The Notion

Brighton Beach Postcard

By D.D. Guttenplan

Brighton.

Short of sashaying over the waves, or flying Harry Potter's Nimbus 2000 (perhaps on loan from his good friend J.K. Rowling) into the Labour Party conference here yesterday, there wasn't much Gordon Brown could do to keep the British press from writing his political obituary. With an election due sometime before May, Labour is currently third in the opinion polls, trailing not just David Cameron's Conservatives but also the Liberal Democrats. Outside the Brighton Centre, a noisy handful of demonstrators shouting "Don't they know there's a bloody war on!" shuffled along the seafront, sharing sidewalk space with a more numerous assemblage from the postal workers' union, protesting government plans to sell off part of the Royal Mail. (The delay in postal deliveries from strike action in London meant that your correspondent's press credentials, mailed in mid August, still haven't arrived.)

On Monday Labour delegates cheered Peter Mandelson, who twice resigned from the cabinet in disgrace only to be drafted back last year by an increasingly desperate Brown, when he told them "If I can come back ... we can come back." And they loved it when Mandelson, architect of the postal sell-off and master of all political dark arts, told them "this election was still up for grabs." Brown's job was to make them believe it.

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September 30, 2009

Punch in the Streets, Not in the Suites at G-20

By Laura Flanders

The G20 summit wrapped up in Pittsburgh Friday with pledges but little punch. Except in the streets.

On climate change, world leaders vowed "strong action" and on the economy, "balanced economic growth." The summit endorsed granting more voting rights at the IMF and World Bank to ‘underrepresented' countries like CHINA. With a billion people and the world's second largest economy -- China may budge up from having 3.6% of all votes.

Underrepresented booming countries may get a bigger voice in global finance. Nice. But under-represented people? Well there's the rub.

Around 200 people were arrested during the two-day Pittsburgh summit.  Heavy policing seems to be the only plan world leaders have come up with for shutting reality out.

Reality, for those in the streets, not the suites, of the world, is a whole new economy -- way more than a downturn -- and the prospect of long-term, possibly permanent, unemployment.

Read the papers, and the stats are all there. In the US, job seekers now outnumber job openings six to one. Official unemployment stands at 9.7 percent, its highest level in 26 years. If you're a teenager, it's over 25 percent. No reason there to shun protest for fear of ruining your job prospects, they're grim and only getting grimmer. That's if radicals like Paul Craig Roberts, a former officer of the Reagan Administration, are to be believed.

If measured according to the methodology used when he was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Roberts says "the unemployment rate today in the US is above 20%. Moreover, there is no obvious way of reducing it."

Consumer spending -- the engine that drove 70 % of the US economy and by extension much of the world's -- isn't coming back. And that's just the way it's going to be, President Obama's chief economic adviser Larry Summers told the BBC (my sister, actually) in Pittsburgh.

"The US can't, shouldn't and won't continue to experience the consumption-led growth of the past few years." said Summers. And the world -- and we -- should just adjust...

The message is pledge-on! Endorse "strong action" on climate and "balanced growth." But all those poor people out of work? They'll just have to adjust.

While banks are doling out cash by the millions to kill any new regulation of Wall St. (which clearly has its heart set on making another buck off all that poverty...) There is one part of the economy that seems actually to be getting stimulated: Policing. If ever civil society finds a voice and decides actually to wield it, they'll be ready. How else to reign in reality, for lawd's sake?

Laura Flanders, is 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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September 29, 2009

Lose the Love/Hate, But Keep the Hope.

By Melissa Harris-Lacewell

It seems Eyal and Richard have thrown down the gauntlet with their criticisms of the emotional, irrational, fact-proof fantasies that seem to characterize contemporary politics in the United States.

