Just to show how bad things have gotten at firedoglake, Pam Spaulding had a panic attack over gays and lesbians having a kiss in at Chick-fil-A today. After another instance of firedoglake historical revisionism analogous to Southern Dragon's claim that Marx abandoned his activism and limited himself to the understanding of a capitalist economy after 1850, wherein Spaulding states that the kiss in is incompatible with the past activism of ACT-UP, she is joined by numerous others complaining about the adverse consequences of public displays of gay and lesbian affection. It was left to slobeck to correct the record and bring some rationality to the discussion. Just imagine if Spaulding went to an Occupy event in NYC or Oakland, she'd probably faint and require help from the street medics.

Labels: Activism, Alternative Media, firedoglake, Gay Rights, Liberals

UPDATE 2: The implosion of firedoglake continues. TBogg, known for calling a critic of his support for drone strikes a fucking retard and telling that person to blow me without consequences, is now complaining that the conduct of others is driving people away from the site:

I’d like FDL to have a much bigger readership, but it is hard to do that when the same people keep showing with the same tired arguments, and the attendant goal post moving, which only makes regular readers run away, And, believe me, they do; I get emails from people all the time who say they won’t come back. That frustrates the crap out of me.

This, from someone who, in addition to hijacking the comment thread of a post written by someone else, frequently seizes upon the legitimate transgressions of the Catholic Church and turns them into offensive posts certain to drive even progressive Catholics away. Indeed, the anti-Catholicism of TBogg and, sometimes, Teddy Partridge, is arguably the most self-destructive feature of the site, if measured by Hamsher's aspiration to create a progressive town square.

UPDATE 1: Predictably, it didn't take long. Hamsher banned someone who made a comment in response to her post that she didn't like. There is no longer any evidence of this person associated with the site at all. Furthermore, if you inquire about it, or, even worse, post about it, you risk virtual disappearance. So much for being a town square where a fair discussion of the merits of all sides can take place. A better, more inclusive approach would have allowed members to vent in response to her post today, while firmly insisting upon future compliance with the new policy, but that would have run contrary to her reflexive need to assert control. In this instance, there was also the side benefit of expelling a strong, third party voice, and, probably, many of those who liked him, from the site as well. Hence, expect a manipulation of this standard for posts and comments to the benefit of those supporting the reelection of President Obama.

INITIAL POST: Jane Hamsher has spoken in response to intensified snark guerrilla warfare among the remaining die hards at firedoglake:

Accusing someone of having ulterior, nefarious and unacknowledged motives isn’t discussion. It’s nothing but an attempt to shut down discussion.

The rule is clearly stated. Don’t pee in the pool or you’ll be kicked out of the pool. If someone thinks their special brand of ambrosia-scented pee pee doesn’t count, and they want to give a good squirt and demand a deal in order to comply with the rules, they’re gone.

The no wee-wee policy could not be any more unambiguous. I suggest maybe zipping up and rethinking how you want to approach this conversation, rather than accusing us of an unacknowledged desire to to shut down criticism of the veal pen.

It is what it is. The rule is the rule, and it is iron-clad. If someone can’t accept that, this is the end of the road for them at FDL.

I guess that one of the privileges that comes with funding your own website is that you can say anything, no matter how ridiculous. In this instance, she has developed such an impenetrable sense of denial that she no longer recognizes that she is the one of the people that most frequently violates this rule to manipulate the content of the site, as she did in order to drive me away. Is she really so oblivious that she doesn't understand that the snark wars that have overwhelmed the site are being caused by people emulating her oftentimes arrogant, dismissive and insulting style of communication? Or, maybe, she cynically believes that the remaining members will uncritically accept anything she says. Only she knows. But, for those of us on the outside, it is becoming more and more evident that firedoglake no longer possesses any capability to motivate people to politically organize themselves. And, that, for reasons that I have previously explained, is a great loss. If she had candidly admitted her own shortcomings in relation to the current situation at the site, she might have been able to turn things around. But Hamsher isn't known for acknowledging that she makes mistakes. The reporters, Dayen, Walker and Gosztola, remain well worth reading, though.

Labels: Activism, Alternative Media, American Culture, Democrats, firedoglake

Over the years, I have been preoccupied with how radicalized people can be effectively organized in this atomized society. Hence, my interest in the demise of labor unions and their self-absorbed leadership that considers any sincerely motivated rank and file social activism as a threat. Instead of challenging the neoliberal order, they have aligned themselves with it, policing the boundaries of acceptable, innocuous protest, as they did in Wisconsin, with disasterous results. I find myself experiencing a kind of cognitive dissonance in regard to them, recognizing that they lost their historical agency decades ago, but incapable of identifying an alternative.

Similarly, I have looked to the Internet for places operated by people with a sufficiently independent turn of mind outside the progressive establishment. In 2006 or so, I discovered firedoglake, a progressive site operated by Jane Hamsher and Christy Hardin Smith, although Hardin Smith has not been involved with the site for several years, possibly for health reasons. firedoglake was interesting to me, as was the late Steve Gilliard's The News Blog, because anti-imperialists and leftists openly posted there without being moderated out of existence. Both were a marked contrast to mainstream progressive sites where the participants self-censored themselves in regard to challenging the Democratic Party and got rid of anyone who didn't do so. I posted comments on Gilliard's site frequently, he relished hard nosed political discussion, the more contentious, the better. I still remember going back and forth with him about whether US soldiers who enlisted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be held morally responsible for that decision. Conversely, I declined to post comments at firedoglake because I had an intuitive sense that I wasn't going to get along well with the kool kids who ran the site, epitomized by Hamsher herself, an intuition that was confirmed earlier this year. Even so, I was a lurker because I noticed that posters and commenters had a relatively ideologically free hand. Moreover, it was evident that the people forming the firedoglake community were going through a radicalized political evolution, the kind of evolution that many of us on the left hope, against all odds, to happen in this country. As with any such evolution, it was messy, erratic, abrasive and inconsistent.

But it was an evolution experienced by people who were trying to put into practice the old adage attributed to Lenin: Be as radical as reality. Accordingly, the initial approaches were reformist, with an emphasis upon more and better Democrats and an insistence upon subjecting the malefactors of the Bush administration to the rule of law. While I was indifferent to both approaches, ridiculing the expectation that US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald would accomplish anything of political significance through his investigation of Lewis Libby, I perceived that the people involved in these efforts were going through an important educational process. By 2008, after the bitter progressive disappointment with the 2007 Democratic Congress, a disappointment intensified by the betrayals of some newly elected representatives who had benefitted from firedoglake fundraising efforts, Hamsher had the good sense to stay out of the fight between Obama and Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, even though most of the people who posted and commented on the campaign were Obama supporters. firedoglake participants were not immune to the euphoria associated with Obama's candidacy. Perhaps, she perceived, in light of her experience with the 2007 Congress, that there was much worse to come.

If so, Hamsher was correct. To her credit, she put her personal resources to work through the site, exposing the mendacity of those involved in the Obama administration with the same rigor that she had done in regard to the Bush one. She hired journalists like Jon Walker and David Dayen to cover almost every aspect of Obama's capitulation to capital: the conscious refusal to provide sufficient stimulus for an economic recovery, the bank bailouts, the extension of the Bush tax cuts, the refusal to stem the tidal wave of foreclosures and, of course, health care reform. While she did not personally emphasize it, journalists and posters exposed the horrific violence of Obama's variation on the war on terror. For this, she was reviled by mainstream progressives aligned with the Democrats as they called people who identified with her site firebaggers. She even embraced the effort to defend Bradley Manning when everyone other than gays and lesbians and radical leftists considered him a pariah. Along with leftists like Louis Proyect, Pham Binh and Richard Seymour, she immediately recognized the importance of Occupy, and hired Kevin Gosztola to cover it, and raised money to provide supplies for occupations.

Unfortunately for firedoglake, however, Occupy has proven to be more polarizing than unifying, partially because it emerged just prior to the 2012 campaign. It emboldened those who had rejected the US electoral process to express themselves more aggressively, while those who remained aligned with Obama responded in kind. There have therefore been a number of nasty arguments on the site that have been poorly moderated by people who support Obama and the Democrats, a conflict that exploded, curiously enough, when someone was banned for posting an anti-Zionist article. If the number of comments are any indication, site traffic dropped significantly after this episode. Meanwhile, contemporaneous with this, Hamsher became paranoid about what she perceived as efforts to disrupt the site, as most embarrassingly revealed when she characterized me as either a Department of Homeland Security or K Street operative. Or, at least, she came across as paranoid, but it could have been an instance of crazy like a fox, hiding behind the absurdity of police and lobbyist infiltration to justify running off people like me from the site, people that she understands all too well. If so, she succeeded, as demonstrated by the melancholy tone of those who remain in the firedoglake community. One even comes across references to those who have been driven away, and elliptical statements to the effect that the damage is real and major.

