Author: Madman in the Marketplace

Liberal Street Fighter

Oh my, I don’t know how any of the rest of us would survive such a pernicious, exploitive environment:

Forget the minimum wage. Or outsourcing jobs overseas. The labor issue most on the minds of members of Congress yesterday was their own: They will have to work five days a week starting in January.

The horror.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to.

“I have bad news for you,” Hoyer told reporters. “Those trips you had planned in January, forget ’em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th.”

The reporters groaned. “I know, it’s awful, isn’t it?” Hoyer empathized.

If you want to know how damned out-of-touch DC is, there’s an indication for you right there. But wait, you haven’t heard the members of the Republican Party bitchin’ yet … you know, the guys who like to lecture about productivity and hard work, especially when they’re undermining the lives of poor people who actually DO work.  Check THIS out:

Hoyer said members can bid farewell to extended holidays, the kind that awarded them six weekdays to relax around Memorial Day, when most Americans get a single day off. He didn’t mention the month-long August recess, the two-week April recess or the weeks off in February, March and July.

He said members need to spend more time in the Capitol to pass laws and oversee federal agencies. “We are going to meet sufficient times, so the committees can do their jobs on behalf of the American people,” he said.

For lawmakers within a reasonable commute of Washington, longer weeks are not a burden — although they are likely to cut into members’ fundraising and campaigning activities. But for members from Alaska and Hawaii, the West Coast, or rural states, the new schedule will mean less time at home and more stress.

“Keeping us up here eats away at families,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.”

Hey, asshole, tell that to the mothers and fathers working long days without overtime, or two or three jobs, people who never get to SEE their families!

Just how burdensome will this new schedule be?

Next year, members of the House will be expected in the Capitol for votes each week by 6:30 p.m. Monday and will finish their business about 2 p.m. Friday, Hoyer said.

Gentle readers, I bet a lot of you wish that was YOUR work week, don’t you? Don’t forget that much of that time will consist of schmoozing and getting pictures taken, having lobbyists clap them on the back and promise them a nice vacation conference that they’re going to fly to on somebody else’s dime. Don’t forget your nice clubs, Representative!

Other than the minimum wage (which will be increased much less than it needs to be, and over an extended period of time), little of this extra time will be spent helping people who ACTUALLY work for a living, especially considering who Nancy “liberalism is off the table” Pelosi is bringing in to instruct the caucus on the measures our economy Wall Street needs to get cookin’! While they make sure Wall Street is kowtowed to, that little wage increase will …

… some low-income workers and their advocates say the wage increase won’t affect many workers and is not a way out of poverty for minimum wage workers. Since the last hike, wages for most of the lowest-paid workers have risen above the federal minimum wage, while prices for necessities such as housing and transportation have grown faster.

“We should be aware that this is an extremely moderate proposal,” said Jared Bernstein, senior economist of the Economic Policy Institute.

The minimum wage hike, which Democrats have put at the top of their agenda when the next Congress convenes in January, would affect 1.9 million hourly workers who make minimum wage and workers who get tips, who can make less than minimum wage. It would raise wages for an estimated 6.5 million workers or 4 percent of the work force … janitors, waitstaff, security guards, cashiers and store clerks … according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Adjusting for inflation, the minimum wage of $5.15 is at its lowest level since 1955. By 2009, a $7.25 minimum wage would have the spending power of $6.75 today, Bernstein calculated using Congressional Budget Office projections.

A wage increase to $7.25 would help, but “it wouldn’t put anybody in the clear,” said Cara Prince, 41, of Louisville, Kentucky. She has been working for a temporary agency for two years, doing factory, warehouse and restaurant work at $6 an hour.

“There’s a whole lot I can’t do,” because of the low pay, she said. “By the time they take taxes out, there’s nothing left. Just $23 a day.”

But the proposed increase “is not a solution to poverty,” said Matt Fellowes, a scholar at the Brookings Institute. “This is, for the most part, a symbolic effort,” he said.