Richard's piece asks for emotional maturity in our politics. I only partially agree. Yes, we need to halt the characterizations of Obama as savior or as anti-Christ. And we similarly should moderate our memories of the Bush years as evil or perfect. Still, I believe that the Obama win is important precisely because it injects a certain emotional valence into our electoral politics: a much needed revival of American hope. Obama won, in part, by encouraging us to feel good, to be optimistic, and to believe. The problem is when we direct that hope and belief onto the character/candidate rather than investing that optimism in the movement itself.

There is a way to hold onto hard won optimism while still demonstrating emotional restraint in the public sphere. There are some ways to intervene in this moment with optimism and effort.

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September 28, 2009

Ending the Cycle of Presidential Love and Hate

By Richard Kim

Eyal's post juxtaposes the irrational views an alarming number of Republicans have about Barack Obama (a Kenyan-Muslim-Socialist-Hitler!) with the conspiracy theory--apparently held by 25 percent of Democrats--that Bush let 9/11 happen to justify a march to war. Fair enough, but I'm not sure you need to graze that far afield to find a left-right correspondence.

The first time I encountered a fantastic, fact-proof theory about Obama was during primary season. It was at a debate-watching party where an acquaintance of mine, an Obama-volunteer, hissed at Hillary Clinton's response to a question about same-sex marriage. "She's such a homophobe!" the woman exclaimed. I felt the need to correct the record.

"She's not really any more anti-gay or pro-gay than Obama. Neither of them back gay marriage, for example," I pointed out.

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September 28, 2009

The Wisdom of the Public

By Eyal Press

It's been a rough week for those of us who believe that only a tiny minority of Americans hold ludicrous and outrageous views. As this distressing survey by Public Policy Polling revealed, the belief that Barack Obama was born outside the United States is inching toward becoming a majority view among Republicans (43 percent are on board). The belief that George W. Bush let 9/11 happen to justify marching the US into war is espoused by one-in-four Democrats.

So it's true: a lot of Americans in both parties are willing to believe wacky and irrational things about their opponents. It's apparently not enough to judge someone misguided or erroneous. One has to see either Bush or Obama as the Anti-Christ (a view that curries favor among roughly ten percent of voters).

But before too much despair sets in among people who consider themselves rational-minded, take a look at the CBS NEWS/New York Times poll on health care and Afghanistan published today. According to the poll, 76 percent of Americans believe Republicans have not explained their plans to overhaul the health care system. And 59 percent believe Obama has not clearly explained his plans.

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September 25, 2009

OOPS! The ACORN Ban Could Snag Lockheed & Catholic Charities

By Laura Flanders

Continuing the GOP's attack on the poor people's organizing group ACORN, the House and Senate -- by wide margins -- have voted to bar ACORN from receiving federal funding on account of fraudulent activity.

Let's hope the legislators enjoy their gloat and then get right back to business.  Passed in a flurry of bloviating bluster, The Defund ACORN law is written so broadly that it just could come in very handy.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D of Florida) has already asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to find out which other contractors might be caught in the ACORN ban-net.

When it comes to fraud felons receiving federal funds -- Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman top the list, with 20 fraud cases between them. Where military contractors go, the cash-for-killers at Blackwater (now XE) are rarely far behind. (Indeed, see Jeremy Scahill's story.) And then there's Halliburton and the magically disappeared federal cash for troop services and Iraq reconstruction. (Has anyone seen that $9 billion? )

Fraud by recipients of the $750 billion financial bailout program is bound to show up soon. Earlier this year, federal investigators said they had opened 20 criminal probes into possible securities fraud, tax violations, insider trading and other crimes by TARP recipients.

If Congress - including scores of Democrats --  can get this hot and bothered over the $50 million ACORN's supposed to have received over the past 15 years they're going to become hysterical about the BILLIONS received by banks in the blink of a brokers' eyelid.

Not to be left out, several supposedly faith-based groups, recipients of federal grants, currently stand accused of misspending taxpayer cash to cover for child-molesting clergy.

To name just one, in at least two cities Catholic Charities stands accused of using federal funds to settle or cover up sex abuse charges, but that didn't stop Catholic Charities from receiving a federal government contract this August for $100 million to work with victims of natural disasters.

