Dayen, In Support of Dissent

I don’t have the time to blog as much as I’d like to and have, as any regular reader is probably aware, tended to focus on highlighting good commentary and analysis that I am reading and think others would enjoy too. It’s not the most exciting form of blogging, but it’s what I have the capacity to do and after nearly six years of blogging, I know I’m happier when I’m able to take a few minutes out to write something at least five days a week.

With that prologue, I have to highly recommend David Dayen’s article in Democracy Journal, “Advise and Dissent.” The piece pushes back on the somewhat prevalent notion that progressive dissatisfaction – on blogs, in the media – is hurting the ability of Democrats to enact a liberal agenda. Dayen goes through numerous historic examples of how pressure from the left helped FDR, JFK and LBJ achieve better outcomes. He writes, “Division is not only healthy–it helps us avoid especially negative outcomes.”

Much of Dayen’s piece is in response to an article by Michael Tomasky, wherein Tomasky calls for an end to vocal progressive despair. Dayen concludes:

Ultimately, progressive “despair” has more utility than Tomasky allows. It represents more than the smug carping of dilettantes who would rather take down a presidency so they can prove the correctness of their own nihilism. There’s some of that, of course. But progressive critics of the President are working to figure out the choke points in our busted democracy, and either leverage or fix them to achieve goals in which they truly believe. They also mean to present an argument for a grander progressive vision that can endure over time, through the next president and the one after that. They have yet to succeed, but they have no choice but to try.

Vocal dissatisfaction may be uncomfortable for those who want the base to just go along with whatever agenda Washington Democrats put forth. But it’s not about them and their agenda – it’s about broad principles for change, for making our society stronger by caring for the weakest amongst us and using the power of collaboration and of government to make life in America better than it was yesterday. In an ideal world, the policies and tactics pursued by Democrats in Washington would mesh nicely onto the goals of movement progressives. But that’s not the world we live in and as a result, there will inevitably and likely always be dissatisfaction from movement progressives with the things Democrats say and do. But as Dayen points out, the existence of progressive discontent does not mean much for the fate of the work of elected Democrats as compared to 9.5% unemployment and millions without health care. As a result, I really don’t have sympathy for people who complain about what bloggers are saying about elected officials or the policies they put forth. I’d rather see leaders focus on how they make government work for the American people and find ways to fix the things that don’t work in our economy, our society and our government

Life on Wall Street is Hard

From today’s New York Times:

Being partner at Goldman is the pinnacle of Wall Street; if you make it, you are considered set for life,” said Michael Driscoll, a visiting professor at Adelphi University and a senior managing director at Bear Stearns before that firm collapsed in 2008. “To have it taken away would just be devastating to an individual. There is just no other word for it.”

The financial blow can be substantial as well. Executives stripped of partnership would retain their base salary, roughly $200,000, but their bonuses could be diminished, potentially costing them millions of dollars in a good year.

Life on Wall Street is really hard, especially with the occasional humiliation of not getting a multi-million dollar bonus or a demotion for not doing your job well.

Of course, in contrast, here’s what a hard life of work looks like for a whole lot more Americans than the 60-odd Goldman Sachs tycoons who are de-partnered every year. It comes from today’s New York Times as well and appears under the painfully obvious headline of “Retiring Later Is Hard Road for Laborers“:

At the Cooper Tire plant in Findlay, Ohio, Jack Hartley, who is 58, works a 12-hour shift assembling tires: pulling piles of rubber and lining over a drum, cutting the material with a hot knife, lifting the half-finished tire, which weighs 10 to 20 pounds, and throwing it onto a rack.

Mr. Hartley performs these steps nearly 30 times an hour, or 300 times in a shift. “The pain started about the time I was 50,” he said. “Dessert with lunch is ibuprofen. Your knees start going bad, your lower back, your elbows, your shoulders.”

He said he does not think he can last until age 66, when he will be eligible for full Social Security retirement benefits. At 62 or 65, he said, “that’s it.”

I’m sure Mr. Hartley feels deeply the pain of Goldman Sachs partners who lose their million dollar bonus and are quietly asked to move out of their office overlooking the Hudson River.

Extremism & The Media

Rick Perlstein has a post up on the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog in a discussion, framed by the Times, of how the internet has played a role to rising extremism, as seen with the Koran burning pastor in Florida. Naturally Perlstein flips this flawed premise on its head from the start.

The problem is not the Web. Anti-JFK rallies “revealing” to every school child in Orange County, California that Communists planned to colonize the United States by the year 1970 drew bigger crowds than Tea Parties today, with nary a blogger among them.

