Editor's Cut

Political Blackmail

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people…."

Thus spoke Representative Dennis Kucinich on the House floor last week, quoting Isaiah, as he railed against a cynical attempt by Republicans to attach the first minimum wage increase in nine years (during which time Congress has received EIGHT pay raises, and is scheduled for its ninth), to an estate tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. Despite his efforts, on the eve of adjourning on July 29, House Republicans pushed through this controversial bill linking a minimum-wage increase to a package of tax cuts.

At a time when the gap between rich and poor is greater than even during the Gilded Age…at a time of unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthy during the so-called war on terror…at a time of vast cuts in our social service infrastructure...at a time when a federal surplus has been transformed into a soaring deficit....the Republican leadership refused to allow a straight up or down vote on the minimum wage.

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July 31, 2006

A New Openness

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

"It has to be said: there has been nothing in our time like the Bush Administration's obsession with secrecy….It's an old story: the greater the secrecy, the deeper the corruption." -- Bill Moyers, December, 2005

As the Bush Administration threatens and bullies the media, it is also engaging in an unprecedented rollback of public access to information that is an affront to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) signed into law forty years ago.

Gary Bass, Director of OMB Watch – a government accountability watchdog group – notes that unclassified information has been sub-categorized into oblivion by the Bush administration. The ambiguous, unclassified-but-inaccessible designations include: "sensitive but unclassified"; "sensitive homeland security information"; "critical infrastructure information"... and approximately 50 other invented obfuscations. Furthermore, Pentagon officials acknowledge that the GAO has rightly criticized the Defense Department for mistakenly marking unclassified matieral as "confidential or secret."

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July 24, 2006

101 People Who Are Really Screwing America

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

For everyone who has been waiting for the response to Bernard Goldberg's awful 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, Nationbooks has the answer--101 People Who Are Really Screwing America by Jack Huberman of The Bush-Haters Handbook fame. In this witty book, Huberman lays out in well-researched detail the interlocking relationships within the vast rightwing agenda to undermine our democratic institutions for profit and prophesy.

For example, there is Regnery Publishing, whose authors include Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Phyllis Schlafly, Wayne LaPierre, G. Gordon Liddy, and whose founder William Regnery (#71) has started a match-making service for "heterosexual whites of Christian cultural heritage." And don't forget the Reverend Sun Myung Moon (#54), who published The Washington Times and started lobbying Republican politicians heavily after his organization ran afoul of the IRS. Since then he hasn't had as many legal problems. Of course, you would expect Halliburton and its CEO, David Lesar, (#72) to make the list, but did you know that Dick Cheney's old company was helping the Iranians develop their natural gas fields in 2005--two years after the Axis of Evil speech?

It is these and so many other details in Huberman's book that remind us who we are fighting and why.

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July 26, 2006

The Madness of King George

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Today, a bipartisan American Bar Association task force released its report challenging George Bush's flagrant misuse of signing statements to circumvent the constitutional separation of powers.

Bush has issued more than 800 challenges to provisions of passed laws (more than all previous presidents combined) and he has asserted "his right to ignore law." Among the areas of laws Bush has threatened through this "shortcut veto" are the ban on torture, affirmative action, whistleblower protection, and limits on use of "illegally collected intelligence."

The 10 member ABA panel includes three well-known conservatives, including Mickey Edwards – a former Republican Congressman who places protecting the Constitution above lock-step partisanship. Edwards, a former chair of the American Conservative Union and a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, is a true maverick whose recent article in The Nation signals his commitment to protecting our constitutional design. "The President. " Edwards wrote, [has] "chosen not to veto legislation with which he disagreed – thus giving Congress a chance to override his veto – but simply to assert his right to ignore the law, whether a domestic issue or a prohibition against torturing prisoners of war."

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July 24, 2006

Neonuts

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

For them, Afghanistan and Iraq will not suffice. They want to take out Syria and Iran, and speed full steam ahead towards World Wars III and IV. The Weekly Standard asks simply, "Why wait?"

According to Newt Gingrich, there is no need to wait at all. On Meet the Press this past Sunday he offered that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict "… is, in fact, World War III" and "the U.S. ought to be helping...."

