Grrr

Yes, grrr. My second computer disaster in less than a year temporarily crippled my online existence. After much frustration and trying every damn thing I could think of and a few I didn't, I managed to resuscitate the computer, which was a Very Good Thing because no way in hell could I afford the cost of a replacement.

The cost, however, was still considerable in another way: It required a clean reninstall of the OS - which means everything else is gone. All my files, all my programs, everything. Other than a couple of email addresses, nothing was vital; all of that sort of stuff is either safely stored somewhere else or recoverable elsewhere. But what was lost - other than time - includes all the news clips and other background stuff I use for posting. All the .pdf files I could use for reference material. That sort of stuff, while not vital to either this blog or real life, is still a definite loss.

So here I am, in a sense back to square one after an enforced absence, hoping to rebuild an audience way back up to its previous anemic levels.

For a brief time I thought about not coming back at all; I was that frustrated and depressed both by the world at large and my own meaningless corner of it. There never really was a chance of that, I suppose: I still have delusions of grandeur, imagining that I am deserving of reaching the elevated heights of averaging a hundred hits a day and maybe 50 regular readers. To do that, I know I have to be more consistent about posting, which was a New Year's resolution that events of this month have made hard to keep (although I had been doing better) but then again, as it seems to me I said not that long ago, at the end of the day you might as well just carry on because what else is there to do?

So this is me, carrying on.

A sort of footnote to the preceding

In response to the previous post, commenter Graeme said, in part (i.e., this is edited):

When I was young I wanted nothing more than to be an American.

But after Vietnam and Nixon and Iran-Contra and a thousand other examples of a total misunderstanding of what life was all about, I began to doubt.

I have come to believe that America is the most dangerous nation in history and American arrogance will lead to our destruction.

Your common wisdom post is brilliant, heartfelt and utterly futile.

We are fucked.

(You can see the full, unedited, comment here.)

I started to write a response there but it started to get kinda long and it raised a point worth addressing, so I decided to make it a post.

I don't know if I necessarily would call the US "the most dangerous nation in history." As L. P. Hartley famously wrote (and historians have echoed), "The past is a foreign country" and as a friend once said to me, "history is a long time." Neither the Romans nor the Mongols, for two examples, were notable for either restraint of ambition or gentleness with enemies. However, if you're thinking in terms of the absolute, as opposed to the relative, destructive power available, the absolute total of the devastation that could be caused, coupled with the likelihood of it being used, then yes, the US is without doubt the most dangerous nation in history.

But that danger arises less because of our arrogance than because of our - and I will have to explain the word immediately after I use it - innocence. By that I mean our national social conviction, i.e., our cultural mythology, that we really are a good, moral, gentle, people who always act with the purest of motives and the highest of ideals and the multitude of examples to the contrary are individual aberrations, the exceptions that prove the rule - in much the same way that the right wing dismisses every reactionary scumball who guns down some leftist or government official as a "lone wacko" whose actions say nothing at all about the right's rhetoric and ideology, with the exception that in the case of our national mythology, it is something in which many many Americans genuinely believe even if they never think of it so directly.

Indeed, I have referred to this mythology of "American innocence" as the most dangerous of our national mythologies (yes, plural; every culture will have several) because it enables us to undertake and pursue the greatest follies, the greatest inanities, the greatest cruelties, the greatest acts of greed, selfishness, bigotry, and imperialism all the while telling ourselves we are doing a good or at least the least bad thing, which makes it more likely you will be prepared to undertake those follies and cruelties. (Parenthetically, I recognize that this sort of extreme self-confidence in your own purity can be considered a form of arrogance but I persist in regarding it as a matter less of consciously looking down on other nations and peoples and more one of being genuinely puzzled as to why they don't think more highly of us than they do.) Yes, it is a delusion, but it is one shared to at least a small degree by most of us as it is part of what defines being "an American."

What all this means is that we may well be fucked, we may well be headed for an ultimate destruction that will take a lot of others down with us, it's just that the reason isn't a national arrogance but the power of some who have learned how to manipulate our national myths for their own selfish short-term benefit. I certainly have said so myself more than once: I have, for example, used some variation of the phrase "We are so screwed" in no less than 35 posts and yes, I counted.

But having said that, then what? Sometimes, especially when the darkness moves across me, the world I see coming is likewise one of gray shadows and chilly drizzle: It's a world of vanishing personal privacy coupled with increasing government secrecy; a world of diminished political freedoms; a world suffering massive environmental degradation driven by global warming, leading to bloody wars as tens, no, scores of millions of environmental refugees spark fights over shares of diminished resources; and here at home, an economic structure resembling the days of Hell's Kitchen and Five Points and Robber Barons with aid programs and worker rights to match. I have more than once said that I am sometimes glad that I will not live to see that world I see coming.

So in light of all that, in light of the apparent, to adopt Graeme's word, utter futility of it all, why am I still here in this lonely corner of the blogosphere? Why do I still write letters, go to meetings, sign petitions, turn out on the streets when the opportunity arises? What, dammit, is the point?

The point, I suppose, is to "not go gentle into that good night" because, as I reflected once before, even when all that's left is the fall, still how you fall, how you fail, matters both for the future and for your own honor.

It is a frequent but rarely noted truth that even the harshest cynics among us quite often actually are, in their hearts, unregenerate romantics whose sharp words are honed on the irrational, inexplicable, unsupportable, but still unshakeable conviction that things not only should be but can be better than they are, a conviction that makes the too-obvious failings that much harder to take, their bitter taste upon entering the mouth generating the bile that comes out of it.

I count myself among those people, those, if you will, romantic cynics (or cynical romantics), those who despair, who predict doom, but who never quite give up hope. A while back I came to the conclusion that the only thing that keeps me going, the only thing that sustains that eternal flicker of hope, is the realization that while I can't guarantee that anything I do will do a damn bit of good, I can't guarantee that anything I do will help, I can guarantee that doing nothing, won't.

So I say "we're fucked, we're screwed, I despair at the present and fear for the future" and I keep saying how it's a dark time - but I do use the word "surviving" and so at some point I shrug and carry on as best as I can. Because, at the end of it all, what else is there to do?

It's common wisdom

Updated I haven't posted anything for a week now, but not for lack of trying. I have worked on this post literally for hours, rewriting it, reconstructing it, re-focusing it, each time finding it did not say what I meant or said what I meant but in such a garbled way as to be unintelligible, or it did not flow or it was too broad or too narrow or too something.

It's thus a good example of why I haven't written much lately: Every time I try I find myself at risk of being consumed by an inchoate rage that corrodes my self-control and leaves me quite literally wanting to scream out loud in frustrated fury. When I write I try, even when I am in full rant mode I try, to maintain a certain control, a certain rationality, a certain coherence, the better, I think, to give the words more power simply by virtue of a certain degree of rigor which that very control suggests.

Now, lord knows there is enough wrong with this country and its heritage - but dammit, there are some good things in that heritage, too. We have done much evil as a nation, but we have also done some good. There are ideals that we fail to live up to, fail on a daily basis, but they at least are there to strive for. There are rights and freedoms, the privileges and immunities of citizenship, that too often have been violated and transgressed, but they have survived and even in some ways - although it can be hard to see it at times - have been expanded over the course of our history.

But every day now, those ideals are under attack, those rights and freedoms are being shrunk and circumscribed, those privileges and immunities are being stripped away, shredded, discarded by people more interested in their personal perks and positions and their private power trips than in what we as a society are supposed to be, what we like to tell ourselves we are as a people and as a nation.

So right now I find that rigor, that control, hard to come by. Right now all I want to do is to screech and wail out a string of the vilest invectives I know, all directed at the foul, sleazy, lying, sub-human, grasping, cruel, utterly despicable, fascistic, goat-fuckers that surround us.

What we are seeing every day is sometimes done consciously and sometimes unconsciously (in the sense of being useful idiots), but still what we are seeing is a conspiracy against every notion of equality under the law. Against every notion of community responsibility. Against every notion of justice. Against every notion of decency and fairness.

What we are seeing, that is, is an unfolding pattern of betrayal of - no, that's not strong enough - we are seeing an unfolding pattern of treason against every decent part of our heritage as Americans.

The most obvious example because it's gotten the most attention, is Wisconsin, where Governor Walkalloveryou's assault on the rights of workers has generated mass opposition. But that's far from the only place such attacks are occurring. Writing in The Nation, Jane McAlevey notes that regressive, anti-worker (my description, not hers) so-called "right to work" laws already exist in 22 states and bills to create them have been filed in 12 more. A law essentially barring unions from being involved in election campaigns already exists in Alabama; bills to do the same have been introduced in four states and union organizers expect there will be a dozen more. Fifteen states are expected to see bills revoking prevailing wage laws.

An even more extreme measure - which, oddly to me, has gotten less attention - is Michigan Governor Rick Snidley's bill for "financial martial law," under which any municipality in the state, in the event of a "fiscal crisis" with a definition so vague that even healthy communities could be found to be in such a "crisis," can be put under the control of an "emergency financial manager" appointed by the governor who could on their own authority cancel contracts (including labor contracts), slash services, fire city employees, and even dismiss elected officials. Such a manager would, in effect, be the lord of the manor.