The problem is that elite media gatekeepers have abandoned their moral mandate to stigmatize uncivil discourse. Instead, too many outlets reward it. In fact, it is an ironic token of the ideological confusions of our age that they do so in the service of upholding what they understand to be a cornerstone of civility: the notion that every public question must be framed in terms of two equal and opposite positions, the “liberal” one and the “conservative” one, each to be afforded equal dignity, respect — and (the more crucial currency) equal space. This has made the most mainstream of media outlets comically easy marks for those actively working to push public discourse to extremes.

Don’t blame the minister and his bait-and-switch bonfire either. Once upon a time anticommunist book burnings and threats of book burnings were not unheard of. The difference is that Associated Press reporters did not feel obliged to show up. That shift in news values, not the rise of the Internet, is the most profound way that times have changed.

When the press cares more about selling conflict than telling stories that actually matter, the appeal of extremism is evident. But it’s also flat out bad for our country to give attention to any gasbag who tempts us with base hatred. As we just saw, there’s a lot of ignorance that is driven by hate from demagogues like Glenn Beck on TV and radio. This isn’t about the internet, as Perlstein says, it’s about the media making the people who hate other Americans more important than the people who are trying to solve problems in all three branches of government. Burning a book is more appealing to the media than a hearing on prison reforms or building telecommunications infrastructure in rural America.

This Is A Problem

This paragraph, in the New York Times article on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against former CIA prisoners who were tortured in overseas prisons after their extraordinary rendition, is the sign of a very large problem:

The sharply divided ruling was a major victory for the Obama administration’s efforts to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy powers. It strengthens the White House’s hand as it has pushed an array of assertive counterterrorism policies, while raising an opportunity for the Supreme Court to rule for the first time in decades on the scope of the president’s power to restrict litigation that could reveal state secrets.

For the life of me, I cannot remember President Obama campaigning for office on “a sweeping view of executive secrecy powers.” And it’s not just this.

Among other policies, the Obama national security team has also authorized the C.I.A. to try to kill a United States citizen suspected of terrorism ties, blocked efforts by detainees in Afghanistan to bring habeas corpus lawsuits challenging the basis for their imprisonment without trial, and continued the C.I.A.’s so-called extraordinary rendition program of prisoner transfers — though the administration has forbidden torture and says it seeks assurances from other countries that detainees will not be mistreated.

Again, even without checking the cached versions of BarackObama.com, I’m quite certain these were not core planks in the Obama campaign’s case to the American public about what an Obama administration would do regarding civil liberties, the rule of law, and restoring the Constitution following Bush/Cheney administration abuses.

Of course, looking beyond his candidacy for office, we were told by President Obama in February 2009 that:

Living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger. And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.

I suppose it is technically true to say that “America does not torture” as long as any people who have been tortured or subjected to rendition are denied their day in court and the chance to present evidence that these things happened. Of course, putting our hands over our ears and shouting “La la la la la la” whenever someone tries to have legal remedies for torture doesn’t exactly constitute any lived value I learned about in civics class or Sunday school.

Glenn Greenwald makes an observation that I think captures the gravity of what is actually happening now under President Obama, following what happened under President Bush:

The history of America’s torture regime will record not only the criminality and shamefulness of the torture itself, but also the subsequent — and ongoing — effort by the U.S. Government to prevent its victims from obtaining any justice while protecting the perpetrators from all accountability.

To say that I am disappointed with the administration’s embrace of illegal and immoral legal doctrines put forth by the Bush administration’s sadistic and un-American legal team is an understatement. I’m embarrassed by it. It is indefensible, especially when done by a President who at one time taught constitutional law. A lot was made earlier this week when General Petraeus said that if a rightwing church in Florida burned the Koran, “It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan.” I really hope that the Mighty General speaks up again, because I don’t know how hiding behind state secrets privileges to protect torturers does anything to help our presence in Afghanistan nor the troops the President has sent there.

As a side note, Marcy Wheeler writes:

So basically, the government can kidnap you and send you to be tortured–as they did with Binyam Mohamed–yet even if your contractors acknowledge what they were doing, if the government wants to call their own law-breaking a secret, the most liberal Circuit Court in the country agrees they can. [Emphasis added]

Among other things, this is as solid example as exists today as to why we need more liberal judges confirmed to the federal bench.

About Those Bush Tax Cuts

David Dayen reminds us why it’s important that the rich not get new tax cuts when the Bush-era ones expire at the end of the year:

Mind you, it’s amazing that we have to wait on pins and needles wondering if the Democratic President will support ending tax cuts for the rich – one of the standard promises he made for two years on the campaign trail. Those tax cuts, and I hope Obama mentions this today in Cleveland, did absolutely nothing of value for the economy in their ten-year history, coinciding with wage stagnation and pathetic job growth, the weakest of the postwar era. If they led to anything at all, it’s the mind-boggling inequality and wage stratification, which has turned the middle class into an endangered species and set up an economy that almost can’t succeed. It’s offensive that anyone calling themselves Democrats would think twice about extending these tax breaks, given all the damage they’ve caused.