And how might the US help fight Newt's World War? The Weekly Standard provides the answer: "It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions – and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

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July 20, 2006

Brothers in Arms

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

There's been much chatter about President Bush's earthy open-mic discussion of the Middle East crises with Tony Blair. But it was the joint news conference at the G8 summit between Bush and Putin that caught my attention. I'm still trying to fathom what led Bush to describe his private conversations with Russian President Putin this way: "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same."

Putin's rejoinder, which garnered disbelieving guffaws from the press gaggle, was: "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly." Then there's the fact that despite the worsening relationship between the US and Russia, Bush still claims he and Putin are friends. Perhaps this is because of the parallels in their leadership styles.

Putin has used the disastrous war in Chechnya and terrorist attacks on the homeland as the pretext for rolling back Russian civil liberties and democratic institutions. Similarly Bush has used the war in Iraq and 9/11 as ever ready excuses for his imperial presidency.

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July 19, 2006

Don't Forget the Bloodletting in Iraq

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

With the Middle East on the cusp of war, President Bush's foreign policy for the area--remaking the region through invasion and occupation--is now effectively buried under the rubble of bombed out buildings, decimated bridges and civilian bodies.

The ongoing sectarian carnage in Iraq now barely makes it onto the front pages--and television is filled with the latest, horrifying scenes of devastation from the region. But Jessica Stern's op-ed, in Saturday's New York Times, is a powerful reminder of why we must not lose sight of ending the US occupation of a ravaged Iraq. Stern, a leading expert on terrorism, argues that our continuing occupation--and the growing number of revelations of US military atrocities (which she points out "are likely to proliferate the longer we remain in Iraq") will vastly increase the pool from which Al Qaeda and its sympathizers can recruit new members and supporters. As she reports, the latest Al-Qaeda video "tries to recruit ordinary American Muslims who might be offended, as many ordinary Americans are, by America's mistakes and moral failings in carrying out the war on terrorists." What Stern is saying is that this Administration's policies are actually increasing the possibility of future terrorist acts here in the US.

Yes, Iraq is complicated. As Robert Kuttner wrote recently in the Boston Globe, "..the search for a viable Iraq policy is really hard. President Bush has left the country with a policy problem from hell that may be literally insoluble, for him or anyone else." I agree, but at the same time that view should not lend a kind of gloss of acceptance to continued occupation.

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July 17, 2006

Killing and Dying in the Nation’s Capital

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

If I do well in school can I jump over jail?
If I pray every night can I jump over this hell?
Will the preacher say a special prayer?
Will the social workers really care?
It doesn't seem that as a child it should be my fault
All these hurdles to jump over before I could even walk.
--from Against All Odds, by 17 year old Cardarius Becton, Life Pieces to Masterpieces
Program, three months before he was shot in the back and killed after being robbed.

The nation's capital has declared a Crime Emergency in response to a recent surge in homicides and armed robberies. But, as Courtland Milloy writes in the Washington Post, "Violent robberies are certainly nothing new in the Washington area…To a certain extent, however, these black-on-black crimes seem to be of interest only to the victims, their families and closest friends."

What has changed is gentrification, a new proximity between rich and poor, and the recent crimes being black on white. "The sense of security among the affluent and influential has been shaken," according to Milloy.

Adding to the sadness and outrage is the lack of political will, vision, and commitment to promote real change – to truly fight back against the poverty and hopelessness. To be sure, no one – including Milloy – is minimizing these crimes or the suffering of innocent victims. Yet it must be recognized: "Here's part of the problem: Juveniles, many of whom have been robbed themselves – ripped off by parents and schools and communities that couldn't care less about them – have become hardened and increasingly violent."

And while DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey has responded with increased rewards for information leading to arrests, and greater deployment of police officers, that is not what will change the tide of crime in DC or any other city. Again, Milloy: "But it's unlikely that money and police alone will solve the problem. The city is being terrorized – and, as residents of many low-income neighborhoods will tell you, it's been that way for years. When discussing terrorism abroad, we talk about giving would-be terrorists a better choice – of giving them hope of a better life and providing them with the tools to help them realize the fruits of freedom and democracy. Now that the homegrown terrorists have our attention, maybe it would be a good time to show how that's done – in the nation's capital."