Indeed it is. And while firedoglake is merely one website among many, it was, until recently, a popular one, and, more importantly, one that facilitated the social and political education of many sincere, highly motivated people. I doubt that it has the capacity to do so any longer, and, for those of us who understand that the radical transformation of this country is dependent upon spaces, however imperfect, it is a great loss. In this, it prefigures Occupy and efforts that will invariably emerge in the future. As with the struggles within Occupy Oakland, it is essential that we learn from them in order to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

Labels: Activism, Alternative Media, American Culture, Democrats, firedoglake, Liberals, Neoliberalism, Occupy Wall Street

UPDATE 5: The conflict continues.

UPDATE 4: The firedoglake insurrection prevails. Cavlan has been reinstated, with an explanation that the moderator was confused about the nature of the video in question. But the fact that it took over 36 hours to address the situation when it is common for websites to resolve similar ones within hours, if not minutes, will certainly fuel speculation among firedoglake members. It is entirely possible that there were a significant number of cancelled memberships during this period. Hard liners, like Teddy Partridge and Phoenix Woman, who found themselves abandoned after going to the mat in support of arbitrary, non-responsive authority for site moderators, cannot be pleased. A commonly expressed belief is that Cavlan, who is also running for office as a third party candidate, was banned as part of a firedoglake retrenchment in preparation for support for the Democratic Party in the fall.

UPDATE 3: firedoglake is apparently breaking new ground in dubious Marxist revisionism as well. In subsequent replies to comments in response to his diary about Professor Richard Wolff's lectures about Das Kapital, SouthernDragon states that the content of the The Communist Manifesto should be discounted because Marx wrote it under contract and that, after 1850, he limited himself to understanding the operations of a capitalist economy. Marx, in the words of the Dragon, had made quite clear to his associates that he wasn’t interested in the future. Just another empiricist like Darwin. Of course, when Alan Maki disputed this, he was predictably accused of the heinous crimes of threadjacking, stalking, trolling. Shhh, shhhh, please don't tell SouthernDragon and his allies on the thread about Marx's involvement in the International Workingman's Association.

UPDATE 2: At 10:27 PM PST, there are over 700 comments in response to marsdragon's defense of Michael Cavlan. The prevailing ethos of those defending the behind the scenes censorship at firedoglake has been concisely stated by Teddy Partridge:

Whatever gives anyone this sense they are owed any explanation at all about any operation of this blog? Whence cometh this sense of entitlement?

And after 550+ comments, bleatings, demands, and whines, don’t you get it? No one’s going to explain, ever, when someone’s banned or given a timeout. It’s never going to happen, because the more explanations are provided, the easier it is for those who wish the blog ill to work around the criteria.

Besides, it’s essentially an internal matter between the blog and the commenter (you claim has been) banned: it would be inappropriate for management to comment publicly on its relationship with any commenter or diarist. The matter is between FDL and the commenter, who has allegedly provided an explanation to another commenter via email.

don’t think anyone else is going to explain anything to any of you, nor need they.

Translation: keep purchasing firedoglake memberships and just shut the fuck up while my diaries and Phoenix Woman's diaries get front page exposure on the website day after day. Why anyone would contribute a nickel to firedoglake to support narcissists like this is beyond me.

UPDATE 1: Actually, Anthony Noel is acquitting himself quite well in the ongoing debate over the banning of Cavlan and the video of Kaufman at firedoglake.

INITIAL POST: firedoglake bans Michael Cavlan after he posted an anti-Zionist video deemed offensive. David Seaton subsequently reposted it, a video of a speech by Sir Gerald Kaufman in the House of Commons. marsdragon will probably be shown the door shortly because of his aggressive defense of Cavlan and insistence for an explanation for the moderator's actions. One of the most humorous responses to this episode comes from Anthony Noel, who states that he has e-mailed Jane Hamsher about the situation and expects to get an explanation because she has responded to him promptly in the past.

Right. Just like Jane responded to my e-mail when I told her that she had falsely described me as a Department of Homeland Security or K Street operative, and provided documentary proof of my past interviews of firedoglake journalists. I will never get that response because she was attacking my character in the most transparently preposterous ways to get rid of me. My best guess is that she wanted to do it because she disliked me for being a leftist advocate for Occupy Oakland as revealed by my profile on the site.

Unlike Cavlan, I voluntarily left firedoglake because I had no interest in participating on a site where the person responsible for it can libel someone without any accountability. In this instance, there have been a number of anti-Zionist posts in recent days on the site, and I suspect that she has decided that a purge is in order. The naivete of FDL members who actually believe that firedoglake is an open forum for progressive political activity is on display in the comments to the posts of Seaton and marsdragon. Please let me know if the links to them go dead.

Labels: Activism, Alternative Media, firedoglake, Palestine, Zionism

UPDATE: wendydavis posted a diary about the #F29 actions at firedoglake at 9:01am, just as I was putting the finishing touches on my post here.

INITIAL POST: First, more on the NYPD surveillance program directed against Muslims:

The Obama administration has pointedly refused to endorse or repudiate the NYPD programs it helps pay for. It remains unclear whether the White House knew how the NYPD was spending the grant money until the AP asked the White House about it last week.

We make very clear that we consider Muslim Americans partners in the effort to combat, you know, radical extremism, [Press Secretary] Carney said Monday. I think we've made that clear again and again. And that continues to be our position.

John Brennan, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, last year called the NYPD's efforts heroic but would not elaborate. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose department also gives grant money to the NYPD and is one of the lead federal agencies helping police build relationships with Muslims, has refused in recent months to discuss the police tactics. Tom Perez, the Justice Department's top civil rights lawyer, has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the NYPD.

In other words, the Obama administration has no problems with it, and will continue to fund it.

Meanwhile, as noted here, there were numerous Occupy actions yesterday directed against banks and corporations associated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization known for its lobbying activities on behalf of such interests. Oddly, I could find no coverage of them at all on firedoglake. I could find no posts in advance of them, nor any posts as they took place. If they were any such posts, they were buried within the site at a hard to find location. firedoglake does great work providing supplies to occupations around the country, but it is rather peculiar that there was a news blackout, whether accidental or deliberate, in regard to these #F29 actions. Stranger still, firedoglake is in the process of a membership drive wherein the site highlights its support for Occupy as a reason to join.

Of course, many of the posts at firedoglake are provided by members, so, perhaps, there were no members with knowledge of the #F29 actions. Even so, you'd think someone who blogs there on a daily basis would have reported on them, and it is perplexing to find a diary on The Magic of "29", and nothing about the #F29 actions. In any event, on Monday, there will be a large protest march to the state capital here in Sacramento as part of a nationwide Occupy Education day of action, with some reports that there will be an attempt to Occupy the Capital and conduct a general assembly inside the building. There are also walkouts taking place today in support of this effort. One hopes that firedoglake will find these actions newsworthy, as Occupy needs all the sympathetic coverage that it can get in the face of corporate media hostility.

As for the Monday protest here in Sacramento, it could result in confrontations with the highway patrol and local law enforcement officers responsible for policing the capital grounds, as they have historically utilized a zero tolerance policy towards any protest activity inside the building. In one notorious episode from the early 1990s, they arrested, and the Sacramento County District Attorney subsequently unsuccessfully prosecuted, about 10 disabled people in wheelchairs for protesting inside the lobby of the governor's office. They will not hesitate to respond violently, unless expressly ordered not to do so.

Labels: Alternative Media, Barack Obama, California, firedoglake, Muslims, NYPD, Racism, Sacramento

At breakfast over the weekend, I told my wife that I had visited a website where someone had called me a Department of Homeland Security agent. I haven't heard that sort of spontaneous, surprised laughter in awhile. I didn't have to elaborate any further about the site, firedoglake, or the person who did it, Jane Hamsher. Interestingly, I have participated in the rough and tumble comment pages of Marxist websites over the years and never encountered anything as persistently snarky and offensive as the accusations Hamsher directed towards me. Indeed, I have to say that, with a few exceptions, I've been treated pretty well. Could it be that some liberals, like Hamsher, have embraced the entertainment value of snark to attract visitors to their websites so much so that they can no longer distinguish understated, respectful commentary from the efforts of trolls?