These drives against labor and against democracy itself are of a piece with the moves, now so common as to almost be a cliché, of cuts in both state and federal taxes on the rich and corporations matched with cuts in services for, and increased taxes on, everyone else, both being justified as economic necessities, the former for "growth," the latter for "reducing deficits." But it's important, indeed I think it's vital, to realize that this is not really about unions per se or about cutting aid to the poor per se. It goes far beyond that. It is, as I said last week, about power. But while that is the why of the attack, what I want to raise here is the what.

That what, the something that is under attack, is sometimes called The Commons. I'm using the term here in a somewhat broader sense than its more usual economic understanding of referring to shared resources; rather, I'm thinking of a philosophical Commons, a social Commons, of the idea of a public sphere wherein all can participate, all have a stake, all have a part - and all have some responsibility. That space of socially shared and mutual duty, of what is or at least by rights should be equally available to all.

It's true that that sense of The Commons has always been under attack from the elites of our society; indeed, that is likely true of the elites of any society, who tend to care neither for the idea of all having a stake nor for the idea of they themselves having responsibilities to others other than those self-imposed ones of noblesse oblige, the true purpose of which is to demonstrate that elite's superiority. But the intensity and range of the attack we are seeing now is nearly if not totally unprecedented here.

The on-going, decades-long, and largely successful campaign to turn "government" and "taxes" into words to be spat out with unrestrained contempt is being broadened into an attack on the very concept of a public, that is, a whole-community, economic sphere. Put another way, what is being rejected is the very idea, the very root idea, of an economic Commons where there exists, at least philosophically, at least hypothetically, a notion that society as a whole and every member therein is required to have some measure of concern to see to it not only that none are left utterly destitute but that none may be bereft of the means to improve their economic condition.

Just consider as a simple example to illustrate the point: How long ago was it that someone dismissing public school teachers as just overpaid part-timers whose workday ends at 2pm and who are just ripping off taxpayers would have been greeted with hoots of derision? But now such deliberately demonizing denunciations are common currency even as teacher tenure is under attack in five states and laws to allow for, in effect, the privatization of public schools have been filed in eleven. That latter fact in particular reveals what is important here, the true underlying objection here, the unspoken desire here: The problem for those making the attacks lies not in the word "school" or the word "teachers" but in the word "public." The problem lies in the fact that it is done through government, that it's nature is that of a whole-community undertaking.

It's hard to underestimate the importance, the potential impact, of this broadened target yet at the same time it's hard to make crystal clear what the change is. This is perhaps the best I can do right now: This goes beyond the idea of "limited" or "small" government, beyond the notion of arguing if government involvement in this or that is a good thing or not, beyond even arguing if government properly should be involved in this or that, to being an attack on the very legitimacy of the idea of government as existing to serve the commonweal, the very legitimacy of the idea of a government "of, by, and for the people," the very legitimacy of the concept of government as an instrument of "We the People." Indeed, on the very concept of "We the People" itself.

It is the farthest reaches of libertarian daydreaming, souped up and mainstreamed by the powerful voices that stand to gain while simultaneously stripped of the comforting classic libertarian fantasy that voluntary private charity will deal with all the have-nots, stripped of it because even that implies some sort of social responsibility on the part of the haves - and it is that concept of responsibility that is being denied.

That idea, that denial of an economic Commons, is marching in lockstep with a denial of a political Commons, with moves being undertaken to restrict participation in the political life to the nation, even to restrictions on the franchise itself, even to calls to alter the 14th Amendment to change the understanding of just who is a citizen. On that latter point, historian Glenn LaFantasie declared in Salon on Sunday that concern over this is misplaced, citing the difficulty of amending the Constitution. While it would be comforting to dismiss the talk of changing or even rescinding the 14th as just empty rhetoric "in the political heat of an election year," as LaFantasie says, it would be unwise: He himself reminds us that Mitch "Fishface" McConnell promised hearings on the matter and opened his piece by saying

I never once contemplated that I would ever hear any American ... suggest that the 14th Amendment should be rescinded.

Which is really the point here: It's not that such dreams will be immediately fulfilled, it's that what not long ago would have been thought proof of madness is now considered to be within the bounds of reasonable discussion. The baseline concept of who is a citizen is coming under fire. That fire may not be - may it never be - withering, but that doesn't change the fact that it's there.

In the case of attacks on the franchise, i.e., voting rights, I'm thinking here not so much of things like voter caging, which are often illegal and always sleazy, but rather on the increasing demands for increasingly specific forms of identification in order to be allowed to register and to vote. Some 27 states now require voters to present ID in order to cast a vote. (I do not regard casting a "provisional" ballot, which often winds up uncounted, as being able to vote.) In eight of those states, a photo ID is required. When the Supreme Court upheld Indiana's photo ID law in April 2008, it did so after oral arguments during which the Justices studiously avoided the 800-pound gorilla which Appeals Court had been forced to acknowledge, that "most people who don't have photo ID are low on the economic ladder" and the law would disproportionately affect the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.

Another group whose ability to vote is betting attacked is college students.

According to research by the Fair Elections Legal Network (FELN) and Campus Progress, in the past six years, seven states have enacted laws that disenfranchise students or make it more difficult for them to vote. This year, 18 additional states are considering similar laws....

In proposing a law to "tighten up the definition of a New Hampshire resident" in January, New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien decried what he claimed were "kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience.”

There is a clear and obvious immediate partisan interest behind these moves, as most of the groups most affected by such changes - the poor, minorities, youth - tend to skew Democratic, as even the Appeals Court openly acknowledged in the Indiana case. However, there is a broader point as well: While most notice of O'Brien's remark has focused on the "voting liberal" part, he also referred to "no life experience." Put another way, he was insisting that college students are just too young, too "inexperienced," to be trusted with the vote. It's not just that they vote "liberal," it's that they're young - and so, well, they just shouldn't vote. That type of voter should be discouraged, even hindered, from voting. More generally, there are certain types of people for who voting rights just aren't, in the eyes of the elite, as important as they are for others.

Writing at the Huffington Post last fall, Glenn Smith got it right. He was talking in partisan terms of attempts to influence elections by deterring certain voters, but he expressed the broader point:

In their narrow views, the right to vote belongs only to the "right" people -- that is, people that look like them, live in gated communities like they do, go to the same churches they do and follow whatever arbitrary and authoritarian rules are demanded of them.

And those people, those types of people, who can't be trusted to serve the will of the elites simply should not be allowed to vote at all. So it doesn't really matter if they are effectively disenfranchised by ID laws, because, the majority of the Appeal Court in the Indiana case found, for them the "benefits" of voting "are elusive." They just aren't important enough for concern.

At this point I have to note something extremely important, so pay close attention. While the attack on our economic Commons and these parts of our political Commons have been more - although by no means exclusively - connected with the right wing and the Republican Party than otherwise, we must always bear in mind the eternal fact that elites are not a matter of left and right but a matter of up and down. And another part of our political Commons is under unprecedented attack from those too many naively viewed as saviors.

To be specific, the Obama administration is, in the words of Mark Benjamin, writing in Time magazine about 10 days ago,

rapidly establishing a record as the most aggressive prosecutor of alleged government leakers in U.S. history. ...

If the Obama Administration were to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, it would be the sixth time the Administration has pressed charges against defendants suspected of leaking classified information. The government has only ever filed similar charges three times over the last 40 years.

This White House, which came into office pledging a new spirit of openness, has instead demonstrated that it is as egregiously obsessive about secrecy as any administration in memory, one that brooks no public disagreements. The O gang has aggressively and repeatedly employed the bogus "state secrets privilege" to shield government and in some cases corporate wrongdoing from prosecution and even just scrutiny. Despite some improvements from its first year, it still has a worse record on FOIA requests than any previous administration except - possibly - that of George Bush The Younger. Even in areas where the Obama administration can claim to be an improvement on openness, it came as the result of outside pressure and often came reluctantly after months or more of resistance and foot-dragging.

To make this clear, this is not to say that overall on "transparency" the Obama White House is worse than previous administrations - although in at least one way, pursuing whistleblowers, it clearly is - but that it is no better, that the prevailing pattern of, the trend toward a gradual increase in, over-classification, closed-door meetings, and "message control" that really means information control, continues.

So even as on the one hand our ability to act as part of the political Commons is being assaulted, on the other our ability to know, to obtain the information we need to act in the Commons, is likewise being restricted.

There is so much more to say on this, so much more to explore, but this is already much too long so I will make myself stop with two final, brief bits. One is to reiterate in a sentence what I have said here: What we are, what we have been, what we at our best can be, can become, as a people is under attack even as we are being stripped of the means to fight back, our economic and political Commons are being enclosed. It is, I confess it seems to me that yes it is, a dark time.

But the other bit is that still, somehow, I don't want to end on quite so baleful a note. Instead, I want to emphasize that while, again, the breadth of the attack on The Commons is perhaps unprecedented, the idea of such an attack is certainly not new - which is more encouraging than it sounds if you just bear in mind that we have made it through before and, I say again, have in some ways improved over the years. So yes, it is still a dark time - but we have seen such times and worse before (the Civil War, the days of child factory labor, the Palmer Raids, the Depression, McCarthyism, just to name those that immediately spring to mind) and we can survive and if we, to put a twist on Dylan Thomas, "rage, rage, against the dying of the light," we may yet find dawn rather than close of day. Don't give up and don't you dare let me make you give up. My woeful words are just not that important.

