and media establishments, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the San Francisco Chronicle. But the sources of his funding have become a liability for Huffman, who accepts money from both lobbyists and corporations. The Anderson Valley Advertiser, a legendary Mendocino County weekly newspaper, reports that "Jared Huffman's donor base reflects the realities of a decades-long class war waged by the top 1-5% against the bottom half of America. Huffman's biggest and most well-organized donors are wealthy Marin County lawyers, real estate investors, bankers, and executives of major corporations. Some of them are liberals, but many are conservatives. Most of the liberals seem to make their money by representing the interests of conservative corporations." Solomon, for his part, is a Democrat who works within the party -- he was an Obama delegate at the 2008 Democratic National Convention -- while spending most of his time and energy trying to building the progressive movement. A former director of Fairness and Accuracy in Media, a media watchdog organization, Solomon founded the Institute for Public Accuracy in 1997, and has published several books on the subject of media bias, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. (He's also contributed articles to In These Times since the 1970s.) He was a strong voice of dissent in the months before the war in Iraq, and he's a popular teacher and speaker -- in California and across the nation -- on behalf of progressive causes. Most recently, he has been deeply involved with the Occupy protests in California. Solomon decided that, at this point, running for Woolsey's vacant seat was the best way to advance the movement. "His thinking was, instead of just speaking truth to power, let's take power," said Jeff Cohen, Solomon's longtime friend and writing collaborator, "without in any way surrendering the progressive values and ideals." Last year, in explaining why he was thinking about running for the seat, Solomon wrote that "dysfunctional relationships between liberals in Congress and progressive social movements serve as enablers for endless war, massive giveaways to Wall Street, widening gaps between the rich and the rest of us, erosion of civil liberties, outrageous inaction on global warming, and so much more." Solomon has been endorsed by several of the district's weekly newspapers as well as the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Democracy for America. He finished second of nearly 200 candidates in the latter group's online "Grassroots All-Stars" competition. The primary election will be June 5. According to California's new open primary rules, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will move on to the general election. Recent polling by the Solomon campaign puts him second among the dozen candidates who are running. The GOP?s Dead-End Path to Prosperity by David Moberg 15 May 2012 at 6:00am Mitt Romney may rue the day he called Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal "marvelous," as if he were describing a splendid buffet at the mansion of a friend. The plan from the influential, youthful Republican chair of the House budget committee does offer people like Mitt and his rich buddies tasty goodies -- $10 trillion in preserved and fresh millionaire-friendly tax cuts (over a decade), to be followed later with rollbacks in financial, environmental and every other regulation. But if President Obama is politically vulnerable on the weak recovery of the economy, Romney will be increasingly vulnerable in the presidential race for embracing Ryan's plan -- if the Democrats make clear the dangers it poses for the vast majority of Americans, the servants at Romney's "marvelous" policy buffet. Declaring the presidential race starkly as a "make-or-break moment for the middle class," Obama told Associated Press editors in April that in the much-different budgets he and Ryan have proposed, voters face a "choice between competing visions of our future [that] has [not in recent memory] been so unambiguously clear." The Ryan-Romney plan is further to the Right -- and more hurtful to average Americans -- than anything from Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, Obama said. Calling it "thinly veiled social Darwinism," he argued that his "centrist" approach has historically drawn support even from Republicans, from Lincoln to Eisenhower, who saw government as a way to "do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves." Few Americans may know what social Darwinism means, though many -- especially the rich -- do believe superior people naturally dominate society through harsh competition. (On the other hand, we can hope the anti-evolution religious Right will stay home in November rather than vote for Romney, a disciple of Darwin -- even if 19th-century English philosopher Herbert Spencer was the real social Darwinist.) But polls generally show large majorities supporting Medicare, which the Ryan budget would drastically weaken, and a wide range of government activities, such as operating national parks or protecting the environment, which the budget undermines. And they favor higher taxes on the rich, not new tax cuts for them. Two major pitfalls endanger Obama's attempt to capture the center and label Romney the right-wing extremist: He offers voters a plan tilted more to a limited defense of existing government programs than to bold, inspiring initiatives on the economy. (He should adopt more of the House Progressive Caucus budget or even Sen. Tom Harkin's more limited Rebuild America Act.) And he fails to challenge Romney sharply enough on a general vision of what government can offer, preferring instead to burnish his credentials on shrinking government's size and reach. But even if adopting Ryan's plan may hurt him with centrists and independents, could Romney have resisted? With only four House Republicans voting against Ryan's budget and no Democrats for it in late March, he had to prove not only his right-wing credentials but also -- what now amounts to the same thing -- his mainstream party loyalty. After all, as anti-tax, anti-government zealot Grover Norquist told The Economist, Romney's own ideas are almost irrelevant: "We want the Ryan budget. We ... just need a president to sign this stuff." The path to austerity The Ryan budget will not only fail to do what it claims, but in most cases will do just the opposite. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman put it, the budget is "the most fraudulent in American history." Ryan (and Romney) say they want, above all, to reduce the deficit, but they keep all the Bush tax cuts, slash the budget to eliminate almost all discretionary spending except for the military and cut the top tax rate to 25 percent (now 35 percent, scheduled to rise to 39.6 percent). They promise to pay for the lower rate by eliminating tax loopholes or expenditures, but fail to specify any -- thus effectively increasing budget deficits, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Under the guise of cutting deficits and protecting health and retirement security, Ryan-Romney would change federal health insurance to reduce federal costs but only by shifting the burden back to individuals -- especially the aged and poor -- not by increasing efficiency. The budget would raise the eligibility age for Medicare in the future and replace Medicare with vouchers, turn over Medicaid to the states with inadequate, declining block grants, and invalidate most of the Affordable Care Act, including its expansion of Medicaid. As a result, as many as 27 million people would lose Medicaid coverage (according to the Urban Institute), and 33 million uninsured will not gain insurance promised through the Affordable Care Act. Also, although the recently passed House budget only steers Congress toward changing Social Security, Ryan clearly envisions at least partial privatization and a higher retirement age -- increasing both economic insecurity and inequality. Ryan and Romney claim the tax cuts focused on corporations and the rich -- sorry, "job creators" -- will boost employment, but comparing the economic records of the Clinton and Bush II administrations suggests that raising taxes on the rich can sometimes yield more jobs than cutting them. After reviewing a wide range of studies, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) tax analyst Chye-Ching Huang concludes, "There is no strong evidence taxes on high incomes affect growth strongly negatively or positively." 'Robin Hood in reverse' With their budget and governmental revamp, Romney promises Americans freedom and Ryan predicts a new morality. (The budget is called "The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America's Promise.") But for most Americans their plan would mean greater inequality, which leads to less freedom and a more amoral social order. "[T]his budget is Robin Hood in reverse," CBPP President Robert Greenstein says. "It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget ... possibly in the nation's history." Already, the rich -- and virtually the rich alone -- are rebounding from the Great Recession, with the top 1 percent capturing 93 percent of the income gains in the first year of recovery, according to economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley. But under Ryan's plan, according to the Tax Policy Center, a centrist think tank, the average millionaire would get a new $265,000 tax cut (on top of $129,000 from extended Bush cuts), while after-tax income would fall for households earning $30,000 a year or less (and at the same time, 62 percent of all Ryan's cuts come from programs benefiting lower-income households). Lowering incomes, removing insurance, increasing individual burdens and boosting insecurity does not provide most Americans more freedom, but imprisons them in economic anxiety. Greater inequality also increases illness and mortality, reduces social and economic mobility, lowers long-term economic growth, undermines democracy and contributes to higher crime rates. And recently a team of researchers, mainly from the University of California, Berkeley, found through seven different studies that upper-class individuals are more likely to behave unethically -- lying, stealing, cheating -- than the less affluent. Such behavior may be a major contributor to their wealth, but it also demonstrates that once they are wealthy, people are much less moral, and much more powerful. It's a message apparently lost on right-wing Christians. But it may not be lost on all Americans. Even Ryan faces a strong political challenge from former businessman and Democratic politician Rob Zerban in a once-Democratic district. And Romney now carries the baggage of a plan that does precisely the opposite of what he claims into a campaign against a president who seems willing to take that message to the electorate all year long. Obama?s Chicago: A Pre-NATO Summit Primer by Laura S. Washington 14 May 2012 at 11:27am He was the nobody that nobody sent. Barack Obama's choice of Chicago as his political and psychic home seems brilliant in retrospect. Yet in many ways, it was an unlikely launching pad for America's first black president. Brought up in Hawaii and Indonesia, Obama was a stranger to Chicago powers large and small. The big city in the nation's heartland has always played second string to the glittering coasts. Until Obama, it was best known as the home of mobsters, racial warfare, and hardball politics. The regular Democratic Party ran the show, with a bruising and often wayward iron fist. It is said to be America's most corrupt city. In the mid-1980s, Obama arrived in Chicago, testing the famous tale from his eventual political mentor, Abner Mikva, a longtime congressman from Hyde Park and the city's North Shore. In a 2008 New Yorker interview, Mikva recalled his first attempt to volunteer for the Democratic Party. At the party headquarters, Mikva recalled, a "ward boss came in and pulled the cigar out of his mouth and said, 'Who sent you?' And I said, 'Nobody sent me.' He put the cigar back in his mouth and said, 'We don't want nobody nobody sent.' " In 2012, Barack Obama is no longer a nobody. This week, he will return home to his old stomping grounds to host the NATO summit (and probably stop by his re-election campaign headquarters). As Chicago takes the world stage, here are some insights about the city that molded him. Chicago's historic trilogyObama's choice of Chicago was not accidental, but shrewd. He once told his neighborhood newspaper, the Hyde Park Herald: "I came home in Chicago." "Home" represented a rare but robust combination of progressive activism, sustaining black power and old fashioned, Democratic Party clout. The president's coming of age in Chicago completed the city's historic black trilogy: DuSable, Washington and Obama. Around 1779, a French-Haitian fur trader, Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, encamped at the southern tip of Lake Michigan, becoming Chicago's "founding father." In 1983, Harold Washington won a hard-fought election to become the city's first African American mayor. His victory blasted the Democratic Machine with a brand of progressive politics that brought together a progressive coalition of blacks, Latinos, liberal whites, women and gays. Before Washington, party regulars co-opted minority politicians and voters and kept them in line with patronage jobs and contracts, but gave them little authentic power. Timuel Black, the esteemed professor emeritus and dean of black progressives, dubbed it "Plantation Politics." In 1985 Obama was drawn to Chicago by Washington's progressive politics. Like Washington, Obama assiduously worked on coalition building, and eventually brought longtime Mayor and Chicago "boss' Richard M. Daley, other Democratic Party regulars, and even Republicans into his fold. But first, the freshly minted graduate of Columbia University would dig into grassroots