In other words, it’s a con. Just another con of the “other white meat” political party that really cares not a whit for people who do real work, for people who actually drive the economy, for the drones that move the paper around that serves to keep score for the extractor class, those who are only chits on the gameboards of the grifters and confidence men who rule the investor class roost.

  “At $5.15an hour, you can’t really extend yourself, you only exist,” he said. McCowan worked for four years as a day laborer, making $5.15 an hour, before landing a $6an-hour job at a community center.

With the roughly $80 a week a full-time worker would have after the federal wage hike, “You’re able to afford a telephone, able to pay your light bill on time, able to pay your rent,” he said.

If there are two people at home “it will allow you to put a little more food on the table, sustain yourself a little bit better than before,” McCowan said. “You will be able to relieve a lot of the stress.”

Stagnating wages for unskilled workers coupled with increased housing costs have put more working people at risk of being homeless. For instance, about 28 percent of homeless adults in Louisville, Kentucky homeless shelters are working, according to the Louisville Coalition for the Homeless.

Rep. Kingston, out here in the real, getting-grayer-all-the-time REAL world, it is increasingly clear that NONE of you “could care less about families”. Think about that as you park your well-paid and well-bribed ass in the no-doubt leather executive’s chair in your well-appointed office.

Liberal Street Fighter

Washington D.C. — Madman I. T. Marketplace caused a stir today when he took the oath of office, placing his hands on a fine leatherbound edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

“I’ve found this book to be a fine and insightful source of moral instruction and good illustrations of how to live a moral life,” Mr. Marketplace said.

Conservatives across the country reacted in outrage, disturbed that Mr. Marketplace had spurned the traditional collection of fairy stories. Dennis Prager was especially vocal on his radio program.

“America is interested in only one book, the Bible.” […] he added “If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.”

Mr. Marketplace smiled when informed of Mr. Prager’s objections. “My book instructs me that wicked people who spout falsehoods generally come to messy ends. I suggest to Mr. Prager that he stay out of dark woods and secluded cabins.”

Liberal Street Fighter

We seem eager, desperate, to throw away the freedoms we imperfectly hold in this country. So little that needs to be said ever actually GETS said, yet so many want everybody to just shut up:

MANCHESTER – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a “different set of rules” may be needed to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

“We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade,” said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP’s takeover of Congress in 1994.

Never mind, you idiot, that 9/11 happened BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO NEEDED TO TALK TO EACH OTHER DIDN’T. Yes, yes, that’s not a case of public speech, but it’s still on point. A democratic republic can only function if there is MORE speech happening, not less. Does this idiot not understand that terror cells will find ways to communicate, that silencing EVERYBODY in the hope of making things harder for them is a fool’s game?
Gingrich isn’t talking about how to make us safe, not really. He’s talking about maintaining control. Control for his authoritarian party. Oh, and what “speech” SHOULD be protected?

Gingrich sharply criticized campaign finance laws he charged were reducing free speech and doing little to fight attack advertising. He also said court rulings over separation of church and state have hurt citizens’ ability to express themselves and their faith.

His fans are floating his name as a potential PRESIDENTIAL candidate, yet the only freedom that concerns him is keeping campaign donations rolling in and making sure that the religious (the right kind of religious people, of course, not those scary OTHER religious people) amongst us have more and more influence over public life in this country.

Does anybody have any doubt WHO would be silenced in Gingrich’s brave new world? It sure wouldn’t be voices from the rabid right. It would be people who question the status quo, of course, and I bet they start with people already on their lists. Gingrich is considered one of the leading THINKERS on the right, and that should frighten us all.

Behind all of their bromides and lectures about goodness, the right worships destruction, exploitation and the cultivation of hatred and bigotry. They rely upon ignorance, and there is no better way to foster ignorance than to deny speech, to ban books. Silencing speech will not make us safe. It won’t bring back the dead, or stop extremists from hatching their plans or rebuild destroyed buildings. What it will do is enable more criminal wars, more looting of the public treasury, more expansions of the already-too-big police state. Beneath Gingrich’s professorial demeanor is the rictus grin of the authoritarian. His idiotic suggestions need to be roundly condemned … while we still have a public square that ALLOWS us to condemn them.