Updated just to say that if you read the earlier version, you might want to start from the beginning anyway because some things have been added, some paragraphs moved around, so forth and so on.

It ain't over 'til it's over, Part Three

Many both online and off have said that the scummy actions of the Wisconsin legislature and Governor Walkalloveryou have now proven, as if proof was necessary, that this was never about the budget. Rather, it was always about breaking the unions.

But that last part is not quite right or more exactly, it is too narrow: This is not, strictly speaking, about breaking unions. That is merely the current expression, the present focus, of what this is about. Which some have recognized, arguing that the real purpose of attacking unions is to undermine financial support for the Democratic party, an assertion given considerable credence by the fact that Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald told Faux News this:

If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.

But even that is too narrow. That still fits in the realm of tactics. When you cut through the tangle of stratagems, when you hack away the underbrush of claims that often contradict other claims depending on what is useful at the moment, when you chop and saw and dig until you get to the root, you find that this whole fight is not, ultimately, about unions. And it's not, ultimately, about Democrats because in the longer run unions are more dangerous to the real purpose than Democrats are. Rather, this is about what such fights are always about: power. Power and control and domination and the power to continue controlling and dominating.

This is about the on-going, the never-ending, the sometimes-retreating but sometimes-advancing (as now), drive by the elites in society to protect, maintain, and whenever possible expand their control.

It's vital to realize that this is not new. It extends back to and even before the existence of our nation and anything that could be called US society. The names and faces have of course changed over time and even a more exacting (more properly, less vague) conception of what is embraced in the term "elite" has not been a constant; specifically, while wealth has always been a factor, the degree to which "wealthy" and "elite" have been synonymous has varied.

But the idea, the basic idea, the driving idea, the central conviction among some that they are powerful because they are supposed to be powerful, that they are privileged because they are supposed to be privileged, that they truly are better than the lesser sorts such as the rest of us and their dominion over us is theirs by right, even by natural law, has been a constant, a constant whose culture-distorting effect has subsumed the thoughts even of those members of that elite who have thought themselves free of it.

On July 29, 1877, Henry Ward Beecher, the most famous preacher of the latter 1800s and a reformer who endorsed women's suffrage and Darwin's theory of evolution and had been an abolitionist, responded to the just-crushed Great Railroad Strike by attacking the workers as acting contrary to religion, to God's dominion, because they did not know their place: "God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little" and "Man cannot live by bread alone but the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live." A week later he declared that if workers were being forced into poverty, they should just accept it - and then left for a two-month European vacation.

Almost exactly 100 years later, in July 1977, after a blackout in New York City sparked rioting and looting, then-President Jimmy Carter dismissed those who referred to poverty in explaining the outburst: “Life,” he said, “is unfair.” This sentiment, addressed to the poor blacks whose frustration drove them beyond the bounds of restraint, was not applied to the merchants and business people who clamored for - and got - federal relief for their losses.

Words spoken a century apart but expressing the same conviction: In the minds of our elite, it’s only the have-nots, never the haves, who are to quietly acquiesce in the “unfairness” of their condition.

Power and control. That's what it's about. That's what it always about. That's what we - all of us - are educated in, what we - all of us - are steeped in, what we - all of us - are socially trained to believe, its what we as a people are even as we vociferously deny it: a class-oriented society where wealth equals power and power justifies more wealth. That's why it can be said with a straight face that a teacher making 50k a year is an overpaid featherbedder ripping off taxpayers with a part-time job while a Wall Street greedhead making 10 times that much would be shockingly underpaid. That's why Bank of America is still open for business, why a whole gaggle of corporate CEOs are not in prison, why the foreclosure mills have not been shuttered by the sheer volume of public outrage, while some poor loser caught with an ounce of crack cocaine gets a minimum of five years in the slammer. (And that's the improvement: A year ago, less than one-fifth that amount got that minimum sentence.)

And until we learn to think of it in those terms, until we learn to think of it in terms of the desire, the drive, for power and control on the part of those who truly if bizarrely believe in their own inherent, God-given superiority, until we learn to think radically even as we design social strategies for applying political tactics, until we learn to keep our eyes on the prize even as it's a single step at a time, "left foot, peg foot, travelling on," we will forever be fighting as if wearing blinders in a boxing match, always thinking about the last punch to hit us rather than the one coming and with limited view of where the opponent is: We may win some rounds that way but we'll never put the other down for the count. And a knockout is exactly what we need if justice is to be ultimately won.

Footnote: Beecher's line about "the great" and "the little" comes from The Myth of American Religious Freedom by David Sehat.

It ain't over 'til it's over, Part Two

News coverage surrounding this whole issue has been poor. For an obvious example, reports on the bill's "passage" referred to the GOPpers "breaking the stalemate," to Walkalloveryou's "victory," to, in a particularly hyperventilating description, labor's "epic defeat." Overwhelmingly, mass media treated it as if the issue was now concluded and all that was worth discussing related to it was future election campaigns. It was hard to find a single reference to the potential court challenge or to the movement for recalls. (This is one of the few I found and that covered each issue in one sentence in the 10th graph). References to the possibility of a public worker strike or even a more general strike were rarer than reporters at press conferences calling the governor a liar.

An equally grave failing on the part of the media was allowing the reactionaries and their allies to frame the debate as "a battle over the pay and benefits of government workers compared with those in industry." Which, of course, is exactly the ground the rightwingers wanted to fight on. They knew stripping away rights was unpopular, so their only option was to demonize public workers by trying to sow jealousy among members of the general public, which they set about doing. Even worse, the media often assisted them to that end, quoting the claim that public workers make higher pay while generally ignoring all the necessary caveats about qualifications and responsibilities.

Even when they did address some of those qualifiers, they screwed it up because of their underlying assumptions. Case in point is a New York Times sidebar titled "Are State and Local Government Employees Paid Too Much?" The answer it gives, in short, is "it depends." Depends, that is, on just what comparisons you make, what the basis of comparison is.

Yeah, fine, whatever. "It depends." It reminds me of the old joke about narrowing all the world's wisdom into a single word, which turned out to be "maybe." What really got me about the whole exercise, though, what really brought the failings into focus, was the section titled "Public workers quit less often and are fired less often," which contained this paragraph:

But there are other issues. The rate at which state and local workers voluntarily quit is very low. Some economists argue that this confirms that they are overpaid and that private workers leave for better pay.

Note first that that is the entire discussion of that particular point. Then leave aside - no, really, just put it down and step away - the typical, squishy, "some say" argument. Note, rather, how the conclusion, the only conclusion offered, does not follow from the evidence. Public workers staying at their jobs longer "confirms" that they are overpaid? What the hell? That same fact could be taken as "confirming" that public employees are dedicated to their jobs and feel what they do is important. It could also be taken as explaining at least some of the supposedly better pay and benefits public employees get: By staying in their jobs longer, they accrue more seniority and seniority tends to result in improved pay and bennies.

But here's the kicker: It "confirms" that public workers are "overpaid?" Why in the goddam flaming hell doesn't it instead prove that private industry workers are underpaid? I refer back to the quote from David Sirota I cited about two weeks ago. He said, comparing the demonization of public employees to the failed attempt to limit CEO pay as part of the bailout of the bankers, that in the corporatist-government view,

$500,000 isn't nearly enough taxpayer cash to retain government-funded bankers, but $48,000 ... is too much to pay educators.

Why, why why? Why is it that whenever the media talks about the rich, the powerful, the privileged, why is it that whenever the prerogatives of the plutocrats come up for discussion, attention revolves around "are they getting enough" but when it comes to the middle class, especially when it comes to unionized workers, and especially especially when it comes to the poor, it's always about "are they getting too much?" Why? Why is the question here "Are state employees getting paid too much?" rather than "Are private industry employees getting paid too little?" Why at a time when for those private industry workers pensions are disappearing, real pay is stagnating, benefits are declining, all as the rich are getting richer, why isn't "private industry workers are underpaid" the real story here?

Back during the Reagan years, when the reactionary calls for cutting taxes on the rich and cutting services for the poor and middle class were gaining traction, John Kenneth Galbraith sliced the logical pretenses of their program to shreds in one line: "Their argument," he said as nearly as I can quote from memory, "is that the poor don't work because they have too much and the rich don't work because they have too little."

It's still true. It's still true. That is exactly the argument being bandied about now, that is exactly what underlies the claims and charges, and it is exactly what underlies the New York Times' arguments about public employees. It is the filthy underbelly of the entire enterprise: The assumption, the unspoken conviction in the media, that whenever there is a difference between one part of the middle class and another part, even when those differences are utterly dwarfed by the difference between any of them and their economic overlords, just 400 of who have more wealth than not just half but 60% of US households combined, whenever such differences among the middle class are addressed, it is never because one of those middle-class parties has too little, it's always because the other has "too much." Is "overpaid." Is a "featherbedder." The people who try to teach your brats something worth knowing, the people who run into the burning buildings everyone else is running to get out of because some asshole was smoking in bed, the people who clean up the shit you throw out, all lazy bums who don't deserve whatever it is that they are getting.

