State of Change

Hillary vs. The Israel Lobby

By Ari Berman

In her 2000 race for the US Senate, Hillary Clinton was loudly denounced by uncritical right-wing supporters of Israel for a 1999 trip to Ramallah, where she kissed Palestinian First Lady Suha Arafat and listened as Arafat denounced Israel (in Arabic). Pictures of "the kiss" were repeatedly slapped across the cover of the New York Post, in TV ads and invoked by the campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and Rick Lazio. The flap almost derailed Clinton's campaign.

Clinton learned her lesson and for nearly a decade afterward offered only boilerplate praise of Israel, which made her a favorite of the right-leaning Israel Lobby.

Now, as Secretary of State, she's forced to confront another reality: the difficulty of forging peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Anything she says that might be perceived as even slightly critical of Israel will land her in hot water with right-wingers back home. Just ask Chas Freeman, who Barack Obama appointed to head the National Intelligence Council despite fierce opposition from war-hungry neoconservatives.

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February 27, 2009

New MoveOn Director Backs The President, For a Change

By Ari Melber

Justin Ruben had a good meeting with President Obama last week.

As the new executive director of MoveOn.org, the 35-year-old Texan was invited to a small White House gathering for allies on February 18, where he brought a message from his five million members to the new President. "This is a moment to go big," he said, citing daily conversations with MoveOn activists. "We understand that's not going to be easy, but people are mobilized and willing to fight to make it happen. That's really what I carried with me into that room," he said. Ruben outlined MoveOn's goals, its Obama strategy and its mechanisms for grassroots accountability in an exclusive interview with The Nation this week, his first extensive discussion with the media since taking the helm of one of the largest progressive organizations in the country.

As executive director, Ruben must now take a network that has long battled bad ideas – impeaching Clinton, invading Iraq, gutting Social Security – and adapt it to supporting and broadening the administration's agenda. "We're in this amazing position now where we get to fight for stuff," he says. MoveOn's four "core" policy areas, decided by members during December house meetings, are economic recovery, universal health care, climate change and ending the Iraq war. "Finally our top priority," he enthused, "is winning real substantive changes that will make a difference in the lives of everyday Americans."

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February 27, 2009

Gary Locke: Militant (and Misguided) Free Trader

By John Nichols

It is frequently suggested that the Democratic Party, once fairly divided on the issue of trade policy, has moved in recent years toward the fair-trade camp. As such, while most Republicans continue to preach the free-trade orthodoxy of the 1990s with all the associated fantasia about a coming boom for U.S. manufacturers and farmers, relief of global poverty and the certain spread of democracy, Democrats are supposed to be the realists who recognize the failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement, granting permanent Most-Favored Nation status to China and other trade-related missteps of the Clinton years.

But for the critical position of Secretary of Commerce, which has a significant role in both the framing and advancement of trade policies, Obama has nominated former Washington Governor Gary Locke.

Obama says that Locke will be "a trusted voice in my Cabinet" on economic issues, while Locke says he'll make the Commerce Department -- which has traditionally been the corporate bastion in Democratic and Republican administrations -- an "active and integral partner" in shaping and promoting Obama's economic agenda.

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February 25, 2009

Jindal Doesn't Levitate to the Occasion

By Ari Berman

Ronald Reagan gave us "voodoo economics." Dennis Kucinich spotted a UFO. Credit Bobby Jindal for making "magnetic levitation" and "volcano monitoring" national buzzwords.

The Louisiana boy wonder has always been an eccentric fellow, converting from Hinduism to Catholicism in high school, changing his name from Piyush to Bobby and reportedly participating in an exorcism in college (at Brown, no less!). He's signed legislation as Governor of Louisiana to chemically castrate sex offenders and recently refused to accept extended unemployment benefits for his economically depressed state as part of the stimulus.

His folksy demeanor, on display in his response to Obama last night, helps to conceal his hard right politics.

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February 25, 2009

Stress-testing Us!

By Laura Flanders

So, before the government takes further steps to support the financial system, there will be a "stress test" to see how the biggest banks would do in an even weaker economy? I'll tell you who's being "stress tested." It's us.

If the banks need more, we're told, the government might have to act. But don't worry -- it won't be a government takeover. A takeover would be "surprising," the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp told CBS this week.

It won't be a takeover, oh no, because a takeover would be bad. That's the drumbeat of the week.

Economist Paul Krugman makes the point that it's not entirely un-American to nationalize the banks. He's right. It's happened in the past. The bigger point is that even as the public -- and markets -- panic about nationalization via "takeover," our government has already actually nationalized much of banking. At least the risky part.