In any event, I must not be too much of a threat, because I failed to receive any response to my request for assistance in closing my firedoglake account. I thereafter tried to scrub the entirety of Franz's works from the site in an obsessive attempt to disassociate myself from it, but failed, although I have been able to remove Franz's display name and replace it with -0-, which clears his record, at least. Unfortunately, I received a firedoglake solicitation e-mail, in the name of Hamsher herself, about 10 minutes after unsubscribing from an earlier one from Brian Sonenstein, the firedoglake Director on Online Activism. Upon seeing it in my inbox, I had the brief, eerie sensation of being stalked over the Internet, and I can only hope that I got it because of a delay in processing my request.

Labels: Activism, firedoglake

As some of the longtime visitors to this blog know, I am a fan of the films of the 1970s and early 1980s German director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder aspired to show us the world as it is in order to encourage us to create a better one. He was personally inspired by his identification with the character of Franz Biberkopf in Alfred Doblin's 1920s novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz. Biberkopf was a thief, a murderer and a pimp, but he, and those with whom he lived, also represented the experience of the German lumpenproletariat during a period of rapid urbanization and extreme poverty during the Weimar era. Fassbinder said that, upon reading Alexanderplatz as a teenager, he felt as if his personal experience had already been written by Doblin. He eventually directed a TV series based upon the novel in 1980.

Prior to that time, Biberkopf allegorically appears in a number of Fassbinder's films as the character Franz Walsch, usually performed by Fassbinder himself, as in his debut film, Love is Colder than Death, with the last name being an homage to one of Fassbinder's favorite American directors, Raoul Walsh. One of the identifying characteristics of this character is his naivete, which results in him invariably being the fall guy in the classic film noir sense. After being reluctantly persuaded by one of my Occupy guests on KDVS last October, Mary McCurnin, to move beyond being a lurker at firedoglake and become a member, so that I could post comments and, possibly even diary entries, I took the name of Franz Biberkopf. I selected it to identify with the downtrodden who struggle through the perils of life, having forgotten the more specific noirish implications of it. I intended to communicate with others through comments and a stray diary entry here and there about Occupy as firedoglake has been a strong supporter of it.

Unfortunately, my apprehension about becoming a member of firedoglake was confirmed in the most incredibly surreal way. On Monday, Kevin Gosztola, a person who I have interviewed on KDVS as well, posted about his visit to Occupy Buffalo. He briefly addressed how Occupy Buffalo deals the question of admitting the homeless. As Franz Biberkopf, I commented upon it by responding specifically to a comment by Kevin, and, apparently, as you can see if you scroll down the post and peruse the comments, Jane Hamsher, the founder of firedoglake, wasn't too pleased with what I had to say, although I didn't understand the intensity of her displeasure at the time. Yesterday, Gosztola discussed the issue of Occupy Buffalo and the homeless in more depth, and I commented again despite an initial inclination not to do so because I felt an obligation to engage Gosztola's willlingness to continue to address the subject.

Of course, that was a mistake, similar to the kinds of mistake the allegorical Franz makes in Fassbinder's films, assuming the kind hearted good nature of those around him. Here is what transpired as Hamsher proceeded to imply that I am either an employee of the Department of Homeland Security or sympathetic to it:

Franz Biberkopf January 26th, 2012 at 1:44 pm 5
In response to CelestialNavigation @ 3

Yes, the challenge is to avoid considering the homeless as a monolithic group identified by a set of dysfunctional behaviors, which it appears that those involved in Occupy Buffalo does. I do, think, however, that John’s contrast between those who sleep outside as a statement against the government and the homeless who see it just personally advantageous is a bit reductionist. No one, including the homeless, should personally exploit the movement, but there has to be a point of contact that enables those in the movement to persuade others to embrace it and take responsibility for it as well, as best they can. Otherwise, you run the risk of that old left sectarian thing where you can’t even walk through the door unless you possess a completely realized political consciousness congruent with the movement. Think about this in terms of activism outside of Occupy. You know someone who has some personal problems, but is willing to hand out flyers or make some phone calls a few hours a week, and has the capability to do these limited tasks. Do you say, no thanks, or work with them as they are? Of course, there are some people with such difficulties that an occupation lacks the resources to deal with them and offer them the opportunity to participate, and they must regrettably be excluded. The sad reality is, as you observe, that the victims of this social order respond to that victimization in self-destructive ways, and this presents unique problems for any social movement that seeks to address it.

Jane Hamsher January 26th, 2012 at 1:54 pm 7
In response to Franz Biberkopf @ 5

I think it’s so great you’re out there putting yourself on the line every night like the people in Occupy Buffalo and show up here to give us the benefit of what you have learned from dealing with these same problems directly, and not some failed middle-aged blow-hard armchair activist who shows up here demanding that others expose themselves to danger for your philosophical beliefs.

What occupation do you live in that allows so much access to electrical power during the day? And what has your General Assembly done to deal with your homeless issues?

I know that the #1 way that government operatives undermine the occupations is to send people out to infiltrate them and demand that they take on more problems than they can handle by working their liberal guilt and castigating them for being insufficiently compassionate when they take steps to protect themselves — usually from the same compassionate agencies that are pouring violent, mentally ill and drug addicted homeless people into the camps and feeding them a steady diet of drugs and alcohol to exacerbate their problems.

What occupation did you say you were with again?

Jane Hamsher January 26th, 2012 at 2:04 pm 8
Hey you two have a real consistent tag-team going, Franz and Celestial. It’s great that both of you always show up to engage in a back-and-fort every time the subject of the homeless at occupations comes up, to reinforce just how cruel, selfish, short-sighted and insufficiently liberal the people who are out there in the occupation camps are when they take steps to protect themselves from the tactics of professional operatives who are exploiting the homeless. Which you both mis-characterize in the same (equally uncharitable) way.

Occupy Buffalo has become a rich target for government operatives because they have adopted tactics that keep infiltrators from working their game plan there as successfully as they have other places.

Do you work for Homeland Security, or just engage in their their tactics out of personal belief?

Franz Biberkopf January 26th, 2012 at 2:31 pm 9
I really don’t understand your hostility, because I’m not even sure that we disagree about very much. And, to malign me as a Homeland Security operative . . . well, I’m speechless and that doesn’t happen very often. After I interviewed her last October about Occupy Sacramento, Mary McCurnin suggested that I sign up to post comments here after I told her that I had lurked here for years. Not because I’m Homeland Security, mind you, but because I actually appreciate what you and the other people here have done. Anyway, that was apparently a mistake. I even made a small contribution to the site the other day and a larger one to the Occupy Supply fund. I’m no enemy or agent provocateur.

Needless to say, I wouldn't know where to begin to deconstruct Hamsher's comments, except to note the obvious, as I did, that they were indicative of an intensity of hostility that was incomprehensible. If you think that was the end of it, guess again, as Hamsher thereafter proceeded to abandon her claim that I am aligned with or sympathetic to DHS and substitute another one to the effect that I am part of a K Street, corporate lobby effort to disrupt Occupy Buffalo and firedoglake:

Jane Hamsher January 26th, 2012 at 11:39 pm 45
In response to Franz Biberkopf @ 9

I really don’t understand your hostility, because I’m not even sure that we disagree about very much.

That’s the exact thing they train the DLC guys to say to us when they debate us. It’s a canned response: “Try to sound reasonable and emphasize your similarities; characterize them as hysterical, out of control, extreme and angry for not acknowledging how alike you are.” Standard tactic for appropriating populist credibility on behalf of an elitist agenda.

It’s also the second time you’ve used that exact phrase. Perhaps it’s your first time at the rodeo?

FDL has been vigilant about keeping the place free of obvious political and corporate operatives (and their contractors) by booting people who show up and exhibit the warning signs. Where other sites have become overrun with propaganda-pushing trolls who tag-team messaging using virtual counterinsurgency tactics (“let the enemy know you care about them and you’re on their side”), FDL has adopted a zero tolerance policy when the warning lights go off.

You Mr. Franz are flashing bright fuschia, and I frankly don’t care if you’re working for STRATFOR or NMS or Palantir or Berico or it’s just a happy coincidence that you follow their script. You’re here for the second time to curl your lip and disrespect Occupy Buffalo for adopting tactics that protect them from such infiltration, and only dialed it back when you realized you were on thin ice.