Or so you are supposed to think. And to a very important degree, so the elite does think.

Which brings me to that final point and part three of this.

Footnote: The Galbraith quote always brings to mind another favorite quote whose author I do not recall: "The problem with welfare is not that welfare pays too much, it's that working pays too little."

It ain't over 'til it's over, Part One

So Governor Walkalloveryou has gotten what he wanted - for the moment, anyway, it's important to note. In a surprise and quite possibly illegal maneuver, the Wisconsin GOPpers rammed through a bill stripping virtually all collective bargaining rights from state employee unions, along with hampering their ability to collect dues and subjecting them to yearly re-certification elections. There are a whole bunch of different things I want to say in response. As usual, the one that I think is the most important will come last.

The first thing to say is that the illegality I mentioned is one part of why I say "for the moment." What the GOPpers did was to take the "budget" bill, strip out everything except the parts aimed at crippling unions and cutting benefits, and pass it at a conference committee meeting called on two hours notice - calling the roll even as state Assemblyman Peter Braca was still speaking. The problem for the GOPers is that there simply is no question but that the meeting violated the state's open meetings law, which requires at least 24 hours notice. This, bluntly, is open and shut: The meeting broke the law. There is no rational argument to the contrary. Which should mean that any action taken there was likewise illegal and thus invalid. Which should in turn mean that any court willing to apply what is clearly the law should be ready to issue an at least preliminary injunction barring the invalid "kill the unions" law from going into effect. Such a legal challenge appears to be a certainty and it's hard to see what a legal justification for rejecting it would be.

The problem, of course, is that it remains to be seen if the courts are as prepared to ignore the law as the GOPpers were.

Another thing I thought worthy of comment was Walkalloveryou saying he applauded what the legislature did. It's odd - not surprising in this case but still odd - to see a governor applauding a blatant violation of law, but never mind. Rather, I wanted to describe a fantasy I had of someone during his presser asking this question: "Governor, I need you to help me understand something. This bill stripping away bargaining rights either is budget-related, in which case the Senate could not have passed it because it didn't have a quorum, or it's not budget-related, in which case you were lying for weeks when you insisted it was. There is no third option here. So which is it? Did the Senate act illegally or a you a liar?" Of course, a fantasy because no one in the press corps was going to ask that, being either brainwashed or gutless. Or brainwashed into being gutless.

Which in turn serves to point up yet again again again how poorly served we are by our news media, especially our national news media. That will be part two of this.

Footnote: There are two other questions I'd like to see Walkalloveryou asked but which he won't be. One is, "If these givebacks and rights-strippings are so necessary because of a budget crisis, why did you exempt police and firefighter unions, which have among the highest pay and benefits? What is the connection between that exemption and the fact that those unions were the ones that endorsed you in the election?"

The other is, "Um, Governor, the argument is that this bill could be passed by the state Senate because all the budget-related items had been stripped out. If that's true, why are you still calling it 'the budget repair bill' as you just did in your statement?"

Yeah, yeah, I know

Okay, already. So the weekend turned into the week. BFD. Nobody reads this anyway. I just keep it up to let out my frustrations until I'm in a position to do something more constructive.

Let's just say it's been a hard week and leave it at that, okay?

Weekend

More or less. (I always liked the calendars I saw in the UK where rather than the week being displayed from Sunday to Saturday, as is common in the US, it was from Monday to Sunday, thus making Saturday and Sunday literally the weekend.)

For these past two days I have been taking a mental vacation, one in which the whole goddam fucking world can go fuck itself in its own fucking ass and just leave me the fuck alone. I have read no news, read no blogs, paid no attention. I got all the news I needed on the weather report. And I damn well will not and do not feel the least bit guilty about it.

Back late tonight or maybe tomorrow.

Reuters is no DFH

I've mentioned before that one of the ways Western mass media news outlets prove that they are not DFH's is by demonizing Hugo Chavez, the eternal "becoming-an-authoritarian" president of Venezuela even though he somehow never actually gets there. A dispatch for March 3 proves that Reuters knows how to play the game.

Here, for example, is the very first sentence:

Venezuela pushed a vague peace plan for Libya on Thursday, saying President Hugo Chavez's friend Muammar Gaddafi was in favor of foreign mediation.

Okay. First, in such news coverage, pro-US governments always present the "ouline" of a plan or the "principles" of a plan. Chavez, however, presents a "vague" plan, one, we are told further down, has "few concrete details." Now, that may well be true, but when such "vague" - excuse me, "outlined" - proposals come from pro-US governments, the attitude is "let's see what develops" rather than the dismissive "analysts are skeptical."

Beyond that and more importantly, again in the very first sentence we get "Chavez's friend Muammar Gaddafi," the adjective being a wholly irrelevant reference but a damning one for most Americans. Just out of curiousity, can anyone point me to a Reuters article (or an AP article, a CNN report, whatever) which opened with a reference to George Bush's "friends and former business associates," the royal family of Saudi Arabia? Or merely even to Bush's (and Obama's) "friend" Tony Blair as if that was a central issue?

There are several more irrelevant-except-to-be-damning references, such as referring to Chavez's "mentor, Fidel Castro of Cuba" and the assertion that Chavez "has won plaudits in the Arab world for his condemnation of Israel." It also referred to "fellow left-wingers" and described the ALBA bloc of Latin American nations as "left-wing." How many times have you seen pro-US governments, no matter their policies or practices, anywhere in the world called "right-wing" in major media? How many times have you seen any American government official so described?

All of this was in the space of a little over 500 words.

Chavez is no angel and I have previously questioned whether he is able to separate himself from the causes he promotes, that is, if he can envision those causes continuing to be advanced if Hugo Chavez is no longer on the scene. Both he and his supporters must be able to do that in both philosophical and practical ways; it is the failure to do so, it is the identification of the benefit of a particular individual with the benefit of cause as a whole, that has lead, as I wrote a good number of years ago, to "so many sets of high hopes being shot down by so many 'New Orders.'" Again as I have said before, Venezuela is not at that point by any means but the possibility is not over the horizon.

Hugo Chavez is not beyond criticism - but his continued, almost routine now, demonization is more likely than anything else to lead to that increasing identification of him with, even as, the cause and all the dangers that entails. I'm not a conspiracist, really I'm not, but that premise, that conviction that constant demonization most often leads to repression, not liberty, that idea is so obvious and so well-documented over the course of history that I can't help but wonder if at least some of the demonizers intend precisely that result, the better to discredit any moves toward socialist answers to the woes created by capitalism.

Footnote: Another quote was

"Chavez's credibility does not fly very high," said Olivier Jakob of think-tank Petromatrix.

I was going to ask when was the last time you heard the credibility of any US official being dismissed without rebuttal or counter-claim in mainstream media - but then I realized you can hear it frequently, provided it's some right-winger dismssing someone anywhere to their left. Which does tend to confirm the overall thesis.

Oh, and by the way, Jakob added that "the only value of such a proposal is if it offers some honorable way out for the Gaddafi clan." That is, if it provided a way for Qaddafi to back out without looking like he's backing down, and for that reason more likely to be accepted. Other than a potential feather in Chavez's cap, that would be a bad thing precisely how?

Another Footnote: Reuters had a sidebar article entitled "Analyst View: How serious is the Chavez Libya peace plan?" It turns out that all of them were analysts for the energy industry. Among that truncated grouping was Olivier Jakob, whose connection to industry was not mentioned in the main article.

I was a Teenage Geekenstein

The chances of eventually having somewhere else to go to really get away from it all have gone up.

According to an extrapolation of early results from NASA's Kepler telescope, which is designed to search for extrasolar planets, there are at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way.

At least 500 million of those planets are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold zone where life could exist.

True, no extraterrestrial life has been found despite some teasers over the years. But then add in other discoveries, such the recent one of a bacterium in California’s Mono Lake that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA and the examination of a meteorite that revealed amino acids where there shouldn't have been any (leading chief researcher Dr. Daniel Glavin to say it suggests "there is more than one way to make amino acids in space"). In light of those and other discoveries, 500 million seems, well, let's just say to my mind it's rather too large a number to think that life screwed up every one of those chances.

Time for some good news

Brace yourself: I'm about to say something nice about the Obama administration.

There has been a fair amount of discussion about the White House's decision to stop defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA (which I keep wanting to pronounce as "Doom! Ah!"). Much of what has come from the right has been predictably inane, such as the execrable Newt Gingrich, the nation's most perfectly-named politician, calling it an impeachable offense and the always-good-for-a-laugh Alan Keyes comparing same-sex marriage to owning slaves on a plantation. (I keep expecting Keyes to bust out laughing and say "I just can't hold it in any more! Haven't you people ever read Jonathan Swift? How obvious do I have to be?")

Commentary from the left has also been predictable in its own way, justly praising the decision while scolding PHC* for how long it took to get to this point. A number on both sides referred to a "reversal" in the administration's position.