Woman faces fines for wreath peace sign

Do you think you are free to do as you please with YOUR private property? Well, not if you’re in a development with crazy people:

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

“Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up,” he said in a telephone interview Sunday.

Lisa Jensen said she wasn’t thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, “Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing.”

I’m sure that a big huge yellow ribbon stuck to the slab of concrete would be perfectly fine.
This sort of herd-like behavior isn’t uniquely American, of course, but it is sadly endemic for a country that pats itself on the back for being “free”. Those who’re most loud about being patriotic, or being “good Christians”, are often the most thin-skinned about being confronted by something that is, or is imagined to be, “offensive”. Often remarkably easily bruised, these people often object based on weird beliefs and conspiracy theories, like the continual insistence that the peace symbol is “satanic”. Some call it “Nero’s Cross”, an inverted cross or the “witch’s foot”.  The symbol was actually designed by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist and a graduate of the Royal College of Arts and was meant to invoke the semophore symbols for “N” and “D”, standing for nuclear disarmament.

Gerald Holtom, a conscientious objector who had worked on a farm in Norfolk during the Second World War, explained that the symbol incorporated the semaphore letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament). He later wrote to Hugh Brock, editor of Peace News, explaining the genesis of his idea in greater, more personal depth:

I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it.

Eric Austin added his own interpretation of the design: “the gesture of despair had long been associated with the death of Man and the circle with the unborn child.”

The symbol went on to become a broader symbol for peace as counter-culture demonstrations spread:

The symbol almost at once crossed the Atlantic. Bayard Rustin, a close associate of Martin Luther King had come over from the US in order to take part in that first Aldermaston March. He took the symbol back to the United States where it was used on civil rights marches. Later it appeared on anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and was even seen daubed in protest on their helmets by American GIs. Simpler to draw than the Picasso peace dove, it became known, first in the US and then round the world as the peace symbol. It appeared on the walls of Prague when the Soviet tanks invaded in 1968, on the Berlin Wall, in Sarajevo and Belgrade, on the graves of the victims of military dictators from the Greek Colonels to the Argentinian junta, and most recently in East Timor.

Many Americans would rather wallow in their ignorance and preconceptions, so these niggling little details would matter not a whit to Ms. Jensen’s neighbors. What matters to them are the cozy little myths and superstitions that protect their narrow little worldviews. Use the cross to “support the troops” … that would doubtless be okay. Scatter little mangers or Santas or reindeer around to your heart’s content, but if you dare to stumble across the easily-bruised psyches of these disturbed people then you may find some representative of authority telling you what you can do with your land, and what thoughts you’re allowed to share with the world around you.

Free thought isn’t welcome in the land of the blind and ignorant.

Liberal Street Fighter

Oh, THE HORROR:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who runs the giant agency that keeps track of threats to the United States, has shared what he calls his “chilling vision” of the future – a time when U.S. government actions might be constrained by international law.

Chertoff outlined his nightmare scenario in a Nov. 17 speech to the Federalist Society, an organization of right-wing lawyers who spearheaded the legal arguments for granting President George W. Bush authority unbound by any law, including the constitutional rights of Americans.

But the focus of Chertoff’s warning was that the United States is under growing pressure from legal scholars and the world community to comply with international law, especially on war crimes and humane treatment of detainees in the “war on terror.”

“The fact is, whether we like it or not, international law is increasingly entering our domestic domain,” Chertoff said.

The culprits, according to Chertoff, include a narrow majority of the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court has begun to bring it through cases like Hamdan,” a reference to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in which the high court cited the Geneva Conventions in ruling that hundreds of suspects being held without charges at Guantanamo Bay had legal rights.

Chertoff objected to the Supreme Court’s reference to the Geneva Conventions despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution states that treaties entered into by the U.S. government are the “supreme law of the land” and all four Geneva Conventions were long ago signed by the U.S. Executive and ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Chertoff also protested the mounting worldwide legal criticism of the U.S. government.