community organizing. A careful ascensionIn the 1930s, Saul Alinsky, the author of the organizing bible, Rules for Radicals, was a gritty populist-intellectual who built a lasting brand of power out of Back of the Yards, a gritty, working class enclave on Chicago's Southwest Side. Obama learned the Alinsky way. He was the first executive director of the Developing Communities Project, which mobilizes citizens for change through local churches and community based organizations. In the 1980s the group was working on environmental justice and other causes out of a Chicago bungalow in Roseland on the far South Side. Obama spent only three years honing his organizing chops, but the experience lent abundant street cred for his presidential campaign mantra of "Change." Obama and other community advocates fought for the removal of asbestos from Altgeld Gardens, a depressed public housing project on the far Southeast Side. One resident of the ironically named "Gardens" was Hazel Johnson, a determined mother and activist who founded People for Community Recovery, a pioneer in the environmental justice movement. Today, the Developing Communities Project is spearheading a campaign to extend a major rail line through Roseland and other neglected neighborhoods. Altgeld Gardens was symbolic of the decline of public housing. The massive, racially and economically segregated "projects" has become ugly symbols of pernicious poverty, dysfunction and crime. The city's Plan for Transformation, the city's closely-watched $1.6 billion rehabilitation program launched in 2000, promised to change that. Touted as a national model for remaking federally funded housing for the poor, the plan has been controversial. In February 2012 Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced plans for a major "recalibration" of the effort. After his organizing stint, Obama was off to Harvard Law School, where he excelled and established his academic pedigree. In 1991 he returned to Chicago and settled in Hyde Park. While Chicago remains one of America's most segregated cities, Hyde Park was the integrated oasis for progressive intellectuals, activists and professionals. The neighborhood has been the hallowed stomping ground of myriad movers and shakers, among them boxing champion Muhammad Ali; the University of Chicago and academic icons like Enrico Fermi and Saul Bellow; Gospel songbird Mahalia Jackson; Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan; Bill Veeck, the wily White Sox owner; and Hugh Hefner, the ultimate Playboy. Obama was a lecturer at the university's law school, wife Michelle a top executive at its medical center, and his children attended its Lab School. Obama's early political career was plotted at kitchen tables throughout the neighborhood. In 1992, Obama ran Project Vote, a voter registration campaign that helped elect President Bill Clinton and elevate Carol Moseley Braun as the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. The political work connected him to the city's political elites, wealthy donors and political gurus like Mikva and David Axelrod. Chicago is the nation's capital of the black middle class. Michelle Obama, whom he met while they worked together at a law firm, helped him maneuver that world. She worked in government and community circles, ran the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps youth service program, and was an attorney in the city's Law Department. The South Side native and Harvard Law graduate connected her husband to prominent black professionals like Valerie Jarrett, now his closest White House confidante; Martin Nesbitt, a best friend who runs an airport parking business; and John Rogers Jr., an Obama basketball buddy and CEO of an investment company. Such relationships helped the future president plumb a lucrative fundraising and support network. The church is the black community's strongest institution. Obama tapped into its allure when he joined Trinity United Church of Christ, a prominent congregation on West 95th Street. Its formidable pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preached a black liberation Christian theology that promoted social justice and activism. Wright and other Obama allies like the Catholic priest, Rev. Michael Pfleger, and longtime civil rights champion Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., would become flashpoints in the 2008 presidential campaign. But the social justice institutions they molded, like the Faith Community of St. Sabina and Rainbow PUSH, remain influential forces. In January, Trinity kicked off plans for Imani Village, a 27-acre community-based conglomerate of sustainable housing, urban farming, retail stores, health centers and a sports complex. The city's black church scene staged musical talent that set the sanctuaries rocking. Chicago artists with deep Gospel roots include Mahalia Jackson, the bandleader Tommy Dorsey, and Mavis Staples, the hit soloist and mainstay of the Staples Singers. Her swinging, "I'll TakeYou There" was a theme song for Obama's presidential campaign. Dorsey was the choir director at Pilgrim Baptist Church, the Adler and Sullivan-designed structure that was nearly destroyed in a 2006 fire. Plans are underway to revive the architectural gem. South Side pride, and powerIn 2002, his bond with the city's white progressives brought Obama to a rally at the Federal Plaza downtown. At the protest, mounted by Chicagoans Against the War in Iraq, Obama delivered a speech that sealed his anti-war credentials, and another crucial plank in his presidential campaign. Obama's Hawaiian genes may have helped Obama surf the treacherous waters of regular, black and independent politics. His allies included his "political Godfather," now-retired State Senate President Emil Jones, a Machine stalwart; to progressive white and black independents like Mikva and Obama's former alderman and now Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle; to black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan. Like most every South Sider, Obama is an avowed White Sox fan. During the 2008 election, he mocked the rival Chicago Cubs and their pastoral Wrigley Field. "You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there. People aren't watching the game," he told ESPN in 2008. "It's not serious. White Sox, that's baseball. South Side." Them's fightin' words in Chicago. During the NATO/G8 summit weekend, the Cubs will take on the Sox--at Wrigley Field. Nestled between Hyde Park and McCormick Place sits Bronzeville, the historic heart of black Chicago. Once known as the "Black Belt," it was the port of entry for the Great Back Migration from the South in the first half of the 20th Century. Once a segregated but vibrant haven for black Chicago, the area declined, but is reemerging as a symbol of black progress and tourist destination. Obama co-founded Bronzeville's Lugenia Burns Hope Center, a leadership development and organizing institute. A current Hope Center