But truth be told, I'm not sure it was a true reversal, and here's why: It's generally held to be the obligation of the DOJ to defend in court the constitutionality of federal laws. This is because it's felt unwise to essentially give the Executive Branch a double veto, one when the bill comes out of Congress and a second by refusing to defend the law against a legal challenge.

In this case, the DOJ's statement said that

the Department of Justice has defended Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act on several occasions in federal court. Each of those cases evaluating Section 3 was considered in jurisdictions in which binding circuit court precedents hold that laws singling out people based on sexual orientation, as DOMA does, are constitutional if there is a rational basis for their enactment. ...

Section 3 of DOMA has now been challenged in the Second Circuit, however, which has no established or binding standard for how laws concerning sexual orientation should be treated. In these cases, the Administration faces for the first time the question of whether laws regarding sexual orientation are subject to the more permissive standard of review or whether a more rigorous standard, under which laws targeting minority groups with a history of discrimination are viewed with suspicion by the courts, should apply.

Put another way, in those previous cases the underlying question of can it be constitutional to single out people based on sexual orientation had already been answered yes. However, now DOMA has come up in a circuit where that question has not been answered and so the constitutionality of DOMA is a relevant issue. The administration's response is to defend that more rigorous standard regarding discrimination to which the statement referred, under which DOMA could well be held unconstitutional.

What this makes me suspect is that the White House was defending DOMA only to the extent it felt obligated to and it grabbed the first chance to offer what I suppose could be called a truly minimalist defense, that of "DOMA is constitutional if it can meet this strict standard, which we say it can't." Which in turn suggests that this is not a "reversal" but a case of having waited for an opportunity and then grabbing it when it arose.

I've said enough times before but it bears repeating: The day of justice, the day when the sex of the person you love will be, at least legally and eventually socially, no more relevant than their race or their religion, will come. Want a bit more proof? How about the fact that earlier this week

the Maryland Senate voted 25-21 to pass SB 116, the Civil Marriage Protection Act, legislation that would end the exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from marriage in Maryland.

The bill now goes to The House of Delegates; thanks to Rumproast for the link.

The day is coming. And while all the screeching and scraping of the bigots and bozos may delay that day, they will not prevent it.

*PHC = President Hopey-Changey

RIP

Updated In 1958 the New York Giants met the Baltimore Colts for the NFL championship. I was growing up in central New Jersey and everyone I knew was rooting for the Giants. I thought somebody should be rooting for the Colts, so I decided I would. Which is how I became a Baltimore Colts fan. Something of a rebel even then, I suppose.

On another sports front, baseball, and a few years earlier: My father, oddly enough, was not a big sports fan. But the members of my mother's family were fanatics. For them, there was only one baseball team that mattered: the Giants. Which is, I expect, and along the same lines of becoming a Colts fan, how I came to be a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. (Well, I sure as hell wasn't going to root for the Yankees! Sheesh.)

All of which serves by way of introduction to the news that Duke Snider, centerfielder of The Boys of Summer, died yesterday at the age of 84.

My family was not by any means well off, and getting all the way into Brooklyn for a game would have been difficult logistically as well as financially. I got to see Snider play in person just once, at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey and yes it was a regular season game: For each of two seasons, the Dodgers played seven home games there. And damn it, didn't he go 0-3 that night. At least the Dodgers won. (It occurs to me that with all the records baseball keeps, since the Dodgers only played a total of 14 games at Roosevelt Stadium and I know the teams and the final score - the Dodgers beat the Reds, 3-1 - I could probably find out the exact date I was there. I doubt I'll bother.)

I can't say I follow any sports any more, and now when I watch the occasional game (most commonly but not exclusively basketball) I prefer to have no rooting interest, as I find that enables me better to appreciate the good plays and cringe at the bad ones no matter which team it affects, to better focus on how well the game is played rather than on who wins it. Perhaps that's just me.

The point is that while I neither could nor would any longer call myself a Dodger fan - I couldn't name a single person on the current roster - I can still play in my head a clip from I have no idea what game or when, but a clip of Vin (or, as he then used, Vince) Scully going "In comes Snider! Right behind him is Hodges! It's a brand new ball game!"

And y'know what? Grapefruit League games are getting started, the snow here is melting, spring and then summer are coming, and I've decided that this year I'm gonna go see myself some baseball.

Updated due to the fact that my curiosity - about the Web even more than about the date - got the better of me and a search on "Dodgers Redlegs Roosevelt Stadium" easily produced the date of July 12, 1957 as well as proving my memory incorrect: Duke went 0-4, not 0-3.

Oh, and yeah, they were called the Redlegs at the time; it was the 1950s, after all, and being called "the Reds," well, you know.

Rallying point

I was going to post this earlier but I decided to wait until reports of Saturday's pro-union rallies were in. I had heard some breathless pre-event predictions of a million turning out across the country, which I dismissed as over-enthusiastic hyperbole, and properly so.

Even so, the numbers and even more the range, both geographic and demographic, of the rallies were impressive. According to a mailing from MoveOn.org, there were actions in every state capitol as well as other places; 66 in all. The biggest, of course, was in Madison, where local police estimated the crowd at upwards of 100,000. But the turnout in a number of other places, based on various news and/or eyewitness accounts, was in four figures, including not just obvious ones like New York and Los Angeles, but Boston, Hartford, Harrisburg, St. Paul, Santa Fe, Lansing, Denver, Olympia, Trenton, and more. One - Columbus, scene of its own labor fight - could well have been in five figures. Again according to the MoveOn mailing, a total of 50,000 people outside of Wisconsin took to the streets to say they support the rights of workers - a figure I find, based on my own search of media accounts, to be if anything a little conservative. And remember: All these actions were put together in just four days.

All this is, of course, in addition to the thousands who turned out earlier in the week both to express support for Wisconsin workers and to demand that the same treatment not be given to workers in their own state.

It's been exhilarating to see that there is still life in the old lefty-labor coalition. It's been energizing to see the steadfast determination on the part of the Wisconsinites and others. (I had a distressed moment last weekend when I thought the Wisconsin teachers' union had blinked, as its president told its members to go back to the classroom. Happily, I was wrong.) It's been greatly encouraging to see actual union solidarity - particularly from Wisconsin police and firefighters whose unions, as is not commonly known, were exempted from the stripping away of rights Governor Walkalloveryou wants to inflict on others. (Those unions were also the ones who endorsed Walkalloveryou in the campaign. Ain't coincidence wonderful?)

And it has been particularly pleasurable for this aging radical who has repeatedly said - here and here, for example - that we leftists, we progressives (in the real sense of the word), we who like to think of ourselves as part of a movement, need to be more aggressive, more assertive, in our behavior and stop thinking of political action as limited to legislative chambers and getting Dimcrats elected, it has been a delight for this "vaguely reminiscent of the '60s" old guy to see that there are still some things that will get Americans out on the streets other than death panels and the looming threat of a secret Muslim socialist foreigner imposing sharia law on the nation.

So yes, it was great to see, even more so because in Austin the rally was done in conjunction with one supporting Planned Parenthood and in other places the rallies were supported by the new group US Uncut, which uses social network organizing to put together protests against tax-dodging corporations and produced actions at 50 different places on Saturday, most of them at branches of Bank of America. That sort of unity, that sort of "It's all connected so we all need to be connected" thinking is what can drive a wider, more inclusive, and therefore stronger movement.

(Lighthearted sidebar: I smiled at hearing one rally chant "The people! United! Will never be" only to be taken aback when instead of the last word being the '60s cry "defeated," it was "divided." I swear, these kids today....)

However - and you damn well knew that was coming sometime - in another way I found the day, well, not disheartening but depressing. Amidst all the energy, all the hoopla, all the excitement, there is a shadow filtering through, a shadow big enough to dim the light cast by the crowds: The goal of the entire enterprise, the entire effort, the entire purpose of every action from the very beginning of the entire confrontation, was to stand in the same place. To not be forced to back down. To not, in another sense, be forced to back up.

Even if every demand of every one of those protests about labor laws in Wisconsin or Ohio or Indiana or wherever else workers' rights were under attack, even if every goal was achieved, even if there was total success, still we would have gained nothing. Rather, we would have not lost what we already have.

We've been fighting, that is, not to go forward but to resist going backwards. These are all rear-guard actions, all hoping merely to stand our ground, not to advance. We are perpetually playing defense. But the fact is, you can't hold ground forever; you can't always play defense and still score. In war, a purely defensive strategy can be good, even effective, because it takes significantly more military resources to attack than to defend. But in political and social conflicts such as this, that often is untrue and so in the long run, a purely defensive strategy always fails - always.

So it is depressing to think that even with the massive effort, the intense emotion, the fearsome determination, that have been on display these past couple of weeks that holding our own appears to be - in fact is - the best we are hoping for. It bespeaks a future of continued gradual, even if somewhat slowed, decline, a future that if we are to avoid we will somehow have to find even more energy than we have shown so far.

Footnote to the preceding, Truth in Headlines Div.

