The Notion

Obama Organizing Advisers Rap Healthcare Push

By Ari Melber

Two former advisers to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, famed labor organizer Marshall Ganz and urban policy expert Peter Dreier, are now publicly criticizing Obama's healthcare reform strategy.

In a frank op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday, they contrasted Obama's campaign promises of organizing and confrontation with the sometimes middling approach to mobilizing healthcare reform:

Throughout the campaign, Obama cautioned that enacting his ambitious plans would take a fight. In a speech in Milwaukee, he said: "I know how hard it will be to bring about change. Exxon Mobil made $11 billion this past quarter. They don't want to give up their profits easily."

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August 31, 2009

Conservatives Show Kennedy the Love

By Eyal Press

Now that he's gone, conservatives can't seem to say enough good things about Ted Kennedy. He was a pragmatist, a realist, a compromiser, someone who worked in the spirit of bipartisanship. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said that if Kennedy were around, he has little doubt they would have joined hands to "get this done" – this being an overhaul of the healthcare system that Republicans could support.

What's wrong with this picture? Well, for one thing, the fact that the actual Ted Kennedy had been advocating universal health insurance since the 1970s – efforts the vast majority of Republicans opposed. It's true enough that Kennedy forged some compromises with Republicans to enact piecemeal reforms. It's also true that, a month ago, he wrote in Newsweek that "incremental measures won't suffice anymore." In the same piece, Kennedy addressed the question of whether an overhaul that includes a role for the government would mark a turn toward socialism, as many conservatives (including Orrin Hatch) claim. "One of the most controversial features of reform is one of the most vital," he wrote. "It's been called the ‘public plan.' Despite what its detractors allege, it's not ‘socialism.'"

I don't doubt the respect some Republicans have voiced for Kennedy is genuine. But the party to which they belong has spent much of the past forty years pillorying Democrats who veered too far left as "Ted Kennedy liberals." These attacks at least had the merit of being honest. Ted Kennedy was an unapologetic liberal who, on issues ranging from civil rights to the minimum wage to healthcare, believed government can and should play a role to make America a more just society. The movement conservatives who increasingly speak for the Republican Party do not believe this. Let's not fudge the difference or pretend that, were Kennedy around, he would have arranged for everyone to meet in the middle somehow.

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August 28, 2009

Honoring Kennedy?

By Eyal Press

"In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on healthcare reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American." So said Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia this morning in a tribute to his departed colleague, Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

As we all know, the shouting and name calling will not stop. Come September, if not sooner, Republicans will go right back to spreading fear and misinformation about any proposed healthcare bill (while at the same time complaining that Democrats are not "reaching across the aisle" to forge a bipartisan approach, as though this is possible with a party that wishes to sabotage any meaningful effort to reform the system).

But the question of whether Kennedy's legacy will be honored is not up to Republicans. It's up to Democrats. They control Congress. They control the White House. They have seen the polls showing that the public overwhelmingly supports giving people a choice by including a public option in any healthcare overhaul. Unfortunately, some of them have also been taking their advice from people like former Kennedy colleague Tom Daschle, the one-time South Dakota Senator turned disgraceful shill for the healthcare industry. As David Kirkpatrick of The Times reported earlier this week, Daschle has spent the past few months peddling the idea of nonprofit insurance co-ops as an alternative to the public option. He also happens to be a high-paid adviser to the clients of Alston & Bird, among which are various insurance, drug and hospital companies.

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August 27, 2009

Will Drones Make General Atomics the next Blackwater?

By Laura Flanders

A US drone firing missiles into a village in northern Pakistan killed at least 19 people over the weekend. The targets were militants, said the US military. The victims included six dead children, said a local tribal elder.

"Suspected US drone kills Suspected Taliban Commander." That's becoming the stuff of very suspect news stories. The reporting is so weak there's almost nothing confirmed except that the killer operator is far away in front of a computer screen.

Suspected killing of suspected people covered by unsuspicious media?  It would be sci-fi if it weren't so here-now, and it's only going to get more so.

The Democratic administration just made a big deal of cutting the cumbersome F-22 fighter jet. "We don't need it any more," said the President. What he didn't say is that the defense department is seeking $3.5 billion for unmanned aerial vehicles a.k.a. "drones." Funding is expected to increase to $55 billion by 2020. The air force is currently training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots.

Drones have been around since the US-led NATO war on the former Yugoslavia. Since '06, drones have launched hundred of missiles along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border killing as many as 700 civilians according to Pakistani officials.

Forbes magazine's "king of the armed drone makers" is a little known company called General Atomics whose founder James Neal Blue came up with the drone as a way of defeating Soviet-backed Sandinistas by blowing up oil pipelines in Nicaragua. He's a fervent anti-communist and quite possibly the next Erik Prince -- only his mercenaries aren't Blackwater's flesh and blood killers, but conveniently bloodless machines.

General Atomics is small by defense industry standards, but it has a lot of friends in Washington. Between 2000 and 2005, GA was the top corporate sponsor of privately funded congressional travel. So perhaps it's no surprise, there's little resistance to more drones in the US arsenal.

Drones are not cheap -- between $10 million and $12 million apiece per GA "Reaper." Their success rate is widely disputed. They kill civilians and even General David Petraeus admits, they make people hate us. But cynical political calculus is on General Atomics' side. 

President Obama has a problem.  Every American military commander wants more troops, but resistance among foot soldiers is growing and maybe, someday - someday - the president's anti-war base will make itself heard.