project is Housing Bronzeville, which works to protect affordable housing in the midst of the ongoing foreclosure epidemic. Bronzeville boosters are pushing the area as a potential location for a future Obama Presidential Library; they'll get plenty of competition from the University of Chicago. (In 2013, presidential advisor David Axelrod will launch an Institute of Politics at the U of C). Obama cultivated the city's multitudinous ethnic groups. According to a new director from Chicago Area Ethnic Resources, the region boasts 245 ethnic organizations spanning 57 ethnicities, and 68 ethnic media outlets. Black and ethnic media outlets who have chronicled Obama's Chicago include Johnson Publications' Ebony and Jet, run by former White House Social Director Desiree Rogers, the 106-year-old Chicago Defender, and LaRaza. But Obama's Chicago morphed into Rahm's Chicago. In February 2011, Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor in Chicago after a 21-year Daley reign. Emanuel, Obama's former White House chief of staff, got a lot of help from his old friend. Emanuel, a centrist Democrat who favors power over ideology, has quickly established himself as the indisputable new boss of Chicago. And the ferociously putative "Rhambo" may be eyeing a bigger prize. Progressives, beware: Emanuel could be in training for a 2016 presidential bid. Perverts on the Bump Patrol by Susan J. Douglas 14 May 2012 at 6:00am When feminists start applauding anything said or done by Hugh Hefner, we know we've come to an odd pass. But in the May issue of Playboy, Hefner blasts "repressed conservatives" who he says are "pounding on America's bedroom door." Citing Rick Santorum's statement that contraception is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," Hefner denounces the "ignorance espoused by a new crop of self-appointed arbiters who are determined to oversee our morality." Amen. But Hefner doesn't go far enough. Because what we've been seeing -- during a time of persistent economic hardship for so many, no less -- has been a national obsession with uteruses. This comes from the repressed yet lecherous religious Right, of course, but it has also come to pervade its almost polar opposite: celebrity culture. From Capitol Hill to tabloid rags, surveillance of the uterus is, weirdly, everywhere. Our country has often been neurotic about sex -- prudish yet pornographic -- but now is an especially pathological time. Having endured, at the state and national level, the year-and-a-half long Republican "war on women" (I highly recommend a Facebook page by that name), we've heard plenty about efforts to further criminalize abortion, water down and redefine rape laws, defund Planned Parenthood and, in a completely bizarre knuckle-dragging move, to attack contraception and access to it. But when you look at some of the laws proposed, there is something deeply perverted about them -- sexually perverted. They have evidenced a keen desire to invade, monitor and manipulate women's sex organs, and thus violate our privacy. What drove Republican men in Virginia to want to force women to have a device inserted into their vaginas prior to being allowed to have an abortion? Their devotion to "the sanctity of life"? Until the national uproar labeling the proposed legislation "state rape," Republican men in other states, like Alabama and Idaho, also wanted to mandate that a probe be inserted inside a woman's body prior to an abortion. (Not surprisingly, this is already the law in Texas.) Cloaked in the guise of prudery, this is a sadistic, pornographic fantasy. When Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut for testifying in favor of insurance coverage for contraceptives and then suggested she make a sex tape, something perverted was going on. But looking beyond reactionary Republicans, our media are increasingly obsessed with the uterus. You can hardly open a celebrity gossip magazine anymore (let alone scan its cover) without seeing various benighted women with a canary yellow circle drawn around their abdomens, and blaring text demanding to know what's going on in there: Did she eat too much for lunch or is there a zygote taking form? (Of course it doesn't help that some celebrities, typically on the D-list -- think Tori Spelling -- parade their "bump" to stay in the limelight and cash in on motherhood.) The "bump patrol" is a relatively recent phenomenon in the celebrity rags. Think about the term's connotations: A patrol, typically involving police officers or soldiers, is designed to look out for criminals, enemies and threats. Despite the somewhat jocular tone of the "bump patrol," it has a militarized law enforcement valence and is of a piece with legislative efforts to keep the uterus under surveillance and render it a public space. Why this obsession now? Is it that the more women become visible and active in the workplace and public life, the more they must be told that their lives are still determined by biological imperatives that are -- or should be -- out of their control? Is it that right-wing "religious" men, fearing their own lust, project it onto women so they think they have exorcised it? Or, in the case of the spate of vaginal probe ultrasound bills, is it just simple sexual sadism, masquerading as moral outrage? Whatever the explanation, some politicians who excoriate the Taliban have attitudes toward women almost as warped and aggressive as members of the Islamist militant group. Girls and women everywhere should out these guys not only as reactionary misogynistic ideologues, but as deeply disturbed sexual perverts. From California to Quebec, Students Fight Tuition Hikes by Diana Rosen 12 May 2012 at 6:48am Though high-quality, low-cost education is fast becoming a relic, militant student protests are very much alive. This year marked the first time students in the world-renowned University of California system contributed more to their education than the state, a fact that has been met with demonstrations, boardroom occupations and a detailed proposal for free up-front tuition to be financed through repayments proportional to students' income after leaving school. While activists in the United States have struggled to stem the tide of disinvestment in public education, students in Quebec have sustained the longest student strike in the province's history -- and they are beginning to win results. Protests began in the spring of 2011 after the Quebecois government announced annual tuition increases of $325 for the next five years. Tuition costs have already increased by 30 percent over the last five years, and the new hikes amount to an additional increase of 75 percent. Since last winter, more than 150 student unions have voted to strike, and nearly 175,000 Quebec college students have boycotted classes on campuses across the province. On March 22, in the biggest demonstration thus far, 200,000 protested. In April, the unions won a meeting with Education Minister Line Beauchamp, who