This is your second warning. If you would like us to agree on something, I suggest the definition of zero tolerance.

Franz Biberkopf January 27th, 2012 at 1:31 am 46
In response to Jane Hamsher @ 45

This is so totally off base that it’s comical. But if you want to look into it, here’s my background. My name is Richard Estes, and I live in Sacramento, California. I have hosted a public affairs program on KDVS 90.3 FM in Davis since 1998, and interviewed a lot of people associated with progressive, liberal and left issues over the years. All on my own time, as KDVS is a volunteer, student and community run radio station. From firedoglake, I have interviewed Jon Walker and Mike Ross, and, more recently, Kevin Gosztola and Mary McCurnin in relation to Occupy, as well as occupiers and ustreamers from Occupy Sacramento, Occupy Oakland and Occupy SF. You can listen to me over the Net at http://www.kdvs.org at 5pm tomorrow when I interview a couple of people from Occupy SF as well as Jorge Mariscal of Project YANO, a counter-recruitment effort among people of color in San Diego. I have also participated in Occupy events whenever possible (you can go look up my post at the Occupy Oakland port shutdown if you are so inclined). If you take the time to check out my profile, you will see that I have a blog, http://www.amleft.blogspot.com

You might not agree with what I say there, but that’s not the point, I just mention it as yet another indication that I’m not a corporate shill. I just write what I really believe, and encourage the few people that visit to engage with it. I have also contributed to Occupy Supply as I said (out of my own pocket, no less), you can check with Brian on that, and even donated to firedoglake itself. Sometimes, you can just take what people say at face value, as if they really mean it, and not incorporate it into some sort of conspiracy theory. My e-mail address can also be found at my profile, and you can confirm what I say by using it if, again, you are so inclined. Anyway, here it is: restes1960@yahoo.com

On my end, I will give some thought about how I ended up sounding like a K Street corporate lobby firm. That’s definitely not my intention.

Poor Franz, always the fall guy. Circulating in shark-like waters where the Department of Homeland Security and K Street lobbyists are conspiring to destroy Occupy and firedoglake, Franz takes the fall for their crimes instead of the leftist ones that he committed. So far, I haven't heard anything more about it, and have sent an instruction to firedoglake for assistance in closing my member account.

Labels: Activism, firedoglake, Occupy Wall Street

A few weeks ago, Arianna Huffington, and other investors associated with her, sold The Huffington Post to AOL. Besides receiving millions of dollars, she was appointed to some position within AOL related to news and opinion content. As most of you know, Huffington built up the Post by relying upon articles and columns submitted by people for free. In the beginning, the writers were primarily celebrities, as this was the initial cachet of the Post, the opportunity to read the opinions of high profile entertainment figures. But, over time, the Post gravitated towards the work of individuals with some sort of journalistic or political connection to the subjects that they wrote about.

Now, with Huffington pocketing a lot of money partially as a consequence of their efforts, some of these writers, as well as some journalists, have expressed anger that none of the money obtained through the sale to AOL is going to them. We have even been subjected to such nonsense as the notion that some provided their work for free because they considered the Post a political enterprise, part of a movement to challenge the ascendancy of the right in the US. Of course, it's ludicrous, and I don't have the slightest bit of sympathy for them. Huffington made it clear from the inception that the Post was a business enterprise, subsequently obtaining approximately $20 million in outside capital several years ago. She made no secret that she wanted to grow the readership for the purpose of increasing the Post's profitability, and did so by highlighting celebrity gossip on the site. Perhaps, we have an example of a particular kind of paradoxical liberal thinking among these writers whereby they really believed that they could change the world with the assistance of a self-serving Internet entrepreneur like Huffington.

Furthermore, and perhaps more insidiously, Huffington was also clear about the constraints upon content imposed by her business plan from the beginning as well. She solicited Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com to post opinion pieces on the site shortly after the Post was launched, and then quickly dropped him when he, quite predictability, expressed his hostility to Zionism. Conversely, the pro-Israel apologetics of Alan Dershowitz have been an enduring feature. She personally expressed support for Israel on the site when it attacked Lebanon in 2006. Since the election of Obama, the Post has been known, in contradistinction to a site like firedoglake, as a cheerleader for the Obama presidency.

Does Arianna do such things for profit, or does she believe them? We will never know. But the writers should have known what they were getting into. For their own reasons, they decided that they would undermine the efforts of their brethren who have been insistent upon compensation for their work, and submit their writings to the Post for free. In this, Huffington is correct, there was a deal, and the writers thought that they could promote themselves by grabbing onto her coattails. Instead of acting in solidarity with others who were attempting to prevent the Internet from becoming a place where capital expropriated the work of writers for free for its benefit, they played along in the expectation that, through their association with the Post, they were be among the few winners, some of the few writers who could actually earn a living by publishing over the Internet. Or, they were so intoxicated by the opportunity for exposure, that they were grateful just to have their work posted there. Or, maybe both. In any event, they, as the title of this post says, got exactly what they deserved.

Labels: American Culture, firedoglake, Liberals, Mainstream Media, Neoliberalism

UPDATE 1: Over at firedoglake, they are, as they often say about inopportune statements of political figures, walking it back. Today, Jane Hamsher is now saying this:

I don’t care if they find Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map in Jared Loughner’s bedroom. She didn’t cause him to do what he did. What she did do, undeniably and indisputably, was act irresponsibly in the midst of an extremely volatile situation. On the fifth straight day of violence and threats against members of Congress over the health care bill, when everyone from John Boehner on down was calling for the attacks to stop, Palin released her crosshairs map and tried to prove she was not a weenie by telling people to reload, not retreat.

David Dayen has also accommodated himself to the new liberal line as well:

Right now, the public isn’t ready to believe an argument that Jared Loughner was motivated by right-wing rhetoric. Fortunately, nobody has said that, because it’s the wrong claim to make. Nobody has claimed that crosshairs on a map or talk of Second Amendment remedies is specifically to blame (some on the right have blamed heavy metal music and a skull in his backyard, and that’s just as silly). The main claim is that the toxic stew of noxious rhetoric, particularly in Loughner’s home district and home state of Arizona, creates an environment that amps up a lunatic fringe. Loughner couldn’t help but trip over that, and indeed his writings do have a cockeyed resonance to some of the really far-right groups like Posse Comitatus and the Patriot movement. That doesn’t make those practitioners of angry rhetoric culpable, but it sure doesn’t mean what they’re doing helped, either.

Leaving aside the obvious, that liberals were, in fact, trying to induce the public to believe that people like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, as well as amorphous groups like the Tea Party, bore responsibility for the Tucson killings, the new line isn't very compelling. Indeed, it's pretty hard to understand as demonstrated by Hamsher's muddy analysis. Palin didn't cause Loughner to do what he did, but acted irresponsibly. I guess that's what you fall back upon when you are caught out with no evidence. After all, how does one defend one's self against that? If it justifies a political death sentence, as she asserted in regard to Palin yesterday, then there are lot of other politicians and commentators who are going to find themselves sentenced along with her.

More specifically, Hamsher condemns Palin because she exhorted people to reload, not retreat. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it, unless you frequently peruse the comment pages at firedoglake. One wonders whether Hamsher is going to double the number of moderators going forward. Dayen's iteration isn't any more helpful. Let's see, they aren't culpable, but they haven't helped, either. Like millions of others Americans, I guess. Looks more and more like Olbermann, the Witchfinder General of American liberalism, is hanging out there in the wind by himself. Anyway, I should probably not be so hard on Hamsher and Dayen, just look at the bright side, and recognize that firedoglake is trying to extricate itself from this embarrasing episode, and return to what it does best, exposing how the Obama administration continues to make policy decisions in favor of the plutocracy at the expense of the rest of us. If so, not a moment too soon, because they aren't many journalists and websites that do it better with such dogged persistence.

INITIAL POST: All that's left is to forcibly seize Sarah Palin, put her in the helicopter position, place a dunce cap on her head and turn up the klieg lights for a round of self-criticism. Maybe, it can be staged live on an upcoming Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 Representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics - she must be repudiated by the members of her own party, and if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling, and they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.

If the Tea Party leaders who took out of context a Jefferson quote about blood and tyranny and the tree of liberty do not understand - do not understand tonight, now what that really means, and these leaders do not tell their followers to abhor violence and all threat of violence, then those Tea Party leaders must be repudiated by the Republican Party...