Bankers, brokers, bomb-makers, and let us not forget the child molesters...  This could all get very interesting very fast. I can hardly wait to turn on the television. Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck. Who's going to be first with the outrage?

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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September 25, 2009

Chris Wallace Goes Beck to the Future

By Leslie Savan

The headline out of Chris Wallace's tirade at President Obama for appearing on every Sunday talk show except his Fox News Sunday was that he called Obama's staff "the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington." But elsewhere in the rant, which aired on The O'Reilly Factor last week, Wallace let spill a sequence of numbers that revealed just how deranging life in the Foxhole can be for a transplanted "mainstream" reporter.

Wallace was taking the Fox line that the Obama administration condescends toward folks like the protesters at the 9/12 rally in Washington:

WALLACE: When you have David Axelrod go on Face the Nation and denigrate the million or, I don't know, 100,000--thousands and tens of thousands of people who came here into the streets of Washington to protest--

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September 25, 2009

U of Cal Budget Protests Draw Thousands

By Jon Wiener

Thursday was a "Day of Action" against draconian budget cuts at the University of California campuses, and thousands of people rallied in protest at all ten campuses. At UC Berkeley, 5,000 students and workers, along with many faculty members, rallied at noon. At the same hour at UCLA, 700 students and workers and a few faculty members gathered at Bruin Plaza. And 500 rallied at UC Irvine, which Time magazine described as "normally placid."

The normally placid UC Irvine is where I teach.

The best sign I saw at the UCI rally read "If I wanted to go to a private school, I would have been born into a rich family."

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September 25, 2009

Ricky Martin Fights Human Trafficking at Clinton Summit

By Ari Melber

New York, NY – When Ricky Martin took the stage at the Clinton Global Initiative on Thursday, he did not sing, or dance, or even flash his trademark grin. Following the same stage directions as dozens of other celebrities who dropped by Clinton's 5th annual global summit, from Brad Pitt to Bono to Jessica Alba, Martin struck a somber note while discussing the fight against human trafficking.

"I feel that my heart is going to come out of my mouth," he said, recounting his sadness for the "millions of children that didn't make it." Martin was followed by testimony from a woman who, along with her two children, was kidnapped and held for four years of forced labor. Then Luis CdeBaca, a former counsel to Rep. John Conyers who now serves as President Obama's chief diplomat for combating human trafficking, explained that between 12 and 27 million people are enslaved around the world today. In its official materials, The Clinton Global Initiative notes that the higher estimates mean there are more people enslaved "than at any other time in human history," though that's the kind of factoid that says more about population growth than the scope of the problem. But the numbers are daunting by any measure. And the policy experts who huddled on Thursday stressed that many obvious measures to combat trafficking are simply not being applied.

About 90 percent of countries do not have dedicated police units for investigating trafficking, according to Clinton's organization, and many governments simply look the other way. Only one out of three governments around the world provide basics like emergency phone lines for children and families who do not know where to turn when faced with a kidnapping.

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September 24, 2009

Nonprofits Gamble - and Lose

By Eyal Press

Back in March, I wrote a story documenting the financial meltdown's calamitous impact on the nonprofit sector. I neglected to mention one important reason for this: the reckless behavior of nonprofits themselves.

As Stephanie Strom documents in The Times today, many nonprofits spent the past two decades doing their best imitation of hedge funds. Interest-rate arbitrage, auction-rate securities, complex swaps: these were among the practices in which nonprofits engaged, taking advantage of a change in the tax code that allowed charities easy access to credit markets. Strom offers the example of New York Law School, which in 2006 floated $135 million in auction-rate securities and sold its library for roughly the same amount ($136.5 million), using the money not to build a library but to pad its endowment and borrow for construction.

Now, many of the same nonprofits are drowning in debt that will result in museums being shut down, services being slashed, staff being cut. Some will presumably end up bankrupt or foreclosed, an unfortunate fate for which they have only themselves to blame.

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September 24, 2009