Headline on a February 21 AP story about Wisconsin:

Wisconsin lawmakers take up bill to cripple unions

I know it's just one headline, but take what you can get. Meanwhile, the Sunday talking head shows, the ones that "set the agenda" for the debate among the Serious People, continuing their inspiring attempt to get all sides, have these people at least tentatively booked for tomorrow:

Deface the Nation: Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ)
Press the Meat: Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)
Faux News Sunday: Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN)

(In fairness, Press the Meat has supposedly added Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO to the guest list. So I guess any complaints about the overall guest list are out the window, hey?)

On another point that has been sticking in my craw, in a quote gleefully spread by the wingnuts as if it was some ultimate slammer, Christie responded to a charge he's engaged in union-busting by saying "unions are trying to break the middle class."

"Trying?" Not even "breaking" but "trying to?" Hey, bozo, don't make me go all Jersey on you. Man up, admit that's a bigger pile of trash than Fresh Kills ever had, and face facts: Unions created the middle class in this country. The middle class in this country exists because of unions. The only reason the middle class still manages to hang on now is because of unions, because even as the level of unionization shrinks, the wages and benefits unions can obtain for their members set a standard that employers on non-unionized people have to at least approach if they want to have a stable and capable workforce.

One of my all-time favorite bumper stickers referred to unions with the line "From the people who brought you the weekend." And the 40-hour week. And sick time. And vacation time. And a pension plan. And a safe workplace. And better educated, more skilled workers. And - the list goes on at some length. All due to the simple fact that when they are united, workers have enough clout to stand up on an equal basis to the array of forces opposing them, forces which would - and before unions did - squeeze the life out of workers in pursuit of their own greed.

Which is also why self-interested, grasping, power-hungry jackasses like you, Chrissy, people to who the word "community" and the concept of reciprocal responsibility for each other's welfare mean nothing, want to destroy them.

On Wisconsin!

I haven't said anything about the events in Wisconsin - well duh, obviously I haven't - even as I have been following them closely. The latest bit, of course, is the Assembly GOPpers stripping away workers' rights in a quite literally middle-of-the-night vote and then again quite literally immediately scurrying away like the shameless cowards they are. That it was a consciously-designed maneuver to sneak in a vote before debate had finished is obvious:

Speaker Pro Tem Bill Kramer, R-Waukesha, opened the roll and closed it within seconds,

a time frame sufficient to allow more than enough GOPpers to vote to pass the crap while 25 of the 38 Dems got skunked. Clearly, those GOPpers knew this was coming and were waiting for it. Scummy does not begin to describe it, but labeling it as displaying "a craven yet well-founded fear of a full and open discussion with time for the public to understand and react instead of cramming 60 hours of 'debate' into three days" might make a start.

Rachel Maddow had a clip of the immediate aftermath of the vote, featuring Dems chanting "Shame! Shame!" as the GOPper skulked away. The second time it was on, during her interview with State Sen. John Erpenbach, one of the honorable Wisconsin 14, there is a moment when one of the departing GOPpers pauses as if to argue with a Democratic Assemblywoman. Immediately, someone steps between them and the GOPper behind the guy who paused gives him a "keep moving" push and all three of those guys leave. Which serves to confirm that there was indeed a pre-planned decision of "flash vote then get up and leave without talking to anyone."

Even before that bush-league ambush, it had become obvious to any observer who can see or hear or breathe that this has nothing to do with a budget shortfall and everything to do with attacking labor. This is part of a coordinated attack not only on the standard of living of the middle class (or what's left of it) but on workers' ability to sustain that middle class, on labor's right to unite to resist the class war that has been directed against them and the poor for three decades or longer.

Governor Scott Walkalloveryou made that abundantly clear all the way back on Sunday, telling Faux News that

he did not believe union leaders were really interested in giving up their benefits and cities, school districts and counties will need weakened unions to cut spending for years to come.

It's hard to get more direct than that. Even so, "Oh, but still, even there he's talking about the money!" the wingnuts screeched and the selfish wailed. "It's about the deficit!" It's hard to accept that anyone would seriously raise such transparent nonsense, but if there really was any lingering doubt about the real goal - although I can't imagine its source - Governor Walkalloveryou surely dispelled it during his appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday. Asked why he kept talking about the need to reduce benefits to state employees when the unions had already said they agreed to the cuts, cuts which amount to, on average, a rather dramatic 10% reduction in take-home pay, he lamely sputtered that no one had made that offer to him directly. But when asked a bit later if would he meet with the unions, he flatly said no - which of course makes it impossible for anyone to say it to him "directly." He can't take it seriously because no one has said it directly while he is actively preventing anyone from doing so.

This is, to put it mildly, an exceedingly dishonest man.

In that same appearance, he was asked about who else besides unionized state workers should bear part of the burden for closing the budget gap and his answer, in short, was "no one." When he was asked specifically about raising taxes on the wealthiest people in the state, well, you know what he said without even having to watch the clip: Raise taxes? Omigod! It will destroy the economy! How you even think of doing such a horrific thing to "the hardworking families" of the state? Which not only suggests that Walkalloveryou thinks that state employees are neither hardworking nor taxpayers but, recalling that the question was about taxing the richest, he is actually arguing - really, he is, and we're supposed to regard it as a serious stance - that middle-class state employees can afford to pay more but millionaires can't, that state employees have excess income but millionaires don't.

Reprise "exceedingly dishonest."

And then of course there was the phone call from "David Koch." Others have covered that quite adequately, but I bring it up because it serves to raise the issue of the shortcomings of much of the media coverage. In responding to the report of the call, Walkalloveryou lamely claimed he said nothing in that call which he hadn't said publicly. As near as I can tell, not only did the assembled press corps not burst out laughing, no one asked him when he had publicly described a plan to trick Dem state senators into coming back to the capitol in order to get a quorum or when he publicly said that he and his staff had considered sending "troublemakers" among demonstrators to cause a "ruckus" but rejected it on the purely political tactical grounds that it might backfire.

Speaking of the protests, that in turn brings up the TPer rally with its pre-printed "Pay your share" signs. I'll leave aside for now my fury at the news media which just talked about the total number of protesters on that day and it being "the first time pro-Walkalloveryou supporters turned out" without feeling it necessary to mention either that the TP rally was organized from out of state and bused in people or that the number of pro-union demonstrators utterly dwarfed the number of TPers. However, I will express my fury at a different failing: Why were none of those people, why weren't the TPers and their ilk, why weren't any of the "screw you, I got mine" crowd, asked "What's your share?"

I would like to see every one of those people asked what benefits they are going to give up to chip in toward solving "the budget crisis," what tax increases that they would have to pay are they are ready to accept, what loss of public services that affect them personally are they prepared to advocate. I'm tired of this crap of "everyone has to pitch in" actually meaning "except me." I've referred to this attitude before in the case of the rich and the attack on Social Security, but frankly it applies across the rightwing half of the board.

In fact, I want someone to ask Walkalloveryou the same thing: Governor, what are you giving up? What losses are you accepting? What sacrifices are you making? And I mean you, personally.

However, I suppose the media failure there is not surprising since it has been a failure in a number of ways. Here's another: Initially, the talk was about a $137 million shortfall. When a few people tried to argue that Walkalloveryou and his minions had driven that deficit with the tax cuts that got rammed through in the first few days of the legislative session, they got shot down with the observation that the cuts don't take effect until next year. Fine. Except that, apparently deciding that $137 million wasn't scary enough, W., et al., started talking about a $3.6 billion shortfall, a figure dutifully repeated in the press - and not once did I see that mainstream press note that that puts it into the period affected by the tax cuts and therefore that W.'s cuts do drive a significant part of that deficit. Maybe some did, but I didn't see it, any more than I saw any of them comment on the absurd behavior of the GOPpers of the state Senate, who proposed to act even without the Dems on non-budgetary matters (as in fact they can) - such as passing a tax cut for dairy farmers.

Wait - at the same time that you're screaming about deficits you're proposing more tax cuts? And this was not considered worthy of notice by our esteemed free press?

What's more, I am sick to death of hearing about the supposedly fat $48,000 paychecks that Wisconsin public school teachers get on average when that is below the median household income in Wisconsin, which is $50,000, and even further below that of Dane County (where Madison is), which is $58,000. As David Sirota says, comparing this to the failed attempt to limit CEO pay as part of the bailout of the bankers, in the corporatist-government view,

$500,000 isn't nearly enough taxpayer cash to retain government-funded bankers, but $48,000 ... is too much to pay educators.

On that same point I want to turn to David Cay Johnston, author of Perfectly Legal and Free Lunch, who argues cogently that slipshod media coverage of the workers' benefits has

created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.

Rather, he says, the benefits are in the form of deferred wages, with whatever the state is contributing to benefits being done, according to the terms of the agreement, "on behalf of the employee." What that means more directly is that whatever the state is putting in for pensions and health insurance is money that otherwise would be paid directly to the employee.

This shows that this is just divvying up the total compensation package, so much for cash wages, so much for paid vacations, so much for retirement, etc.

His point, besides criticism of the failure of the media to realize that fact, is that Governor Walkalloveryou says he wants state workers to "contribute more" towards health and pension benefits when in fact they are already fully, even if indirectly, funding them and what he's really demanding is an outright pay cut or more technically an outright compensation cut.

Workers - to be precise, unionized state workers - must accept a 10% reduction in their standard of living while everyone else, including (or rather especially) millionaires, remain untouchable. And even if they do accept that, which they have, it's not good enough unless they also give up the ability to stand up for themselves in the future.