At a time when neither the administration nor Democratic leaders in Congress seems willing to challenge the Republican premise that only tax cuts can stimulate the economy, it isn’t surprising that this is a big issue that progressives are forced to take a wait and see attitude towards. But it’d be nice if core Democratic principles and campaign promises did survive as core planks of governance.

Populism: It’s September, So It’s OK

President Obama is calling for tax cuts to families earning less than $250,000 a year, but saying he will not support any tax cuts for the rich. This is good. Blue Dogs and New Dems have been calling for tax cuts for the rich (it goes without saying, so have Republicans). It’s something of a surprise to see the President out in front on this; the Conventional Wisdom is that it is to use Republicans blocking working class tax cuts because the richest Americans are left out as an election issue. Funny how populism is finally deemed OK after Democrats’ election chances have been run into the ground due to legislative and messaging choices that have pointedly avoided populism. I’d really like someone to explain to me why populism is acceptable as a backstop to electoral losses, but isn’t acceptable the other twenty-two months of a congressional session.

All that said, this is obviously the right course of action from a policy standpoint and from a politics standpoint. More, please.

Must Read Moore

Michael Moore has a post up on Daily Kos in honor of Labor Day (it went up yesterday, I’m seeing it today). It’s really a must-read. The piece is a response to reports of Steven Rattner’s book & a story wherein White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said “Fuck the UAW” when discussing the auto bailouts. Moore makes the case that Emanuel’s disrespect of one of the America’s great unions – the United Auto Workers – is unacceptable, particularly for the work the labor movement in America has done to create and sustain the middle class.  In turn, Moore calls for Emanuel and the White House to do more to protect American jobs. It’s intemperate, but Moore is right: we need to do more to value working Americans, protect their jobs, and punish the people who destroyed our economy.

The Consequences of Franken

Dave Weigel makes a very solid and under-made observation that the consequences of Al Franken not being seated in January 2009 were dramatic on the ability of Democrats to pass their agenda in a timely and effective fashion.

If Franken had eked out another 1000 votes in Minnesota, or if Republicans simply decided not to keep suing to overturn the recount he won, the Democratic agenda would have been radically different. In January and February, the 59 — not 58 — Democrats in the Senate would have only needed to grab one Republican to pass the stimulus. That probably would have resulted in a larger stimulus bill, with extra billions of dollars (maybe $110 billion) going to tax cuts or spending. Democrats would have had the votes for card check, and gotten that out of the way quickly, while Ted Kennedy was still healthy. Just having that extra vote to play with when Obama’s popularity was peaking might have shaken up the whole schedule, gotten nominees like Dawn Johnson into their jobs, and led to more action in the Senate that pleased the Democratic base and — possibly — had a marginal impact on the economy. As it was, Democrats only had a functioning “supermajority” from September 2009 (Franken in the Senate, Paul Kirk in Ted Kennedy’s seat) to January 2010, and all they did with it was pass health care.

I think Weigel is glossing over the impact Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy’s illnesses had on the composition of the US Senate in 2009. For most of the year, 59 or 60 seats on paper meant 56 or 57 seats in reality. Franken would have made a huge difference had a been seated earlier. But it’s not as if Kennedy and Byrd were being rushed to the Senate floor from their hospital beds with any regularity as it was – it was never quite clear under what conditions men who were struggling to survive another day or week would risk their health to come cast a vote. That is, even with Franken being seated promptly, I don’t know that all the things Weigel says could have gotten done would have gotten done. Yes, I’d expect a bigger stimulus and more confirmations, but I still doubt Employee Free Choice would have happened or healthcare would have happened any quicker.

This actually all gets at a point that I’d like to see more commentators make. While Democrats had a 59 seat Senate in early 2009 and a 60 seat Senate after Specter switched parties at the end of April. But throughout that time Franken was not seated and Kennedy and Byrd were not there to vote with regularity.  The historic moment America was promised from a Democratic super majority in the Senate simply did not exist, at least not as advertised. There is certainly more that could have been done had all of the caucus been in place and healthy. Even in the reality which we experienced where those votes were not present, there could have been more done to pressure conservative Democrats to vote with the caucus – through incentives and threats and public campaigning. This isn’t an apologia of Reid or Obama for more not getting done due to structural hurdles. Rather, I see this as a valuable effort to remind people that part of the disappointment came from being sold what amounted to a bill of goods about what we could reasonably expect the US Senate to accomplish with the Democrats’ historic majority.

I don’t know why Democrats let Republicans obstruct Franken’s seating and have their be any political consequence for it. But it had real consequences, especially as two other Democratic senators were deathly sick. The inability for Democrats to do more substantial legislating in 2009 was directly, though not wholly, attributable to the absence of Franken. It’s going to cost Democrats electorally in November. There should have been a price to pay for it.