If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O'Reilly, who blithely repeated Tiller the Killer until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of bloodlust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers, and by all politicians, and by sponsors, and by the networks that employ them.

Of course, the most obnoxious aspect of Olbermann's statement is the degradation of the Tucson tragedy into yet another media circus, with Olbermann engaging in the television equivalent of a staged food fight with Beck and O'Reilly in order to improve his ratings, although I will concede that there is the happy coincidence that he does, no doubt, believe what he says. Few things are more pleasing than when ones values are congruent with one's economic self-interest.

Naturally, Olbermann doesn't allude to any reports that Loughner was actually influenced by anything that Palin has said or done, because, last time I looked, there aren't any. Indeed, I haven't encountered any reports that Loughner has ever mentioned Sarah Palin in any context, or even knows who she is, despite numerous interviews of friends and classmates, as well as information taken from his Facebook page. You'd assume that he does, given her celebrity, and her frequent appearances in Arizona, but, if so, it hasn't been reported.

And, likewise with the Tea Party and Glenn Beck. Has anyone encountered anything to indicate that Loughner was aware of the mischaracterized Jefferson quote and Beck's obsession with George Tiller? Did Loughner pay any attention to Beck and the Tea Party at all? Apparently, Loughner did describe a woman who read a poem about an abortion in one of his classes as a terrorist for killing the baby, so, maybe, by Olbermann's journalistic standards, that's enough to establish a connection to Beck.

We may have also encountered a curious instance of projection whereby Olbermann has subconsciously attributed his experiences to Loughner, something which may partially explain the hysterical liberal response to Tucson more generally. If liberals like Olbermann paid scrupulous attention to Palin, the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, then, without question, Loughner did as well. Factual confirmation is unnecessary. Such projection results in the erasure of Loughner as a human being with an independent agency, reducing him to a recepticle for liberal fears and anxieties about the far right.

Amazingly, liberals like Olbermann, and other bright, skillful ones like Jane Hamsher, should know better. We are, as they say, in the early innings, and there is much still to be learned about Jared Loughner and why he decided to try to assassinate Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. As I observed yesterday, Timothy McVeigh made reference to the Second Gulf War as one of his justifications for the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. One cannot exclude the possibility that Loughner will make reference to other reasons for his actions, ones that will prove embarassing to liberals, such as, just to throw out a few, the bank bailout, the failure to provide assistance to people facing foreclosure, the war in Afghanistan, or even more obscure possibilities, such as US support for Saudi Arabia. Loughner the person still possesses an unpredictability that Loughner the liberal caricature does not.

Which is why I persist in my stubborn insistence upon factual substantiation for the liberal claims that the atmosphere created by Palin, the Tea Party and Beck was responsible for the Tucson tragedy. There are lots of reporters out there on the story, as well as many federal and state investigators as well, they shouldn't be too hard to find. I appreciate readers of this blog, whatever their political persuasion, that forward such information to me, as I do in any other context. After all, I can't read, watch and listen to everything. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the brazen hypocrisy of Olbermann's statement that Beck and Bill O'Reilly should apologize for having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution.

Any list of such people that does not start with President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others, should be promptly disregarded as self-serving. For they, more than any others in this society, have been perpetually insisting that violence is an acceptable solution to the global challenges faced by the US. And, more than that, they have unapologetically asserted that the US may kill people indiscriminately in order to achieve their aspirations for global domination. While I find people like Beck and O'Reilly detestable, they are merely the media house servants for those who are truly responsible for having persuaded many Americans that the US must engage the rest of the world through policies of preemptive war, preventive detention and torture.

Hat tip to Jack Crow.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Barack Obama, firedoglake, Liberals, Mainstream Media, Political Violence, Sarah Palin, Tucson Tragedy

firedoglake has been doing an excellent job covering the activities of the Deficit Reduction Commission, aka the Catfood Commission. Partially through their efforts, the intention of a supramajority of commissioners to recommend an increase in the retirement age to receive social security benefits has become commonly known. Congressional representatives have already been discomforted by inquiries about it, thus demonstrating that Nancy Pelosi's strategy to push them through the House sotto vocce is already a failure.

Jane Hamsher is providing an essential service by having people do such important spade work, making firedoglake a excellent website for understanding the ongoing effort to dismantle what remains of the New Deal, even if you don't agree with the overall ideological perspective. Now, even Donna Smith of Reuters is reporting what the Commission wants to do:

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson made clear at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event that the bipartisan panel is eying tax breaks, including the popular mortgage interest deduction, as well as slashing government spending in its effort to recommend ways to cut the estimated $1.4 trillion federal deficit.

It is all going to be very painful, Bowles said.

The 18-member commission has been tasked by Obama to deliver its recommendations in December, well after the November congressional elections in which the deficit and $13 trillion debt have become major issues.

Bowles and Simpson provided some insight into what the commission might suggest.

Bowles, who served as former President Bill Clinton's chief of staff, said most of the effort has to come from spending, a view that puts him at odds with some of his fellow Democrats who are looking to pare back President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to reduce the deficit.

I just want to see the vast majority of it come out of spending, Bowles said.

He said about 75 percent of the deficit reduction effort should come from spending cuts and 25 percent from revenue increases.

The Deficit Reduction Commission is the instrument by which the sub-proletarianization of the US will be accomplished. Reduced social security benefits, the reduction, if not elimination of the home mortgage deduction and substantially less government assistance, this is the future, coming soon to your neighborhood. And, just in case there was any confusion:

(snip)

Bowles also called for capping government spending at 21 percent of the overall economy. Government spending now accounts for 24 percent of the economy and could rise to 27 percent, according to Republican Senator Judd Gregg, who is also a panel member.

(snip)

I would like to see us take a hard look at tax expenditures, Bowles said, adding that they amounted to government spending by a different name. Bowles said he favors lowering corporate and individual income tax rates and putting in place a tax on consumption.

If such measures are proposed and adopted, we will experience an exponential increase in already extreme disparities of wealth within this country. Governmental expenditures and income taxes are generally redistributive, while a tax on consumption is regressive, reducing the amount of taxes that the wealthy pay upon investment income while placing more of the tax burden upon the middle and lower class.

Approval of the sorts of measures suggested by Bowles would enshrine the imperialism of market "reason" so incisively critiqued by lenin earlier today. In the UK, it is manifesting itself in the most extreme form through plans to privatize much of the provision of health care by the National Health Service.

As described by lenin:

One aspect of this specious conception of reason is the encroachment of a set of analytical principles established by marginalist economics into other fields of social science. Though specifically concerned with the workings of markets, it is assumed by their advocates that these could apply universally. And, as Ben Fine and Dimitris Milonakis argue (From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics, Routledge, 2009), the 20th Century saw a growing tendency for various authors, including the writers of such ordure as Freakonomics, to extend them as universally as possible. Freakonomics (and its Super- sequel) discovers a market logic behind a bewildering variety of social phenomena. Gary Becker finds that market logic explains a wide range of phenomena including crime and punishment. For Robert H Frank, economics explains everything, and he encourages his students to find ways to apply market laws to all manner of questions. Everything up to and including romantic relationships can be understood in terms of utility maximization. Thus, the search for a partner can be interpreted as a petty entrepreurial activity in a competitive market, in which - acting on information and incentives - couples form property-based relational contracts as a means for effectively utilizing resources, and the relationship is only sustained for as long as each maximises the utility that the other receives.

Underpinning this approach is three basic analytical principles. The first is individualism. The individual is taken to be the self-sufficient unit of all forms of behaviour, the real basis of all fictitious corporate entities. The second is rational self-interest. The individual behaves in ways that will maximise utility to herself, on the basis of a rational assessment of the information available in the market. Here, utility is purely subjective - whatever is useful to an individual is whatever she thinks is useful, while there is an assumption of an implicit market in all walks of life, even where there are no commodities, no price signals, and no currency. The third principle is exchange. Utility maximisation optimally takes place through the act of exchange, and that exchange can take place between the drug dealer and the addict as much as the lover and the pursued. This kookiness, where it is not merely circular and vulgar, descends into absurdity when the suitability of the theory can only be established through an ad hoc proliferation of conceptual innovations, as when - for example - Becker explains criminal recidivism in terms of a preference for risk. This naturalises and universalises the cut-throat self-advancement of career-minded bourgeois WASPs, distilling it into a set of puerile anthropological axioms. Middle market books such as The Economic Naturalist probably aggrandise the narcissism of the bourgeois, allowing them to read about themselves and their conduct in flattering terms, giving it a metaphysical twist, endowing it with transcendent validity. And small wonder that such people like to hear that everyone else has exactly the same petty, criminal mentality that they do - it is not capital that is self-maximising, it is humanity itself! - and that they have merely been more successful utility-maximisers than the majority of humankind.