agreed to consider student plans for alternative financing. Though negotiations broke down after two days when the minister tried to exclude the largest of the striking student groups -- Coalition large de l'Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Etudiante (CLASSE) -- for allegedly violating a 48-hour civil disobedience truce, the provincial government has offered to spread the tuition raise over seven years instead of five. But students voted down the compromise offer, saying they will continue to strike until the hike is called off completely. And in a show of solidarity with CLASSE, other organizations have refused to return to negotiations unless all student organizations are at the table. "We're out again in the streets telling the government that we don't like their propositions," Martine Desjardins, president of the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, told In These Times. "Instead of going into the pockets of the students and parents, we should be looking for other ways to finance education." Our Guns and Butter Economy by David Sirota 11 May 2012 at 6:00am With the economy still struggling and the debates over how to fix the problem more intense than ever, one word still evokes bipartisan consensus: exports. "I want us to sell stuff," said President Obama, summing up the bipartisan sentiment. That nebulous word "stuff" is significant. It asks us to see all exports as the same and to refrain from making nuanced value judgments about what exactly we're shipping overseas. In this cold-blooded view, a job-creating export is a job-creating export, and that's as far as any conversation should go. At first glance, such reductionism seems logical, rational, even boringly uncontroversial. But two recent news items highlight how in a globalized economy, there are troubling consequences that come from the particular kind of export economy we're building. The first bit of news came from the Washington Post, which this week reported that "the Obama administration is crafting a proposal that could make it easier to export firearms and other weapons." Though the Homeland Security and Justice Departments say the new rules could make it easier for terrorist and drug cartels to further arm themselves, the White House is nonetheless citing the "stuff" theory of exports to ignore the objections. This is part of a larger pattern since President Obama took office. During Obama's first year in the White House, he began to gut the Pentagon's approval process for arms exports, weakening controls on what could and could not be sold. Later, diplomatic cables uncovered by Wikileaks showed, as Fortune magazine put it, "American officials act(ing) as de facto pitchmen for U.S.-made weapons." The result is that America has become the true "Lord of War," as the arms dealer motto goes. We are the leading arms supplier to the developing world and we are responsible for the majority of all weapons sales across the globe. Yes, we are so committed to selling instruments of death to the rest of the planet that military industries have almost tripled their share of the U.S. economy in just a decade. The second bit of news came from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, whose new study shows that America is exporting our obesity crisis to Mexico. Coupling health statistics with U.S. export data since the North American Free Trade Agreement tore down Mexico's agriculture trade barriers, researchers found that the Mexican market was flooded by American agribusinesses' taxpayer subsidized commodities (corn, soybeans) and their processed derivatives. According to the report, that quickly wiped out Mexico's local food economy, leaving its food system exactly "like the industrialized food system of the United States -- characterized by the overabundance of obesogenic foods." Not surprisingly, Mexican obesity rates have consequently skyrocketed. Taken together, these export booms represent what could be called America's new Guns and Butter economy. We are so desperate to export any "stuff" we can, we are now fattening up the world and arming it for permanent bloodshed. Seeking to short circuit any objections to this trend, President Obama has said simply that "we're at a moment where necessity has tempered the old debates" over exports and economic policy. In terms of history, he's not wrong -- during the previous century, America witnessed fevered fights over what constitutes a moral farm policy, and in the 1930s the U.S. Senate's Nye Committee held almost 100 hearings into "greedy munitions interests" that were unduly influencing public policy. Sadly, Obama is correct - those debates have been silenced. But should they be? Should we simply say that any exports -- no matter their moral, ethical, environmental or health implications -- are inherently good? Does "necessity" really mean that "stuff" for stuff's sake must be the basis of our export economy? Washington and profit-at-all-cost industries certainly say yes -- but that doesn't mean it's the right answer. A Superhero for the Ladies by Sady Doyle 10 May 2012 at 3:19pm If you saw The Avengers last weekend, then you saw many mind-blowing special effects. Flying aircraft carriers, giant robot snakes, etc. But the film's most impressive special effect has gone largely unnoticed. It's this: The Avengers presents us with a vision of Scarlett Johansson in a skin-tight leather catsuit, and then convinces us that the most interesting thing about her is what she's thinking. With The Avengers becoming this summer's (or this year's) must-see movie, we are being treated to lots of op-eds on why it's not for girls. The problem is, those pieces don't have much to do with The Avengers, which, I would argue, has been successful in part by playing to women. For an example of the punditry I'm talking about, take Moviefone's excruciating "One Girl's Guide to The Avengers": "As your boyfriend probably told you, The Avengers is hitting theaters this Friday... But you hate action movies and you've never even read a comic book." At this point, given that "you" are apparently a character in a tampon commercial, you expect to start hearing about how much more confident you'll feel on your date, due to increased absorbency. But, no: The piece promises "cocktail introductions a la 'Bridget Jones's Diary.'" Yikes. At Salon, Andrew O'Hehir takes a more pro-feminist approach, bemoaning the sexism of summer movie season: He says that most big "tentpole" movies are aimed squarely at young men, that movies for women earn less critical respect than movies for men, and that Hollywood is sexist. All of this is generally correct. But specifically, O'Hehir goes on to say that The Avengers is more or less identical to Transformers and predict that "a large majority of [the movie's] ticket buyers will be teenage boys and young men." And yet, exit polls showed that the people who saw The Avengers were "50% over age 25 and 50% under 25, while 60% were male and 40% female." That's