“International law is being used as a rhetorical weapon against us,” Chertoff said. “We are constantly portrayed as being on the losing end, and the negative end of international law developments.”

How DARE those damned foreigners use pesky wounding WORDS against the right-by-definition American government?!?!

Can’t everybody see how terrible this is? State sanctioned ghouls, vampires, werewolves, psycho killers have to go about their business, and how are they supposed to do that if the happy meals on legs start fighting back with fancy words and guys in robes?

What Chertoff’s speech highlighted is the growing transatlantic divide between two visions of the world. The Bush administration’s view is that national sovereignty – often defined by the dictates of the so-called “unitary executive” – is held as inviolable. Meanwhile, the EU views national sovereignty as secondary to principles of environmental protection, human rights and individual dignity.

Under the European concept, authority is shared and fragmented in a way that both protects the rights of the individual and ensures that no member state of the EU could develop the sort of arbitrary power needed to institute an authoritarian government.

In the Bush administration’s view, international law in no way constrains actions of the U.S. President. Bush, who calls himself The Decider, can personally decide whose phone will be tapped, whose medical records are gathered, who will be detained without charges and who will subjected to “alternative” interrogation methods, such as waterboarding.

Bush’s own opinion about international law is one of contempt. When asked once if the occupation of Iraq violated U.N. or other legal principles, Bush joked, “International law? I better call my lawyer.”

After all, where is the Waterboarder In Chief supposed to get his snuff films if someone stands up to him? High Def updates on torture, death, destruction and despair are SO much better than blowing up frogs.

Liberal Street Fighter

One thing you can say for the right-wing mind … it’s consistant in it’s reliance upon hoary old myths:

Flee Iraq, relive shame of Vietnam

The folks who believe the Iraq war looks increasingly like the Vietnam War are right.

At least the part where the United States pulls out and leaves millions of people hanging out to dry. That part where the war comes to a dishonorable, murderous end. Like on the day, April 30, 1975, that America broke its promises to millions of South Vietnamese and jumped ship. The day on which hysterical Vietnamese civilians and officials were crowding a ladder to the top of the U.S. Embassy, pleading for a seat on the last American helicopter out. The day that crowds of Vietnamese swarmed the embassy gate, crying for escape or protection, as North Vietnamese tanks approached. The day that uncounted thousands turned into freedom-seeking boat people.

Yes, yes, that terrible shame of a war-mongering imperialist power forced to retreat by dirty hippies, commie reporters and spitting college girls. That noble freedom that was advanced by the propping up of one corrupt puppet government after another, a war launched by lies, broadened by lies, prosecuted with lies.

We abandoned millions of people to be stripped of their freedoms, imprisoned for their beliefs or slaughtered by a monstrous, tyrannical regime. It was one of the most shameful days in American history. It was our own day of infamy.

Blame public opinion for bringing shame on ourselves. Public opinion demanded a Congress that simply decided to choke the life out of the South Vietnamese. Yes, the Iraq war is beginning to look a whole lot like the Vietnam War.

Wingers have strange ideas about what constitutes shame. Lying about the nature of our imperialism isn’t shameful. Slaughtering untold thousands of innocent people isn’t a shame:

This is not to minimize the sacrifice of those who have fought or died in Iraq, but in World War II, almost 300,000 American military personnel died in combat, as compared to nearly 3,000 in the Iraq war. (More than 47,000 died in Vietnam and nearly 34,000 in the Korean War.) Civilian deaths in World War II amounted to at least 38 million, compared with the 30,000 to 60,000 by UN and other reliable estimates in Iraq. (The recent, ridiculous 600,000 estimate by researchers from John Hopkins is not included among the reliable.)

[note: experts beg to differ with this moron on the question of “reliable”]

This is not to diminish the importance of any life; its value is not set by the number of people who die with you.

But it is to make the point that the cost of defending the freedom of millions in the Middle East has been somewhat less than Pelosi and crew would have it.