There are three critical things to understand about the public statements by commissioners like Bowles and Simpson in relation to lenin's insight: First, and most obviously, the implementation of policies designed to facilitate such a philosophy, as the Commission intends to do, will inflict social hardships upon Americans to a potentially unprecendented degree, perhaps even worse than those experienced during the recessions of the 1870s and 1890s and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Second, and also fairly evident, it will result in a period of violent unrest, again, perhaps worse than any comparable periods in American past. Given the lack of any publicly recognized left alternative, or for that matter, any political alternative, the prospects for horrible incidents like, say, the pogroms in Russia in the 19th Century, are more likely than we want to admit. Perhaps naively, I still hope that we won't descend something akin to the worst excesses of fascism.

Third, and more subtlely, there is, as emphasized by lenin, the effort to impose a vision of all human experience as one limited to the rationality of market transactions. Beyond intensifying the devastation of the global environment, it will further impair the ability to persuade people to act collectively and have a sincere interest in the well being of others. It will also result in harsh emotional dissonances for everyone subjected to it. People find fulfillment in life for many reasons other than personal economic success, and the inabililty to seek to attain such fulfillment will have nasty consequences for those frustrated by it, whether they are conscious of it or not. A fuller understanding of this emergent phenomenon awaits a 21st Century Freud or Jung, but, for now, the peril is that such repressed resentments will erupt violently, reordering society along explicitly authoritarian lines.

Labels: American Empire, Barack Obama, Democrats, firedoglake, Neoliberalism, Second Reagan Revolution, Sub-Proletarianization of America

[Explantory Note: Vote or Die is a periodic, ongoing series of posts that challenges the conventional liberal perspective that the electoral process constitutes a plausible means for people to compel the government to implement policies for their benefit, as first explained here. For anyone interested in previous posts in this series, click on the Vote or Die label at the bottom of this post.]

During the recent congressional debates on the reform of health care and the student loan program, Jane Hamsher of firedoglake exposed the revolving door that high level Democratic advisors go through as they travel back and forth between the government and the private sector. She emphasized two case studies: Rahm Emanuel and Jamie Gorelick. Gorelick was a Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration. Emanuel, as we all know, is the current White House Chief of Staff.

Gorelick left the Clinton White House in 1997 for an appointment to Fannie Mae, a government sponsored enterprise that serves as the leading market maker in the secondary mortgage market, serving under Franklin Raines as Vice Chair. She received over 26 million dollars in bonuses despite serious accounting irregularities during this period. Upon leaving in 2003, she became a lobbyist. According to Hamsher:

Gorelick has benefitted tremendously as lobbying money has flowed to the Democratic side of the aisle. In addition to SLM Corp (Sallie Mae), she also represents the scandal-plagued investment bank Lazard Freres. She’s also lobbied for JP Morgan, BP America, Lucent, the Medicines Company and Google in the past.

Not surprisingly, Gorelick recently profited from her Democratic Party pedigree by lobbying against a student loan program reform that shifts billions of dollars from banking fees to the provision of more loans for students. Another former Clinton administration figure, John Podesta, did so as well. Amazingly, this one actually got through Congress as part of the reconciliation process used to pass the health care reform bill, one of the rare instances in which the Obama administration carried out a progressive policy against the wishes of transnational financial institutions.

Rahm Emanuel worked in the Clinton White House as well, serving as a senior advisor until 1998. He then took a position as an investment banker, earning 16.2 million dollars in bonuses between 1998 and 2002. In 2000 and 2001, he served on the board on Freddie Mac, another government sponsored enterprise that serves a market maker for mortgages, earning $320,000 in bonuses. Financial and accounting irregularities at Freddie Mac, and Gorelick's old employer, Fannie Mae, subsequently played a prominent role in the meltdown in global financial markets in 2007 and 2008, necessitating an enormous bailout, a bailout that is ongoing and without limitation.

As noted by Hamsher, the Chicago Tribune reported that Freddie Mac inflated bonuses to board members like Emanuel by using dubious accounting practices to misrepresent earnings:

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago's Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

Hamsher responded by submitting, along with Grover Norquist, a demand that Attorney General Eric Holder investigate Emanuel's activities as a Freddie Mac board member. Pro-Obama liberals were, quite predictably, more outraged at Hamsher for submitting the complaint along with Norquist than they were about the possibility that Emanuel may have personally benefitted from fraud at Freddie Mac. Jane, G-d bless her, she still believes in the system, and probably Santa and the Easter Bunny, too.

But, for those of us on the left, the experiences of Gorelick, Podesta and Emanuel raise more troubling questions about the plausibility of implementing progressive policies that prioritize people over capital. In my first Vote or Die post, I emphasized the failings of US electoral politics, the extent to which it disenfranchises millions of people, the difficulty of discerning what the candidates really mean and the fact that it is used to legitimize governance by claiming that we all have a voice in the process when, in fact, we don't. Other entries have addressed the power of large corporations and international capital in dictating outcomes and the unwillingness of elected officials to even respond to our inquiries. Most recently, I observed that the recent Supreme Court campaign finance decision intensifies these problems, and even empowers large, undemocratic unions to speak for us, despite the fact that they don't do it very well.

Hamsher's disclosures about Gorelick, Podesta and Emanuel reveal yet another problem: the fact that, even if you elect the President you want, despite all the impediments, the President and his staff are personally motivated to implement policies dictated by capital. Upon leaving office, Obama, like Reagan, Clinton and the Bushes, will receive millions of dollars for speaking appearances. Obama, as the first African American president, will, in all likelihood, demand fees substantially greater than any President who preceded him. But there's a catch. He's not going to get those fees, and the adulation that comes with them, if he seeks to become the next FDR, or even the next TR. The US political system no longer has a place for the progressivism of past presidents.

For aides, the inducments, as shown by Emanuel and Gorelick, are seductive. Does anyone really believe that Emanuel knew anything about investment banking in 1998? Yet, there he was, making 16.2 million dollars in bonuses over 5 years, after participating in an administration that entered into NAFTA, implemented a telecommunications reform that allowed the emergence of a large media oligopoly and took down the wall between commercial banks and investment ones. In January 2009, he returned to the White House with the perspective of the bankers that he worked with so profitably. Meanwhile, Gorelick made even more in bonuses, over 26 million, and parlayed her personal relationships and access for well paying financial clients, asserting their interest over the public interest. And they are just two examples among many. The career path is obvious. As long as you facilitate policies for the benefit of capital, you can get unimaginably rich yourself.

Or, to put it differently, by serving the lords of capital, you can become one, too. Emanuel, it should be noted, started out in politics as part of a consumer rights organization, Illinois Public Action. For us on the left, though, the troubling question is, how can we expect a movement towards Social Democracy in the US, given the obstacles and perverse incentives of the existing political system? And, the answer is, of course, we can't. Certainly, not a very comforting one, but one that is difficult to refute. As long as economic power resides in the hands of a few, political power will as well, regardless of the outward appearance of a participatory system.

Labels: American Empire, Democrats, Elections, firedoglake, Liberals, Neoliberalism, Postmodernism, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Vote or Die

The health care bill vote is supposed to go down later today in the House. My guess is that it will narrowly pass by the slimmest of margins. After all, controversial business friendly proposals like this usually do, no matter how unpopular with the general public. That's American democracy in action, designed from the inception to empower political leaders to make decisions contrary to public sentiment for the benefit of the capital class. But what happens then? Clip 'n save the link to the firedoglake legislative analysis provided by cutting and pasting it to a secure location on your computer, and then go back and check it out every two or three years. Naturally, my ingrained pessimism leads me to believe that Hamsher and Co. are not bearish enough about the consequences, primarily because they, and many others, have not paid enough attention to the deflationary impact it will have on the economy and job growth.

Labels: Democrats, firedoglake, Health Care, Liberals, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America

Last night, around 9pm, my son was watching a DVD before going to sleep for the night. Nearby, my wife was following the debate on the Senate health care bill over the Internet. Meanwhile, I tried to focus my attention upon reading Beijing Coma.