No wonder the rightwing scream machine is in full-throated roar about the "freeloaders" and "parasites" that teach your children, keep your house from burning down, plow your streets, watch over your health, and haul away the crap you throw out: There is a great need to keep people from thinking about what is really happening, to keep them distracted from what is being done to them. Unlike the beleaguered, befuddled, and bewildered useful idiots comprising the TPers and the dittoheads, the operators of that machine know who their real enemy is.

Footnote: PHC* has been almost completely silent on this; his one contribution was an all-but-passing remark nearly a week ago to a local media outlet that it "seems like" that Walkalloveryou is mounting "an assault" on public employee unions. Even that minimal involvement did not sit well with the GOPpers:

"I think the president should be focusing on what we're doing in Washington," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said today on NBC's Meet The Press.

Y'know, Lindsey, maybe you can give some attention only to one thing at a time, but most of the rest of us are not so intellectually stunted.

*PHC = President Hopey-Changey

RIP

Nicholas Courtney died Tuesday after a battle with cancer. He was 81.

If you don't know the name, perhaps Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart of UNIT will ring a bell.

If there is still no "Oh!" there, all I can say is you missed out. I will say that in the clip, he's the one one's not Jon Pertwee - and if that's no help it's because you don't deserve any.

"Chap with the wings. Five rounds rapid."

Footnote: As further proof as if it were needed that there is nothing rightwingers can't turn into an opportunity to take a slap at the left, the editor of blogs at the rightwing paper The Telegraph (UK) had to say in the course of noting Courtney's death that he, the editor, had recently watched some episodes of the show from the 1970s and expressed his irritation at the "Left-liberal subtext of many of the storylines." Y'know, "cringe-making" stuff like peace and understanding and environmentalism and internationalism and crap like that.

Do you see what I see?

It seems to me that often enough to deserve mention I see something or react to something in a news item that others don't see (or at least don't comment on) or to which they don't react. So out of curiosity, think about your response to this brief story, quoted in full, before you go on to my reaction, just to see if my take really is off the beaten path.

New statistics show that New York Police Department officers made 601,055 street stops of potential suspects last year.

It was the first time the total topped 600,000. The NYPD reports the figures on so-called stop and frisks to the City Council, and the 2010 numbers were made public Tuesday.

Civil rights advocates claim the practice unfairly targets blacks and other minorities, and that many stops are made without proper cause.

Police officials counter that it's essential crime-fighting tool. About 10 percent of the stops result in arrests.

In 2009, 575,304 stops were recorded.

To repeat, that's the whole article. Now, one obvious thing is that it doesn't address the issues of any potential racial disparity in the stops or lack of cause even though those were cited as objections to the practice. But here's what got me about it:

Consider first that it says that 10% of stops resulted in arrests but it doesn't say what for. The whole idea of "stop and frisk" was to search for illegal hidden weapons. Were the arrests for that? Or were they for, I dunno, drug possession (which shouldn't have been found in a frisk and could indicate an illegal search)? Outstanding warrants? Were they some bogus "contempt of cop" arrests because someone made a fuss about being stopped? What?

Consider second that it mentions only arrests but not disposition. Were the charges dismissed or pursued? If they were pursued, did they result in convictions? We have no idea.

Okay. With that in mind, here's the thing that really got me, the thing I noticed: Even if we were to assume that every one of those arrests was for a legitimate hidden weapons charge and that every such arrest resulted in a conviction, we are still left with the undeniable but unaddressed fact that the cops were wrong 90% of the time! At least!

At least nine out of every ten such stops, nine out of every ten uses of this "essential crime-fighting tool" were unnecessary, unproductive, intrusive, wasteful displays of official arrogance and power that served only to humiliate and express dominance over the victims. Nine out of every ten. At least.

I've had a number of posts that addressed issues of privacy*; in several of them (this one, for example) I expressed my concern that one real and quite possibly intended effect of practices such as this "stop and frisk" business is getting us used to being watched, checked, stopped, examined, and searched by "authority," to make passive acceptance of arbitrary authority a normal part of our lives.

How far has this penetrated our culture? How about that commercial for I think it's National Car Rental with the guy at the airport of who it's said "you can spot an amateur a mile away while you go shoeless and metal-free in seconds?" This "business pro" is being praised for how quickly and efficiently he can submit - and I've yet to come across anyone (other than my wife) who thinks that's strange! That surely is one measure.

Another measure is that at least nine out of every ten of the NYPD's increasingly-frequent uses of its "essential crime-fighting tool" of "stop and frisk" fought no crime, uncovered no wrongdoing, caught no miscreant - but that fact appears to have produced no discernible outrage. One sad but true thing about a slippery slope is that the further down you go, the more slippery it becomes.

*Just FYI: Several of the posts at that link don't deal with privacy as a topic but do use the word somewhere in the post. I know of no way to separate the two so if some of them leave you going "Why is this here?" that's why.

Um, you forgot one

I decided to consider Libya separately because there is a somewhat different dynamic here with somewhat different concerns about the outcome.

Libya has been the scene of the most violent examples of repression of the protests sweeping the region, with

[e]stimates of the total number of fatalities over six days of unprecedented unrest rang[ing] from 173 to 285. Some opposition sources gave figures as high as 500.

But it has also been the place where the protests themselves have been most violent, particularly in Benghazi in the eastern part of the country. There, Al-Jazeera reports, protesters against the 41-year long regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi have seized army vehicles and weapons and even some of the troops sent to quash the protest switched sides. In fact, the protesters have essentially taken control of the city with pro-government forces reduced to harassing sniper fire.

There were also reports of protesters heading to Gaddafi's compound in the city of Al-Zawia near Tripoli, with the intention of burning the building down.

Protests have also reportedly broken out in other cities, including Bayda, Derna, Tobruk and Misrata - and anti-Gaddafi graffiti adorns the walls of several cities.

A vital point about Libya is that tribal ties are still very important. Which gives extra emphasis to the statement of the head of the Al-Zuwayya tribe in eastern Libya, who has threatened to cut off oil exports from the region to the West unless there is an end to the "oppression of protesters." Meanwhile, the Warfala tribe, which lives south of Tripoli and is one of the nation's largest, has reportedly joined the anti-Qaddafi protests. A leader of the Warfala tribe said Qaddafi is "no longer a brother" and should "leave the country."

All this together - nationwide protests, what amounts to insurrection in Benghazi, rejection by one of Libya's largest tribes - without doubt creates the biggest threat to Qaddafi's rule ever, which is likely why the response has been so ugly. That repression hasn't stopped the protests, however; in fact they have spread. And that is often the turning point, when repression produces more protest rather than less.

In a predictable step, in a nationally-televised speech on Sunday night, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, Col. Qaddafi's son, offered the carrot to the military's stick, completing the triangle of threats, promises, and pleas that have been the pattern of governments unable to understand or deal with protest that doesn't melt away at the first baton. Mixed in with defiant declarations about fighting to "the last man,"

[t]he younger Gadhafi offered to put forward reforms within days that he described as a "historic national initiative" and said the regime was willing to remove some restrictions and begin discussions for a constitution. He offered to change a number of laws, including those covering the media and the penal code.

He also appealed for an end to the protests, saying that if they continued, it could lead to civil war that could send the country's oil wells up in flames and he admitted to "mistakes" in responding to protests.

The thing I found interesting about the speech, something that indicates, as similar things have in other cases, that the regime is on flimsier footing than could have been imagined just a couple of months ago was that he found it necessary both to say that the army still backed his father and to deny rumors that he had fled to Venezuela. What's more, the BBC noted, without actually saying it he

appears to be conceding that the country has already broken into two parts, with the east out of control.

That makes what's happening in Libya qualitatively different from what's happening elsewhere in the region in this wave of protest. If the Beeb's interpretation is correct, so was Seif Qaddafi's: This is becoming a civil war. Which also means that something other than a change in the form of central government may be coming; this may not be a not-at-all simple but still relatively straightforward change from a repressive government to a more open one but an outcome considerably more complex.

Qaddafi ingratiated himself with a West addicted to oil when he withdrew his support for various revolutionary (or "terrorist") groups around the world and shut down his nascent nuclear weapons program. But those same Western nations turned a blind eye to his continued violent repression of any opposition. And here, once again, our preference for stability over justice, for convenience over conscience, may well come around to bite us on the ass.

It appears to me now that there is much more of a threat than elsewhere of Libya descending into the sort of violent chaos that was feared for - but did not occur in - both Tunisia and Egypt. With the reality that the people of Libya have been given over these recent years more than enough reason to see Western nations as enablers of Qaddafi's reign, what emerges from that potential chaos and whether or not it is burningly hostile to Western people - and note the careful and conscious distinction: not Western interests, Western people - can be a matter of genuine concern.

We - by which I mean those of us who make up the actual Left in this country - are assuredly on the side of the people of Libya over their oppressors. (If you're not, you're not part of the Left.) Here as is so often true, the best course, even the politically wise course, is the just one - which means our leaders should be and their side, too. And it would be helpful if they said so.