Turning young men and women into corpses or broken and battered survivors isn’t a shame. Turning some of them into monsters isn’t a shame, or unleashing those who already showed signs of being monsters. Nope, the shame is “losing” or “retreating”, no matter how hopeless the cause, no matter how much more meat will be fed into a grinder that shouldn’t have been activated in the first place. The shame is in failing to escalate into full-out genocide if that is what is necessary to accomplish “winning” and “freedom” … after all, it worked in the American West, didn’t it? Manifest Destiny marches on, after all, and we exceptional Americans have no choice to wade into our designated enemies (and any innocents in the way) like Gabriel swinging his bloody angel’s sword. Carnage is God’s work, and we’ll be damned (literally) if human decency or the basic good sense to see it’s hopeless will allow us to be stayed from our righteous course.

The right has bled this country dry for decades with this myth, this myth of “winning” bloody occupations. People of principle and decency failed to make the case against this behavior after the pile of war crimes that was the Vietnam “conflict”, and they’ve failed so far leading into this debacle. J. S. Paine makes the point that it’s past time to make the case THIS time, so that in another generation we’re not being bullied into another war with tales of how terrible Cindy Sheehan and Nancy Pelosi were when we “lost” an Iraqi war that was actually lost at the very moment Bush started it:

Indeed, where is the root blowing charge we need to place at the stump of each one of these brutal gun play interventions? We need right here and now to stop the insanity from happening again. But we haven’t even begun to set the charges — in fact I suspect most of us dare not set any charges — because, as Max writes, “Criticism of imperialism can still be painted as ‘anti-American.'” He’s dead right. He continues, “The only safe way to do it [i.e. attack the American empire project] is as a conservative or libertarian.”

But doesn’t the horrendous debacle that the Iraq escapade has become give us progs the means to beat the empire’s battle apes senseless in the public square, right now, even as they still grapple like ruthless futile imbeciles with their sand hydra? To free ourselves and our future from these horrors repeating twice every generation, we must wave the bloody shirt of this present monstrous carnage like raft-bound castaways trying to flag down a passing ship.

Flashback to the low 70’s: the “anti-imperialists” lost the Nambo post-mortem, didn’t they? The GI’s were near rebellion in 1970, but by 1980, these same vets had joined the white-trash roar for Reagan. The Nixon white house did it up brown. Man, were they good, what with the brilliant MIA cult, and the fabricated Jane College anti-vet spitskrieg. In spite of Dick’s personal and temporary disgrace and fall, his pattern of goverence and his notion of national entitlement passed through the gauntlet without a scratch.

As Hunter T wrote in ’72, “we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen, with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.” Yes, this rabid vicious national moment was “lived with” and we were lullabyed to sleep each night with hands still soaked in foreign blood.

The FIRST step toward making amends for this crime, for Vietnam, for so many other imperial invasions and expansions and assasinations and coups, is to finally build the case for us to become a civilized, compassionate people who can finally say “enough”. Enough to the shame brought upon us by the Charles Grainers and Lt. Calley’s and Henry Kissingers and George Bushes and Lyndon Johnsons and Richard Nixons and Dick Cheneys. Perhaps we can start to undo the shame brought upon us by the shallowness with which far too many of us fall for the lies of murderers, eager to bask in the warm glow of their glory, washed in the blood they spill in waves.

The shame was in starting this damnable war, a shame that can only be redeemed by a heart-felt promise that we will never do it again.

Liberal Street Fighter

Some years ago, at Jones Beach on Long Island, I was lucky enough to attend a WOMAD show. One of my strongest memories of the day was watching the band Ashkhabad from Turkmenistan on the second stage. They fused instrumentation and rhythms from so many of the cultures that traveled along the Silk Road. There we were, mostly middle-class Americans who had probably had never heard of their country, yet they had us dancing and singing along with them, eagerly repeating back the lyrics we didn’t understand in an enthusiastic call and response.

So much great music, fellowship and openness that day, sung in so many languages. WOMAD, of course, is one of the gifts given to us by Peter Gabriel, who described their mission:

“Pure enthusiasm for music from around the world led us to the idea of WOMAD in 1980 and thus to the first WOMAD festival in 1982. The festivals have always been wonderful and unique occasions and have succeeded in introducing an international audience to many talented artists.