a male majority, but a slim one. And according to a Fandango poll, The Avengers was the most anticipated summer movie for men, and second-most anticipated for women. The only movie women wanted to see more was Snow White and the Huntsman, another action movie, but with a female lead. So it turns out women do like movies about violence. (See also: The Hunger Games.) And they're showing up in massive numbers to see this particular violent movie. Why? I didn't see The Avengers because of its premise or its stars. (Beyond Johansson, it also features Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans and Mark Ruffalo.) I went--as I suspect many women did--because it was written and directed by Joss Whedon. Not surprisingly, the guy who's famous for writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an overtly feminist drama about a teenage girl with superpowers, has a huge female fanbase. Directors do matter, even with huge movies. For example, Jon Favreau, executive producer of The Avengers, made his name on Swingers, a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the sort of guys we tactfully refer to as "bros." (Less tactfully, and more correctly, we call them "sexists.") Accordingly, his Iron Man (2008) is a wish-fulfillment fantasy for bros: booze, boobs, wads of cash, and Gwyneth Paltrow as a shrill, nagging girlfriend who won't let her man have fun. Favreau's version of Black Widow, seen in Iron Man 2 (2010), existed largely to make doe eyes at men, obey orders from men and take her clothes off in front of men. Any woman who could sit through it deserves a refund and a Purple Heart. But for The Avengers, Marvel went with Whedon, a man who spends his spare time scripting benefits for Equality Now. He fought the studio to have Johansson included, specifically because he didn't want an all-male cast. He cast TV actress Cobie Smulders to avoid having only one female character, and let Smulders, rather than any of the burly famous guys, star in the movie's first big action sequence. And, most impressively, once he'd cast some female actors, he actually bothered to write characters for them. He gave Black Widow a backstory, a personality, and more screen time than many characters who had their own movies. He managed to transform her from a vacant sex object into a compelling character whose primary weapon is her intelligence. And she never once takes off her clothes. I shouldn't have to be grateful for this, but in a post-Favreau world, I am: A male director bothered to write a female superhero who was interesting for reasons other than cup size. It's almost as if ridiculous power fantasies weren't exclusively male! Granted: None of this translates immediately to the outsiders who see the sexist posters. But it translates, hopefully, to word-of-mouth (the evangelical fervor of Whedon fans is already a factor in this movie's ubiquity) and repeat viewings, particularly for smart women who don't mind goofy action. We do see these movies, and we can like them. And we can make studios a lot of money by telling our friends that we like them. All a director has to do is follow in Whedon's footsteps: Prove to female viewers that you know we're in the audience, and that you care whether we're having fun. Daily Kos Maybe we should ask the president's Secretary of State what she thinks about it?
Exclusionary Republican version of Violence Against Women Act slated for Hous... by rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) 16 May 2012 at 9:53am Barack Obama opposes the Republican version of the Violence Against Women Act (White House photo) The Obama administration is making clear that the House version of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, being voted on today, is unacceptable after House Republicans drafted their own, exclusionary, legislation rather than taking up the bipartisan Senate bill. It has been widely reported that the House bill, as it stands, would omit protections for Native American and LGBT victims of violence, and actually weaken existing protections for immigrants; the administration's statement of opposition points to still other groups that the Senate would protect and the House would not: H.R. 4970 does not include important improvements to the Clery Act found in the Senate-passed bill that would address the high rates of dating violence and sexual assault experienced by young people in college and other higher education institutions. The bill also weakens critical new provisions in the Senate-passed bill that would improve safety for victims living in subsidized housing. The Obama administration is calling on the House to embrace bipartisanship and pass the Senate bill rather than moving forward with the Violence Against Straight White Rich Women Act it plans to vote on today. Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to the president, writes that: Tell your representatives to pass the expanded, bipartisan Senate reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, not the protection for a few but not for all House Republican bill.
Obama reelection campaign raises $43.6 million in April by rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) 16 May 2012 at 9:25am President Obama's reelection campaign manager Jim Messina announces April fundraising President Obama's reelection campaign today announced that it had raised $43.6 million in April, a drop from $56 million one month earlier. The total includes contributions made directly to Obama for America as well as to the Obama Victory Fund, the joint fundraising committee established by OFA and the Democratic National Committee. Campaign manager Jim Messina did not reveal cash on hand, but said that 98 percent of the contributions made to OFA were less than $250 and that the campaign added 169,500 donors. He said strong fundraising was essential to remain competitive with Mitt Romney and the network of pro-Romney Super PACs. Overall, the campaign has raised $379 million, though we won't know exactly how much was raised by OFA and how much was raised by OVF until full filings are made later this month. As of the end of March, OFA had raised $191.2 million and OVF had raised $144.9 million. The campaign is running a $25 million ad campaign this month in swing states. It is also expected to have a very strong fundraising month, with $15 million raised at the George Clooney fundraiser alone.
The bully rights movement by rss@dailykos.com (Jen Sorensen) 16 May 2012 at 9:50am (Click to enlarge.) I was going to make a "bully pulpit" joke in this strip, but then I did a search and realized everyone on the internet had already made it. A cartoonist's life is fraught with peril. Mitt has done some good in the past, such as the health care plan he now distances himself from. But more and more, it seems like he's a human hurricane leaving a trail of unemployed people, bowel-voiding dogs and traumatized gay teens in his wake. Order a signed print of this cartoon from the artist.
Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Jeff Landry finally decides to take on Ch... by rss@dailykos.com (David Nir) 16 May 2012 at 8:00am Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off: ? LA-03: In case you missed it, GOP freshman Jeff Landry, the last member of the House who hadn't yet announced re-election plans, finally announced that he will?as long expected?run against fellow Republican Rep. Charles Boustany. Louisiana was actually the first state (along with Arkansas) to complete the congressional redistricting process last year, so Landry's been inexplicably dragging his heels for over a year. There'd been many tells, though, that he had no intention of hanging up his spurs after just a single term, and now it's officially game on. On paper, the new 3rd District heavily favors Boustany, who's in his fourth term and already represents 76% of the district's constituents. Indeed, Louisiana's Republican establishment quite deliberately intended to force Landry over the edge of the iceberg when they drew their new map?someone had to go, since the state was dropping from seven seats to six. But Landry has tea party enthusiasm on his side and his credentials as a movement conservative are impeccable, whereas Boustany is decidedly an insider. And last cycle, Landry not only beat but obliterated the establishment pick in the GOP primary, former state House Speaker Hunt Downer, so I most certainly would not discount his chances.
Today in Congress: Republicans fake VAWA in the House and fake budgets in the... by rss@dailykos.com (David Waldman) 16 May 2012 at 9:00am Recapping yesterday's action: First day of the work week in the House, and that means suspension bills. Eleven were scheduled, seven were dispensed with and four votes were postponed. Nothing terribly exciting to report on that front. The Senate, per its agreement, considered and rejected all five of the precious Export-Import Bank bill amendments that Republicans just had to have in order to allow the motion to proceed to move forward. And guess what? They were all massively unpopular, some of them embarrassingly so, while the bill itself passed overwhelmingly. And even so, Republicans objected to moving to the bill quickly, and even threatened to filibuster and vote against cloture on the motion to proceed. Yet, interestingly enough, not a single one of the five amendments got 40 votes, which is what it would have taken (had every Senator voted on the cloture question) for Republicans to have enforced their filibuster threat. Hell, Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike LEE (R-UT) each offered an amendment, and the two couldn't even muster 20 votes between them. That's what we had to have votes on in order to get Republican agreement to allow a debate on a bill that ultimately passed unamended, by a vote of 78-20? What a bunch of #@%ing d*#ks. Looking ahead to today: Today's work in the House begins with another suspension bill. H.R. 5740, a bill to extend the National Flood Insurance Program. Socialism! After that, it's the House's own version of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization. Because why vote on the Senate version (which passed with 68 votes, 15 of them Republican) when you can vote on something new and horrible, which will also lead to a potential procedural nightmare in the Senate? But the day's not over yet. Next up will be the new defense authorization bill. Socialism! That's right. Everybody should just get their own pointy stick, and stop depending on the Nanny Army to keep them safe. Oh, and technically, the postponed amendment votes from yesterday are on the schedule, too. The Senate has set up an interesting day for itself. Republicans are constantly complaining that the Senate hasn't considered a budget for the past few years. Of course, there's little point in doing so, since the House budgets coming from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI-01) have been so wholly unacceptable to the Democratic Senate (as a Democratic Senate's budget would presumably be likewise unacceptable in the Republican House) that no one anticipates being able to reach a passable compromise. Anyway, today the Senate has agreed to allow the Republicans to bring their wackiest budget ideas to the floor (well, really, make motions to proceed to them) so that everyone can see the Senate still not adopt them. Four of the wacky ideas are the Republicans' own, and one is Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III's (R-AL) interpretive dance exposition, based on what he claims is President Obama's budget. This freak show goes forward, despite the fact that last August's deal, embodied in the Budget Control Act, already set binding spending caps for the FY2013 budget. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his Republican troops are exceedingly proud of themselves over this, believing they've scored an important procedural victory that proves a point critical to their arguments: "I know that our friends on the other side of the aisle said that because of the Budget Control Act we already have a budget, but the parliamentarian does not view that as the case or we wouldn?t be allowed to have these votes that will occur tomorrow," he said. I don't know that the parliamentarian gives a crap one way or the other that they're having these votes, since they're being held pursuant to a unanimous consent agreement. That being the case, the parliamentarian has nothing to say about whether or not it's the Budget Act of 1974 that's "allowing" these votes. The controlling authority is the unanimous consent agreement. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the agreement allows for six hours of debate on the various motions, which is an unusual thing, since the Budget Act of 1974 makes motions to proceed to budget resolutions non-debatable. So if there's going to be a debate, and an extensive one at that, maybe these aren't real budget resolutions after all. But hey, if the parliamentarian says anything about that, I expect Republicans to tell her (yes, her) to take a flying leap.McConnell's argument is that individual Senators wouldn't normally be allowed to propose their own budgets, unless the Senate Budget committee had failed to propose one. But Senators are always allowed to propose whatever they want. It's just that their budget proposals aren't entitled to the special protections outlined in the Budget Act of 1974 unless the committee fails. And what are those special protections? Well, for one thing, the motions to proceed to those budgets are made non-debatable. Yet here they are, debating them. So you be the parliamentarian here. You tell me if you think McConnell's right. Today's floor and committee schedules appear below the fold.
Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday by rss@dailykos.com (Bill in Portland Maine) 16 May 2012 at 8:43am From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE? How to Argue Like a Republican: Sunday Morning Edition Step 1: Accept invitation from the Sunday morning booking assistant. "Why, yes, I would be delighted to come on your program and discuss gay marriage. That's a debate worth having and I have very strong views on the subject." Arrange limo pickup time. Step 2: Arrive at studio for makeup and mic hookup. Explain to your fellow guests in the green room how delighted you are to have been invited to debate an issue as topical as gay marriage. "It's an important discussion worth having, I have very strong views about it, and it's wonderful that we have this opportunity to thoroughly weigh the pros and cons." Step 3: Take your seat on the set (sit on your coat tail so it won?t bunch up and make your shoulders look frumpy). Thank host again for "the opportunity to dive into the weeds, as it were, on such an important topic, with all its subtleties, sensitivities and implications." Make sure flag pin is at the proper angle. Step 4: Smile and nod as the host introduces you. Step 5: When the host asks you a question about gay marriage, respond with confidence, knowing that your preparation for this important debate on gay marriage will sway viewers by the millions, thanks to your superior oratorical skills and mastery of facts, logic, historical perspective and persuasion: Step 6: Remove mic and makeup. Check messages during limo ride back home. Step 7: Brunch! Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Are you in touch with your inner voter? by rss@dailykos.com (DemFromCT) 16 May 2012 at 7:40am Visual source: Newseum NY Times editorial: It clearly does not bother Speaker John Boehner that he pushed the United States to the brink of default last year. It does not matter that the deep spending cuts in the resolution he demanded to end that crisis will hurt economic growth. It does not even matter that the House he leads is determined now to break that agreement with even deeper cuts in vital programs. Eugene Robinson: Republicans say they?re eager for the presidential campaign to turn away from ?distractions? and focus instead on the economy. Someone should warn them that if they?re not careful, they might get their wish. Charlie Cook: Jan van Lohuizen worked for two of the three pioneers, Lance Tarrance and Bob Teeter, in Republican polling (the other was Dick Wirthlin). In 1986, van Lohuizen served as polling director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He has long been Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell?s pollster. He was also the principal pollster for George W. Bush?s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns and was one of the key pollsters involved in Mitt Romney?s 2008 campaign. Only the most wired-in political operatives and reporters know him. That is not by accident. Van Lohuizen has always worked to keep a low profile. He doesn?t have a self-promotional bone in his body and thus is far more given to understatement than to exaggeration.That?s why his May 11 memo to party officials is all the more remarkable. Van Lohuizen starts off by reviewing the state and direction of polling on same-sex marriage. He points out that support grew at about 1 percentage point a year up to 2009 but has ?accelerated? to a 5-percentage-point growth rate since 2010, pointing to the late-February/early-March NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that shows supporters outnumbering opponents by 49 percent to 40 percent. (A USA Today/Gallup poll found 50 percent saying same-sex marriages should be valid and 48 percent saying they should not). Van Lohuizen notes that support for gay marriage has increased across the board, although obviously Democrats are more supportive than Republicans. While younger voters are more supportive than older ones, he points out that ?all age groups are rethinking their positions.? Van Lohuizen emphasized: ?This is not about a generational shift in attitudes; this is about people changing their thinking as they recognize their friends and family members who are gay or lesbian.? Ross Douthat: It?s possible to imagine a gifted political figure emerging to fuse elements from the Tea Party and O.W.S. critiques into a plausible third party challenge to politics as usual. But such a candidate would look nothing like Michael Bloomberg or any other high-minded Davos/Brookings type of technocrat. Instead, he or she would be more disreputable, more eccentric, and probably more demagogic as well. Such a candidacy (Pat Buchanan meets Ralph Nader) wouldn?t have to actually govern the country; instead, its purpose would be to jolt the two parties out of their usual habits and arguments and to persuade one or both of them to adopt some of its ideas.These are not the sort of qualities and goals that the founders of Americans Elect envisioned for their project. But that?s precisely why they failed ? because they didn?t recognize, or didn?t want to recognize, what it takes for a third party to actually sting like a bee. More wasted column space on an organization no one (except the pundits) has heard of, and no one (except the pundits) gives a rat's ass about.More claptrap from Dana Milbank: Faced with this twin disappointment ? desirable candidates being uninterested and interested candidates being undesirable ? Americans Elect has announced that it is abandoning its online nominating process because no candidate had reached its minimum threshold. This is profoundly depressing, and not just because it dashes the Domagala plan to admit Cuba to the union. It?s discouraging because it shows politics may be too broken to fix. Actually, all it shows is that the media is too broken to fix, with some major exceptions. Faced with the truth that this is a Republican problem, Milbank retreats into third party fantasy.Maureen Dowd: After the economy nearly atomized in a cloud of cupidity, Dimon became known as America?s least-hated banker. But now the blunt 56-year-old Queens native who snowed Democrats in Washington with all his talk about not lumping in ?good banks? with ?bad banks? has fallen off his pedestal.If Jamie the Great and his ?good bank? can make such a gigantic blunder, sending déjà vu shivers down America?s back, what hope is there for lesser bankers? As Noam Scheiber writes in The New Republic, ?we now have ironclad proof ? as if we really needed it ? that everyone is capable of disastrous stupidity.? Mark Bittman: A few weeks ago, in ?The Ethicist,? Ariel Kaminer asked readers of this paper?s Magazine to explain why it?s ethical to eat meat. The contest generated around 3,000 submissions, and as a judge I read about 30 of them. (Here are the responses from the winner and the finalists.)A fascinating discussion. But you need not have a philosophy about meat-eating to understand that we ? Americans, that is ? need to do less of it. In fact, only if meat were produced at no or little expense to the environment, public health or animal welfare (as, arguably, some of it is), would our decisions about whether to raise and kill animals for food come down to ethics.
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