What's goin' down

This is going to be a rather long post but as it's broken into various bits, I hope it's not overlong. As I've said any number of times, this is not a site people do (or should) look to for breaking news. Still, the events of the past week in North Africa and the Middle East can't be ignored just because I can't do minute-by-minute - hell, day-by-day - updates.

But I decided I wanted to try to give an overview of where things stand in various places in the region as of this writing, which is late on Sunday night, despite knowing it may be outdated by the time anyone reads it. Or I finish it, for that matter.

Anyway, here it is, news I found from various sources, presented alphabetically by country as if you couldn't tell, with some commentary here and there. Perhaps it will be of use to some folks.

Algeria: For the second week in a row, thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators gathered in the capital city of Algiers on Sunday. And for the second week in a row the mass rally was disrupted by riot police brandishing clubs who forced their way through the crowd, breaking it into small groups that security forces could prevent from marching.

Even so, the government moved to placate the protesters, with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promising to lift the state of emergency, which has been in place for about 19 years, while warning that the ban on protests in Algiers would remain.

It's doubtful that would satisfy the great number of the protesters in light of the government's notorious corruption and an estimated 42% unemployment rate among young people. They have indicated an intent to march every Saturday until the main demand - an end to Bouteflika's government - is met.

Bahrain: Six days of protests were capped on Friday by three massive funeral rallies in the capital of Manama for those killed in earlier demonstrations. According to the Guardian (UK), the turnout was above 50,000 – at least 5% of the entire population of the country and over one-third that of the city.

"We don't care if they kill 5,000 of us," a protester screamed inside the forecourt of the Salmaniya hospital, which has become a staging point for Bahrain's raging youth. "The regime must fall and we will make sure it does." ...

"Down with the king, down with the Khalifas," they cried, referring to the kingdom's ruling family. Anger among the overwhelmingly Shia Muslim demonstrators towards the Sunni dynasty that has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years is now virulent.

Even so,

"No to Sunni; no to Shia," they cried at one point. "We are all Bahraini."

Towards evening, soldiers fired on one march, wounding at least 50 and prompting Crown Prince Salman, deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces, to order the army off the streets. He also promised what one source called "a new dawn of free expression."

Meanwhile,

[v]arious sources reported that seven opposition groups demanding political reform in the country have agreed to meet to formulate a response to the government's call

for political dialogue. The opposition decided that pulling back the army and allowing protesters to re-occupy Pearl Square, the focus of previous protests from which they'd been violently driven on Thursday, was enough of a concession to engage in talks.

Iran: Supporters of the Green Movement gathered in Tehran for the second time within a week on Sunday to protest the killing of two protesters killed by police in the demonstrations on Tuesday. Thousands took part on Sunday but it was in a number of smaller groups which were met with riot police and plainclothed basiji militia who used tear gas and clubs to attack the protesters. An opposition website said that one person had been killed by police and dozens were arrested.

It was unclear how many people joined the demonstrations in Tehran on Sunday. Witnesses estimated that more than 30,000 people protested on Feb. 14, and some opposition Web sites suggested there were close to one million people. Whatever the precise turnout, these were the largest opposition protests since the disputed election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.

Reports from opposition sources say protests occurred a number of other places besides Tehran, including Shiraz, Isfahan, Tabriz, Mashhad, Sanandaj, Rasht, and in Marewan Province in the Kurdistan region.

In a laughably transparent ploy, on Saturday the government had warned people to stay away from the demonstrations because, it claimed, members of a banned opposition group planned to shoot at demonstrators in order to incite the police to do the same. There is of course no way to know how big an effect that sort of blatant threat had on the turnout, but it obviously failed to prevent the protests.

It seems to me that the movement's slogan might be "Green is Forever." The opposition in Iran has been aggressively dispersed and officially denounced - but, "God Bless the Grass," it never seems to die off completely.

Iraq: Protests of sizes ranging from dozens to thousands have broken out in numerous places in Iraq over the past week. Karbala, Nassiriya, Wasit Province, Kut, Sulaimaniya, Thi-Qar Province, Ramadi, Falluja, and of course Baghdad have seen protests.

Unlike their regional counterparts, Iraqi protesters generally have not been calling for the removal of their elected government, installed just two months ago after months of tense negotiations between political factions.

Which is true - but they are calling for jobs, better pay, and improvement in public services such as electric power and water, and in several cases have demanded the resignation of local officials, who they say are often indifferent and corrupt.

Some of the protests have been the targets of official violence, with security forces shooting demonstrators. According to the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, police killed three and wounded sixty while suppressing the demonstrations in Wasit Province. Meanwhile, several dozen have been injured in a series of clashes in Sulaimaniya in the Kurdish area and a gang of about 30 armed men broke into a local TV station that had been covering those protests, wounded a guard, and burned the equipment. The same day, fires were set at three offices of Goran, a Kurdish opposition group.

The government is clearly worried: The cabinet has announced it is taking steps toward "improv[ing] the food ration card system and ... reforming the social benefits system" as well as "launching job opportunities" and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has made moves intended to reduce the level of anger, including

cutting his pay, reducing electricity bills, buying more sugar for the national food ration programme and diverting money from fighter jets to food.

It remains to be seen if, lacking a wholesale sacking of corrupt local officials, it will be enough.

Jordan: On each of the past several Fridays there have been anti-government protest in Amman with turnouts ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. The protesters have been calling for an end to corruption, the creation of a constitutional monarchy, and the lowering of prices. The numbers are not massive but that they are happening at all is very unusual. The actions had been peaceful until this past Friday, when pro-government thugs attacked the demonstrators with clubs and metal pipes, injuring several.

Back on February 1, apparently aware of the potential for a threat to his position after what was then four weeks of demonstrations, King Abdullah II took steps intended to head off more protest. He had sacked his cabinet including the prime minister, replacing him with Marouf al-Bakhit, who is widely viewed as free of the taint of corruption. The government said Bakhit was charged with "taking practical, swift and tangible steps to launch a real political reform process." That appears to have satisfied some protesters - the rallies have been smaller of late - but clearly not all and the government may be feeling the pressure of the constant irritation of the weekly protests. This Friday may be revealing one way or the other.

Morocco: Ignoring a whisper campaign seeking to undermine their protest,

[t]housands staged rallies in Moroccan cities on Sunday demanding political reform and limits on the powers of King Mohammed VI, the latest protests demanding change that have rocked the region.

There were 4,000 people demonstrating in the capital Rabat and 4,000 more in Casablanca. Other cities including Marrakesh and Tangier also saw rallies. The calls were for political change, an end to corruption, and a democratic constitution.

Taken together, what was called an unprecedented show of political unity and strength turned out tens of thousands of protesters from various political strains despite calls from some established Islamic and socialist political parties for their members to stay home.

"We no longer want to be subjects," said Abdelilah Benabdeslam, a leader of the Moroccan Organization for Human Rights. "We want to be citizens."

Morocco is a hereditary monarchy and the king wields most official political power. Protesters want a new constitution and seemed to be calling for a constitutional monarchy - not to get rid of the king, but to limit his power. The idea of getting rid of the monarchy altogether is a social taboo in Morocco, so much so that it was the subject of that whisper campaign, which tried to portray the rallies as anti-monarchy.

The main rally in Rabat drew a massive tide of protesters that flooded the main streets and wound up before the parliament building. Unlike in Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, official permission was granted for the rally. No riot police were present, and the few uniformed security forces hung back, directed traffic or chatted amicably with demonstrators.

There were a few small scuffles reported in Rabat and elsewhere, but nothing serious. Then again, there often isn't at first. We'll see what happens if it develops that the protesters aren't just blowing off steam but persist in their efforts.

Tunisia: Protests at what can be considered the epicenter of the changes in the region are continuing. Protesters are calling for further changes in the interim government, in effect standing guard against the possibility of the revolution being coopted by the old guard. Meanwhile, that interim government wants Saudi Arabia to extradite ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to face charges on "severe crimes."

Yemen: Yemen has seen nine straight days of unrest calling for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, with thousands participating in sit-ins in the cities of Ibb and Taiz and shots being fired at a demonstration in the capital Sana'a. At least 76 people, including seven soldiers, have been wounded in clashes and at least one protester has been killed.

Saleh, in power for 32 years, has called for opposition parties to continue pursuing a dialogue with his government, even as that opposition said it would join the protests, which so far have been driven largely by students at Sana'a University.

A commentator with the Inter Press news service suggested that protests in Yemen may have a problem catching fire the way they have elsewhere in the region because of "a complex context here [which] demands a different kind of political dialogue with power." The problem, simply put, is that the students don't trust either Saleh's ruling General People's Congress (GPC) or the opposition coalition known as the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP). They regard them both as corrupt and are of the mind that the JMP is getting involved to advance its own political interests, not that of the protesters. They want the protests to remain a "march of the people without leaders and middle-persons from the ruling and opposition groups."

Frankly, that seems rather naive to me. Even if their judgment about the JMP is correct and relations with them must be approached with caution so protests don't just turn into JMP campaign rallies, seeking to deal them out entirely is unwise and makes the students easy to isolate. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when you're risking at least your future and potentially your life, turning away potential (even if temporary) allies cannot be a good idea.