“Equally important, the festivals have also allowed many different audiences to gain an insight into cultures other than their own through the enjoyment of music. Music is a universal language, it draws people together and proves, as well as anything, the stupidity of racism.”

For his work with WOMAD, his Real World Records and humanitarian work to help people find common ground through music and art, Peter Gabriel was honored as a Man of Peace at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates:

Gabriel was recognized for his work promoting human rights and world peace. He received the award in a ceremony on Rome’s Capitoline Hill that marks the opening of a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates organized every year in Rome by the Gorbachev Foundation and city hall.

Music has been a real blessing in my life, and opened my eyes to more beauty, joy, sadness, loss, opportunity and broad human experience than I could have otherwise ever dreamed. Gabriel has always been one of my favorites, and I’m glad to see him recognized for his work helping to spread this most wonderful of human creations, music, the doorway through which we can pass to know one another a little better, the glue with which we can hold together a better world.

The random music soothing my savage breast after you hit “read more”:

1. “That’s Just What You Are” – Aimee Mann
2. “Beyond Love” – The The
3. “Goodbye Stranger” – Supertramp
4. “Once Upon A Time She Said” – Allison Moorer
5. “Sunset” – Roxy Music
6. “Brighton Rock” – Queen
7. “One On The House” – Allison Moorer
8. “All Tomorrow’s Parties” – Velvet Underground
9. “Communication Breakdown” – Led Zeppelin
10. “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” – Lucinda Williams

Liberal Street Fighter

The outrageous abuse of power in a UCLA library is about more than just brutish police repeatedly attacking a student with a Taser. Equally important is the catalyst for this confrontation:

According to a campus police report, the incident began when community service officers, who serve as guards at the library, began their nightly routine of checking to make sure everyone using the library after 11 p.m. is a student or otherwise authorized to be there.

Campus officials said the long-standing policy was adopted to ensure students’ safety.

When Tabatabainejad, 23, refused to provide his ID to the community service officer, the officer told him he would have to show it or leave the library, the report said.

Like docile sheep, too many Americans buy these arguments.

On campus Wednesday, many students said they were surprised by news of the incident.

“UCLA is a very peaceful campus,” said Chen Mei, a third-year political science student from Laguna Hills. “I study in Powell Library at night all the time. I’ve seen people without ID cards who are removed. But none of the time has it been this dramatic.”

Karen Jou, a second-year student from Orange, said the campus police “usually are really good.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that would have happened here,” she said. “It’s really odd.”

Julia Newbold, a third-year English literature major from Walnut Creek, said her impression from her limited contact with campus police was good.

“They seem like a peacekeeping force,” she said. “I’m really surprised to hear they had to resort to something like that. It sounds a little too forceful to me to Taser someone.”

HAD TO?!?! PEACEKEEPING FORCE?!?!

All of this, in a supposedly free country.
Afraid of drunk drivers? Please submit to random checkpoints happily … after all, it will keep you safe.

Think you have the right to travel freely within the borders of this free nation? Better be ready to identify yourself when near the US/Canadian border, or if you are within certain areas of the desert Southwest. It’s not an intrusion, NO, we NEED to allow our law enforcement officers to keep us safe from terrorists and drugs! After all, what do you have to hide?

Planning on traveling overseas? You may need permission first, even to take your love on a cruise ship.

As we come closer and closer to requiring national ID cards, as our corrupt political establishment seeks to limit the right to vote, demanding ID cards to carry out the most basic freedom in a democracy, how can we as a people so blithely submit to this growing, insidious encroachment?

We surrender to these demands, empowering people with weapons and badges to enforce greater and greater restrictions on our movements, our civil liberties, our ability to act as free citizens. We surrender to people who often have disturbing histories of abusing their authority, resulting in injury and death when some hapless citizen rouses their ire. We surrender to the watchmen, and then act surprised when they abuse their power. Just ask some of the students at UCLA:

During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would “get Tased too.” At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.