Even so, I couldn't help but overhear snippets of various speakers like Lamar Alexander, Tom Harkin and John McCain. Of course, they went on and on and on, as if the importance of their declarations rivalled those of Zeus. Brevity is not something for which Senators are known, and, from my limited exposure, they did not disappoint the expectations of the typesetters of the Congressional Record.

The most striking feature of the debate, though, was the mendacity on display by representatives of both parties. Alexander, smooth and polished as always, maligned the bill for provisions that, if included in a bill directed towards the desk of a President Bush, Romney or McCain, he would have enthusiastically supported. McCain, apparently embarrassed by this, focused upon Obama's embrace of secrecy in the negotiations that resulted in the final version, while scrupulously avoiding any substantive engagement. And then there was Harkin, the good liberal, striving mightily to put lipstick on a pig, recharacterizing a mandate to buy insurance on terms set by the insurance industry as the fulfillment of our right to health care, with a reassurance that, if it all doesn't work out, we can fix it.

All three were oblivious to the larger implications of the debate and its outcome. The passage of the health care bill in the Senate is one of the five most important congressional events of the last 20 years, with the others being the narrow passage of the resolution authorizing the Gulf War in 1991, the passage of NAFTA in the face of overwhelming public opposition in 1994, the late 2002 passage of the authorization of force resolution paving the way for the invasion of Iraq in early 2003, and, of course, the October 2008 bailout of the global financial sector. Each of these actions reflected a further dimunintion of the institution's ability to respond to public sentiment during its deliberations, with an accompanying increase in public dissatisfaction. Each also, not coincidentally, also reflected the the marriage between neoliberal economic policy at home with military expansionism abroad.

No doubt, Gaius is correct, the purpose of the Senate, as opposed to the House, is precisely this, to ensure that the majority does not infringe upon the perogatives of elites, but it was never supposed to be this blatant. Accordingly, we are now entering uncharted territory, a period that will be marked by intense populist eruptions against politicians and the government more generally. Liberals, seeing over the horizon, are already in disarray, with Jane Hamsher of firedoglake extending an olive branch to those willing to work with her on specific issues of concern, while Kossacks appear horrified at the prospect of people marching upon the iron triangle in DC with pitchforks. In any event, the notion that Democrats, and by extension, existing establishment relationships, can survive by saying that this health care bill is just the beginning of a larger generational enterprise is ludricrous. Instead, the bill is the last straw for a populace enraged by a government that perpetually socializes the needs of the wealthy while privatizing those of everyone else.

Or, to put it more colorfully, the earthquake at the bottom of the Pacific has already happened, it cannot be reversed, and the only questions remaining are where the tsuanami will strike and the severity of the devastation. Liberals are especially alarmed, because, after having rejected several opportunities in the last 20 years to harnass populism, they are now synonymous with the militaristic plutocracy that runs the country, and, indeed, much of the world, despite, paradoxically, having periodically expressed opposition to some aspects of US foreign policy. Much of the liberal discourse that one encounters at places like DailyKos entails distinguishing liberals as better educated, more rational and less prone to superstitution and bigotries than those who do not agree with them. Needless to say, there is little to support this perspective, but it does have the effect of isolating them for much of the American public.

Most importantly, they have willingly distanced themselves from the everyday economic problems of people, as noted by Sam Smith the other day:

Most of all, however, Obama represented a triumph of a generation of liberals dramatically different from their predecessors, most markedly in their general indifference to issues of economic as well as ethnic equality.

This heavily professional liberal class never once - in the manner of their predecessors of the New Deal and Great Society - took the lead in pressing for economic reforms. It wasn't that they opposed them; they just never seemed to occur to them.

They, after all, had risen in status even as much of the rest of the country was slipping. Over a quarter of a century passed and the best the liberal Democrats could come up with was to slash welfare and raise the age for Social Security.

Obama was the epitome of this new generation: well educated, well connected and well toned in rhetoric. But far distant from the concerns of so many.

Most of us out here in the real world recognize this, even as people in DC do not. Hence, the argument that we will only get worse from the Republicans if we do not turn out for the Democrats in future elections, no matter how odious we find the prospect, has no resonance. People feel defensiveless in the face of a neoliberal onslaught in which members of both political parties participate. There is no political comprehension of the scope of the failure of the Obama economic program, a program in which millions remain unemployed, millions continue to have their homes foreclosed and millions, despite this economic distress, now find themselves handed over to the insurance industry through a requirement that they purchase health insurance.

Through Obama, the Democrats have finally succumbed to the neoliberal state just as it is about to be repudiated. They, not the Republicans, are going to get blamed for the ruthless restructuring of the economy that they are allowing transnational finance to impose upon us. Conversely, the Republicans are going to harvest a bushel of populist votes next fall, as they cynically play the game of serving as a vessel for discontent that will allow them to return to power. It worked for Reagan, it worked for the second Bush, and it will work yet again. But this time, will the public mood tolerate an intensification of the policies that precipitated the current crisis? I doubt it.

And, finally, some liberals get it. Hamsher, through an astute reading of the current climate, is consciously seeking to create a liberal, progressive alternative that is independent of the parties, willing to challenge anyone, Republican or Democrat, who continues to insist upon the current orthodoxy. While she will not say it publicly, she recognizes that Obama has made the old progressive blogosphere slogan, More and Better Democrats, laughable. Naturally, the reaction from many hidebound Kossacks was arrogant and insulting. Hamsher understands that not only liberalism, but the legitimacy of the government itself, are in peril, and that it is essential to slip the establishment noose. Otherwise, the right will run wild.

Will it work? That's hard to say. Liberals and Democrats often resort to fearmongering to impose strict conformity with the neoliberal orientation of the party, and, naturally, they are falling back upon it now. As a leftist, not a liberal and definitely not a Democrat, I read such dystopian alarms with care. People, even those within the tea party scene, cannot be reduced to a simple right, left or center program. Instead, it is critical, as Chomsky recently said, that the left begin to directly engage people who are experiecing severe economic distress so that they can actually improve their lives. An alternative discourse is urgently needed to counter the illusory one provided by the right.

I guess that you could say that I am suggesting a popular front program centered around class conscious economic policies and demilitarization as a means of alleviating the distress of millions of Americans, and, ultimately, billions around the world. No doubt, you consider that strange coming from someone who purports to be anarchist influenced, but the immediate necessity is to address the suffering of people and prevent it from becoming worse, much worse. There is no way to do that in the absence of a political movement that emphasizes such a perspective over party identification, while allowing for the involvement of people all across the spectrum who agree with a radical assertion of personal and economic equality.

Personally, I believe that it would be most effective in the form of a non-electoral, direct action protest movement, but that's why you have a popular front, so that liberals, Marxist-Leninists and anarchists can act in ways that they consider most appropriate. I also believe that such a movement, should it succeed, would eventually result in a dramatic transformation of the US, if not its disintegration, much as what in relation to the USSR, given the intensity of the conflict required to dismante the military-industrial complex and redirect resources towards the populace. It is, as Lou Reed sang many, many years ago, the beginning of our new age.

Labels: Activism, Barack Obama, Democrats, firedoglake, Global Recession, Health Care, Liberals, Neoliberalism, Republicans, Sub-Proletarianization of America

A week or so ago, catherine posted a comment to the effect that visiting this site made her feel like turning on the gas. I was tempted to construe the remark as backhanded Goth praise, but the context suggested otherwise.

During the presidential campaign, I encountered this more often, exhortations from local political activists that I was too pessimistic, too dismissive of the prospects for social change as a result of Obama's victory. Strangely, they don't say this to me much anymore.

But catherine points towards some fair questions. Am I just incorrigibly nihilistic or just a situational one? And, if the latter, what would induce to become more optimistic?

Acknowledging that reliance upon my self-analysis is challenging proposition, this is my response. I would consider myself a situational nihilist because of my perception of prevailing social conditions. Unlike partisan political activists, and many liberals, I don't believe that one can rely upon individuals to transform our lives. I consider this to be a form of personality cult politics, and one that invariably results in disappointment.

Accordingly, if you want to evaluate the prospects for a more humane form of capitalism, as given expression in the effort to implement health care reform, or, alternatively, the creation of a more compassionate collective world that rejects the deification of the market, you need to subjectively consider currents conditions.