Taxpayers have already relieved banks of the risk of banking by recapitalizing the banks that squandered their capital and buying up or guaranteeing those banks' bad debts.

The "takeover" on the table now is the takeover of the profits part. That's the potential profit earned on taxpayer funds.

That's not scary socialism any more than privatizing profits while socializing risks is free market capitalism. It is giving taxpayers a fair deal. Instead of scaring us, government should be reassuring us of just that.

If it requires taking over banks for Americans to get value for their investment -- well -- that's what its going to take, they could say. Instead, I guess someone out there is hoping that as long as this terror talk about terrible "takeovers" keeps up, the public will be too stressed to figure out what's at stake.

Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on Free Speech TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415) on cable (8 pm ET on Channel 67 in Manhattan) and online right here at GRITtv.org or streaming live on The Nation.com Mondays through Thursdays from noon to 2 pm ET.

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February 25, 2009

Solis Confirmed as Labor Secretary

By John Nichols

California Congresswoman Hilda Solis, the daughter of a Teamster who has spent much of her adult life marching, picketing and campaigning with trade unionists, has been confirmed as the Obama administration's Secretary of Labor.

Despite the many objections raised over the past month by Republican critics of the Solis nomination, she was approved Tuesday night by a comfortable 80 to 17 margin in the Senate.

Every Democratic senator backed Solis, as did 24 Republicans.

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February 24, 2009

It is Time to Confirm Hilda Solis

By John Nichols

Corporate America and its amen corner in Congress have worked overtime to deny Hilda Solis confirmation as Secretary of Labor.

But it looks like the California congresswoman's nomination will finally be approved by the full Senate tonight.

Republicans have agreed to a straight up-or-down vote this evening, and Solis is expected to win confirmation with relative ease -- despite the long and determined efforts of anti-labor senators to block her nomination.

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February 23, 2009

Obama Announces White House Internet Team

By Ari Melber

The White House rolled out another round of top staff on Monday afternoon, including a list of the tech-savvy aides heading the President's Internet and new media team.

Several of the President's "key White House staff," according to a press release from Robert Gibbs, will manage large portfolios for Internet outreach and "citizen participation" online. The list includes several veterans of Obama's presidential campaign, naturally, a former web adviser to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a former Google staffer who worked on the company's Moderator platform.

The White House press shop already made a wave, at least by Washington standards, when President Obama called on The Huffington Post at his first press conference. On a recent White House conference call for progressive bloggers, one new media aide said that calling on bloggers at presidential press conferences could be a "new tradition."

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February 23, 2009

Harry Reid Promises Republicans He'll Never Call Their Bluff

By Ari Melber

Senate Democrats are afraid to make their Republicans colleagues filibuster anything. I know, it seems like the Republicans filibuster everything, since key legislation is routinely subjected to a 60-vote requirement under the threat of a filibuster.Those filibuster threats are rarely called, however, so the minority party gets to exert leverage without looking obstructionist. After watching this absurdity playing out in the stimulus debate, people are calling on Sen. Reid to make the Republicans follow through and actually filibuster legislation -- go on the floor, waste time or talk endlessly -- and show this spectacle to the public. Now Reid has unveiled an official response: a historical memo arguing that he is all but powerless to tackle this problem. That is wrong.

According to Huffington Post's Ryan Grim, in an article that primarily covers Reid's view, the memo concludes that a senator who filibusters "can't be forced to keep talking for an indefinite period of time." Republicans could filibuster without actually having to talk much, goes the argument, so calling their bluff won't work. Grim's article, "The Myth Of The Filibuster: Dems Can't Make Republicans Talk All Night," also recalls one incident in 1988 when a talk-less filibuster worked. But it's all beside the point.

The problem, as many observers have documented, is that both parties have turned the once-rare filibuster into a regular requirement to pass major legislation.

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February 23, 2009

High Road for Human Rights: A Constitutional Recommitment

By John Nichols

Since stepping down as mayor of Salt Lake City, lawyer and veteran activist Rocky Anderson has been heading an education and advocacy project that he helped develop called the High Road for Human Rights.

With an advisory board made up of allies such as Ed Asner, Harry Belafonte, Daniel Ellsberg and Terry Tempest Williams, Anderson has stirred the pot on a host of civil liberties, executive accountability and constitutional fronts. Well-regarded on Capitol Hill, at least in in part because of his work on environmental issues -- he was named one of Business Week's top twenty advocates in the world on climate change -- Anderson has poured a great deal of energy into identifying the steps that must be taken to undo the damage done to basic liberties and protections during the Bush-Cheney era

This week, Anderson and his colleagues dispatched a thoughtful letter to President Obama and members of Congress in which they outlined an agenda for renewing America's commitment to the rule of law.

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February 21, 2009