There are no shortage of mentoring, tutoring or apprenticeship programs – with proven results – taking kids from the most difficult situations and helping them turn their lives around. In fact, one DC mayoral candidate, former VerizonDC President, Marie Johns, has highlighted such programs on her Fighting Poverty Tour. The Tour is designed to examine the economic divide in the nation's capital – the city with the largest wealth disparity in the nation – and offer leadership and ideas where current elected officials have failed.

"I want to do the work that has been ignored in our city for generations now," Johns said. "That's why I am running for office."

This past week Johns visited the Life Pieces to Masterpieces (LPTM) program that works with kids from the worst neighborhoods in DC. LPTM offers tutoring and enrichment programs, and teaches youths to express their challenges and accomplishments through artistic means. Many of the youths have been with the program for 8 to 10 years, and now serve as mentors for the younger kids.

"The younger kids who come in see the older kids – from their same neighborhoods – modeling positive behavior. It takes the stigma away," said Executive Director Mary Brown. "We are literally saving lives. But we've never had a candidate come to our program in eleven years of existence."

14 year old Malik – an eight year veteran of the program – was a little more pointed in his thoughts. During a session he told Johns, "You coming shows you really want to make a difference to help us out. Most politicians only care about money."

Johns highlighted LPTM because of its track record and its need for new space.

"There are great programs out there that turn lives around," Johns said. "But they usually only have resources sufficient to reach a small number of kids; they have to spend way too much of their time chasing money; and they often struggle to find space and a permanent home. The financial commitment it would take to stabilize and expand these preventative programs is a drop in the bucket compared to the human costs, public health costs, and the criminal justice costs of the way we are doing business in the nation's capital today."

On the national level, John Edwards stands out for making poverty a moral and political issue. He recently delivered an inspiring speech to the National Press Club where he called poverty "the great moral issue of our time" and issued a challenge to cut it by one-third in a decade, and end it within 30 years. Edwards called for raising the minimum wage, overhauling housing policy, strengthening education, cutting taxes for low-income workers and families, and helping Americans save for the future.

It's time we stop treating people as disposable. The "new" crime emergency for some has, in fact, been the status quo for many. There is a desperate need for vision, political will and action to produce real change right now. It is the only way the suffering of innocent people in our American cities will subside.

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July 14, 2006

A Maverick Media Mogul Takes on Mainstream Spinelessness

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

"I will tell you that there won't be any corporate considerations. No earnings per share issues, No worries about advertisers and what they might think." Okay, you probably think these are lines from a recent Nation editorial or Bill Moyers' latest speech.

It's actually Mark Cuban blogging about his negotiations with Dan Rather to launch a program on HDNet, his high-definition cable channel that reaches about 3 million homes. (Later this week, Rather will announce that he's joining Cuban's channel--launching "Dan Rather Presents" this October. ) Cuban also owns HDfilms production company.

At a time when CBS News is run by "by bean counters and profiteers with no interest in serious news," as Moyers recently put it, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball franchise seems ready to revive public interest journalism.

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July 11, 2006

David Brooks--Just Another Joe Lieberman Fan

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

David Brooks had a laughable column in Sunday's New York Times.

"What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition," Brooks proclaims. What Brooks characterizes as an "inquisition" -- an effort, as he puts it, "to expel Joe Lieberman from modern liberalism"-- is simply a spirited effort to elect a Senator who better represents the values of Connecticut's citizens. That's not ideological purity . It's about organized people holding accountable a legislator who has acted as an unflinching supporter of this disastrous war.

Brooks--who likes to play populist--can't hide his contempt for the ordinary citizen-voters of Connecticut. Apparently, he's forgotten what elections are about. He derides "fundamentalists of both parties who believe that politics should be about party discipline, passion, purity, orthodoxy or clear choices." What's wrong about a politics that gives voters "clear choices"? As Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson put it, "Now, maybe I've had this backward all my life, but I thought that elections were held to enable voters to choose between candidates espousing different points of view on the most important issues." What's wrong with bringing some passion back into our politics, which has been dominated for too long by inside-the-beltway, well-paid consultants and pollsters.

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July 9, 2006