How to heed the commanders and quiet the critics simultaneously? Welcome to the super drone bonanza. The pilotless drone is the military's version of cash for very clunky policy.

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.
 

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August 26, 2009

What's Wrong With Washington

By Ari Berman

I've never met Heather Podesta. I've only spoken to her husband, Tony, once. But I found this Washington Post profile of her on Sunday incredibly distasteful. And I imagine I wasn't alone.

Sample quote from the "it girl" lobbyist, nonchalantly praising herself in third person: "This is a very good time to be a Democratic lobbyist...it's incredibly exciting to be able to engage with Democrats and really see things happen. It's always a good time to be Heather Podesta."

Wow, so much for modesty! It's not clear what things happening Podesta is referring to. The Post notes her clients include:

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August 25, 2009

Boycott Israel?

By Roane Carey

Mention boycott in a discussion of Israel, and chances are you'll find yourself the butt of vicious attacks. Israeli professor Neve Gordon elicited just such denunciations when he published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times last Thursday in support of the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS (read Naomi Klein's January Nation column supporting BDS here). After Gordon's op-ed was published, several Members of the Israeli Knesset demanded his firing. The president of Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, where he teaches, said he should seek employment, and a home, elsewhere. And he's received death threats.

Nation readers, particularly those who follow the Israel-Palestine conflict, will recognize Gordon as a longtime contributor to this magazine (disclosure: I've worked with Neve for years as his editor and am a friend as well). He didn't come by this position lightly. As he explains in the op-ed,

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

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August 24, 2009

Holder To Appoint Partial Torture Prosecutor

By Ari Melber

President Obama wanted this to be a quiet news week. "I have specific instructions from the President for the press corps -- he wants you to relax and have a good time," spokesman Bill Burton told reporters on Sunday. "Nobody is looking to make any news," he added, referencing the slow vacation schedule at Martha's Vineyard. Back in Washington, however, Attorney General Eric Holder was poised to appoint a prosecutor to investigate alleged torture during the Bush administration.

The Washington Post reports that Holder will appoint prosecutor John Durham to "examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws," a possibility that Newsweek first discussed in July. Accounts from both publications, however, predict a very narrow inquiry. The mandate, according to the new Post article, is only "to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees."

In his official statement, Holder said he felt compelled to respond to a newly completed, internal Justice Department report on "so-called enhanced interrogation techniques" by ordering the review:

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August 24, 2009

America's Super-Rich

By Eyal Press

So the New York Times reports today that America's ultra-wealthy may finally be feeling the pinch. "After 30-Year Run, Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall," David Leonhardt and Gerladine Fabrikant tell us, profiling the likes of John McAfee, the once-flush founder of the antivirus software company that bears his name, now down to a mere $4 million in net worth.

I suspect not many readers will pity McAfee, nor should they, since until recently the rich – and the super-rich in particular – literally never had it better. The economist Emmanuel Saez recently crunched the numbers and found that, between 1993 and 2006, roughly half of overall income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of all families. During the expansion overseen by George W. Bush, "the top 1 percent captured almost three-quarters of income growth." This was great for ordinary Americans, Republicans told us at the time. Except that it wasn't. According to Saez, real income for Americans in the bottom 99 percent increased by just 1.1 percent per year between 1993 and 2006. During the Bush expansion, it fell below 1 percent per year.

The shrinking fortunes of multi-millionaires such as McAfee will likely make it easy for Barack Obama to boast, in 2012, that he oversaw a decrease in the level of inequality. But the boast will be hollow if the main cause is merely that people who were extremely wealthy in 2006 became slightly less wealthy six years later. It will mean something only if policies are designed to benefit the vast number of Americans whose fortunes did not rise in tandem with the stock-market in recent years. A good place to start would be to quell the growing signs of unrest among the administration's progressive supporters by passing meaningful health-care reform.

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August 21, 2009

Joe Scarborough Is Shocked, Yet Awed by Single-Payer Logic

By Leslie Savan

Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday's Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you're right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine!

Well, he didn't use those exact words, but Joe did seem to finally get that America has granted insurance companies the right to create bottlenecks in the financing of healthcare in order to extract profits out of the suffering of ordinary people--without providing any actual healthcare whatsoever.

"Why are we paying profits for insurance companies?" Weiner asked Scarborough. "Why are we paying overhead for insurance companies? Why," he asked, bringing it all home, "are we paying for their TV commercials?"

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August 20, 2009

Baucus & Grassley Hijack Obama's Agenda

By Ari Berman

Barack Obama received 67 million votes in the last election. Senator Max Baucus of Montana received 349,000 votes when he ran for re-election last year. His Republican counterpart on the Senate Finance Committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, got just over a million votes when he last ran in '04.

So how, exactly, was Obama's landslide victory a mandate for Baucus and Grassley to hijack the president's agenda? When it comes to healthcare reform, trusting Baucus was the first mistake Obama made. Allowing Baucus to cede so much authority to Grassley is the second.

When Baucus became chairman of the Senate Finance Committee after Democrats recaptured Congress, many Democrats were justifiably worried. After all, Baucus helped shepherd through Congress two of President Bush's signature initiatives, his tax cuts and Medicare privatization plan. He received a ton of money from corporate lobbyists, many of whom were former staffers of his. In a Nation profile in early '07, I dubbed him "K Street's Favorite Democrat."

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August 18, 2009