For me, it is difficult to come to a positive conclusion. Radical movements, with the exception of those associated with environmentalism, are defunct in the US at this time, in marked contrast to other periods of US history, such as the 1820s and 1830s, as well as the 1880s all the way through to the end of the New Deal in 1947. Starting with Haymarket in 1886, there was a continuous, irrepressible radical effort to seize control of the US economy from capitalists and turn it over to the workers. Liberals, progressives and union organizers swam in the slipstream and pushed through numerous reforms, the eight hour day (originally, a proposal put forward by anarchists), better pay, Social Security and provisions related to workplace safety, among many.

One can truly say that they saved capitalism in this country because the Darwinian economic system that accompanied industrialization was unsustainable. But, things have changed for the worse. In the absence of the radicals, liberals, progressive and labor unions find themselves on the defensive, and, in the case of labor unions, fighting for their very survival. More than that, they find themselves incapable of crystallizing an alternative to the neoliberal order that has become more and more entrenched over the last 40 years. A combination of their success and the demoralization of the left brought about by Stalinism are probably responsible for creating the opportunity that neoliberals seized.

As a result, they now possess little ability to influence the political agenda. Examples are common. Despite a recognition that the US economy was about to enter a severe recession, they were incapable of putting forward a program that would have stopped the explosion in home foreclosures and directed federal deficit spending and stimulus funds towards with the greatest need and least responsibility for the spreading financial catastrophe. Instead, the bailout went forward, and, to this day, US economic policy remains one of buttressing the oligopolistic power of banks and brokerage houses like Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America. Even a mildly reformist measure like permitting defaulting homeowners to renegotiate their implausble adjustible rate mortgages in bankrupty court failed in the Senate.

Much the same is now happening with health care reform. As with the bailout, a policy initially justified on the ground of assisting the general public is actually being pursued for the purpose of subsidizing health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and health care providers to an extent never before experienced. To their credit, some liberals, like those over at firedoglake, are fighting the good fight, and they should be praised for it, but, unfortunately, the timing is all wrong, just as it was for Flores Magon in Baja California in 1911.

And, of course, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, with no end in sight, with the very real possibilities that they will be expanded into Iran and Pakistan. So, you ask, what would reverse my pessimism into a cautious optimism? I will answer in a future post.

Labels: American Empire, Anarchism, Bailout of Finance Capitalists, firedoglake, Global Recession, Liberals, Neoliberalism

Perhaps, it is a good idea to turn down the temperature after the last post. Every now and then, I think about the debased state of liberalism, as reflected by the liberal abandonment of the progressive features of the social welfare state, the embrace of the so-called war on terror and continued support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Liberalism, as I have said here before, is now nothing more than a marketing strategy, a message for persuading voters to put its proponents in positions of power.

But there are exceptions. Jane Hamsher and the gang at firedoglake don't just put out a liberal line on issues like the wars in the Middle East and health care reform, they urge their allies to lobby and protest in support of those issues. Now, mind you, as a leftist, I have some significant disagreements with the people who post at firedoglake. After all, I'm a leftist, and they are liberals. However, I respect the fact that they are actively challenging the Democratic Party, as represented in the White House and Congress, to adopt their perspective. They don't play the game of talking liberal and then letting elected Democrats vote moderate to conservative. For example, they call out people who try to create the appearance of supporting progressive health care reform, while facilitating the opposite.

As you might have guessed, the people at firedoglake have selected health care reform as the make or break issue for the Obama presidency. They have organized a focused effort to pressure Democrats in the House to demand a strong public option as an essential component of any health care proposal that goes to the President. Now, they are encouraging people to attend town hall meetings this month to counteract the presence of right wing protesters. This is a critical issue, because a strong public option, one that gives people the opportunity to select a government operated plan instead of ones provided by the insurance industry, is necessary to pressure insurers and health care providers to keep costs down. Even opponents of the public option acknowledge it. Indeed, they believe that the government option would be so efficient as to result in the de facto creation of a single payer system.

Unfortunately, it's not going to happen, because the President doesn't want it to happen. Nor does his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. The consequences of this failure, as noted by Hamsher last Monday, are serious:

According to the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, there are 52 million Americans currently without health insurance. We are a country in crisis. If the government cannot respond by delivering a public plan with a President who campaigned on creating one, a 60 vote Democratic majority in the Senate, a Speaker of the House who has committed to doing so and majority support in both parties among the public, then we do not live in a representative democracy any more. The country is ungovernable.

With the passage of a health care reform proposal that operates primarily at the level of forcing Americans to buy health insurance at rates established by the insurance industry, with funds diverted from Medicare to help subsidize it, we will experience the end of the Obama presidency in regard to any prospect of progressive social change. It is more important to exploit the urgent need for health care reform to provide another subsidization of financial institutions than to address the compelling need itself.

For some reason, I see Obama signing the bill in the Rose Garden right around the time that he orders 20,000 to 45,000 more troops into Afghanistan. While not a liberal myself, an old school liberal victory on health care reform would help a lot of people who need it desperately. And that, it seems, is the problem. The provision of affordable health care would contribute to the liberation of people from the control of finance capital. It would give them a little extra money, a little extra personal independence. It would free them to think and act for themselves with less of the fear associated with economic dependence. It might even create momentum to push the country even farther left across a spectrum of domestic and international issues. Sadly, it's not going to happen.

UPDATE: An excellent summary of the importance of the health care reform struggle. Of course, as is typical with a lot of liberal analysis, the author overpersonalizes the nature of the conflict. But, overall, the bottom line is correct. If congressional Democrats return and promptly abandon the public option, there is nothing preventing them from subsequently abandoning other important consumer protection measures as well, leaving us with nothing more than an unadulterated industry subsidy.

Labels: Bailout of Finance Capitalists, Barack Obama, firedoglake, Health Care, Neoliberalism

From an e-mail that I received earlier this week:

Dear Friends,

Our President is gearing up for a fight against the corporate elites and their Republican allies in Congress. To prevail he's going to need our help. There are two quick and easy things you can do right now to support President Obama.

First, please click on the following link and sign up for our new xxxxxx 4 Obama group on the Organizing for America website: http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/xxxxxx4Obamaatxxxxxx. We will be working with President Obama's grassroots network in the weeks and months ahead to mobilize local support for the President's progressive agenda.

Second, please watch the short video below from Mitch Stewart, Organizing for America's national director. Then click on the link to sign the Organizing for America Pledge.

As President Obama said on that magical night last August at Mile High Stadium in Denver, "At defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it – because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time."

Now is that time. Please join us in supporting President Obama and his effort to bring real change to America.

In Peace & Solidarity,
xxxxxx x

Apparently, a lot of American liberals are engaging in a willful flight from reality. Obama, like Bush before him, is channeling trillions of dollars into bankrupt financial institutions, and he has expressed the intention of paying for it with reductions in Medicare and Social Security benefits. Meanwhile, he has sent more troops to Afghanistan and intensified the conflict in Pakistan while abandoning his pledge to withdraw US forces from Iraq.

Such actions, and the willingness of liberals to uncritically accept them, raises the question as to whether liberalism has any ideological grounding at all, whether it represents anything more than the substitution of one group in power with another. As the e-mail indicates, the rhetoric associated with this sort of politics reminds one of the partisanship usually associated with fans of professional sports, although, in actual fact, fans of various franchises express more criticism about their performance than most liberals do about the Obama administration. One noteworthy exception to this phenomenon are the lonely liberals at firedoglake, continuing to fight the good fight and reinvigorate liberalism as an ideological alternative to the left and the right. Unfortunately, I see no indication that their effort is gaining any traction at the local level, at least here in the Sacramento Valley.

Labels: Activism, Bailout of Finance Capitalists, Barack Obama, firedoglake, Liberals, Neoliberalism, Sacramento

I've had my disagreements with firedoglake in the past, but site creater and frequent commentator Jane Hamsher has been courageously on the cutting edge of liberal opposition to the rightward drift of the incoming Obama administration since its inception. Here, she calls out Obama on the selection of Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation during his inauguration. She rightly recognizes it for what it is, a cynical effort by Obama to insulate himself against political pressure from the left while using gays and lesbians as a foil to appeal to what they used to call Middle America.

If more liberals possessed Hamsher's candor, liberalism would still retain credibility as an ideological alternative to the bipartisan consensus by which the country is currently governed. She stands in marked contrast to the cynical calculation of the Huffington Post and the worship at the altar of political pragmatism that personifies the Daily Kos community. Does Obama realize that, by selecting Warren, he has stained his inauguration with the bigotry that his election as President was supposed to overcome? Doubtful.

Labels: Barack Obama, Civil Rights, firedoglake, Homophobia, Liberals, Religion