He’s keeping them safe, after all, and how DARE you question how he chooses to exercise his “protective” actions?

“I realize when looking at these kind of arrest tapes that they don’t always show the full picture. … But that six minutes that we can watch just seems like it’s a ridiculous amount of force for someone being escorted because they forgot their BruinCard,” said Ali Ghandour, a fourth-year anthropology student.

“It certainly makes you wonder if something as small as forgetting your BruinCard can eventually lead to getting Tased several times in front of the library,” he added.

Edouard Tchertchian, a third-year mathematics student, said he was concerned that the student was not offered any other means of showing that he was a UCLA student.

Whether you’re walking down the street and you happen upon a cop who thinks you might be drunk, or you’re going to the library or driving or using public transportation, you’d better be careful if a man with a uniform, badge and weapon demands that you prove that you have the right to be doing what you’re doing, that you can show who you are. You’d better be especially careful if you’re of middle-eastern dissent, or black, or hispanic, for failing to respond quickly enough, or to have an ID on you rather than forgotten on your dresser at home, or you could be in for a beating, or “non-lethal” torture, or even death.

All of this, here in the land of the free. Show that ID, or else …

Liberal Street Fighter

photo by Kat Berger via mkeonline dot com

Senator Schumer, doing his usual appropriation of rightwing talking points, was quoted in the LA Times recently: (Democrats need to) “push aside the special interests and always keep our eye on the average American family.”

Wow, Senator, what keen insight you have. Who, pray tell, is this chimera you speak of, this “average American family?

Does this family include the closeted gay son, afraid to admit to his friends, his parents, his clergyman, to himself, who he really is? Is he average, filled by society’s hate and fear and loathing, as he contemplates his future in a society that doesn’t want the likes of him, as thoughts of suicide bedevil him … is he, a citizen of this country denied his equal rights under the law, is HE an “average American”?

Does this family include the woman in the hospital, staring down the barrel of an aggressive cancer and a doomed pregnancy, facing the possibility of a more dangerous procedure because the oh-so-learned politicians in this country hope to make safer late-term abortions illegal to pander to one particular religious point of view? Does this family include the husband and children who have to go on without her after infection or complications take her life?

Does this family include the children left home alone as their mother works two jobs to keep food on the table?

Does this family include the mother left with nothing but a flag, her memories and her sorrow, her precious child dead in the sand of a foreign land, a land decimated by a criminal war rubberstamped by the jingoistic hawks beside you in the halls of Congress?

Does this family include the one who’s father has been deported to the foreign land he left decades ago?

Does this family include the one decimated by the draconian laws of our drug war, their mother sent away for mere possession of an herb that grows like a weed in nearly every corner of the earth?

Does this family include the worker who stood in a long line, in the rain, waiting to vote on a broken machine, or worse a machine that doesn’t register her vote?

Does this family include the increasing number of children struggling against chronic asthma, drowning in the particulate-saturated air poured out by polluting industries who buy off both your’s and the “other” political party?

Tell me, Senator, just what is this “average American family”, of which “average Americans” is it constituted?

Please, Sir, tell me … these people who face challenges that you apparently can’t even imagine, to whom are they to turn when EVERY institution in this country fails to address their problems? When political parties pander to loud, fractious, bigoted and superstitious minorities, rapacious corporations and corrupt wealthy contributors … who then do people turn to to make their voices heard? Those self same organizations that you denigrate as “special interests”, of course.

Is the Chamber of Commerce a “special interest”? How about the credit card industry, recently rewarded with a law that enables their increasingly usurious behavior? Hollywood .. what about them, with their demands that culture be straitjacketed into business-plan-protection schemes with wrong-headed copyright “reforms”? Are THEY a “special interest? Maybe you’d think of Big Pharma, or the defense industries, or the increasingly out-of-reach higher education system as “special interests”? Maybe you think of the HMOs, the increasingly profitable insurance companies that do everything they can to avoid paying out to their policy holders … are THEY “special interests”?

No?

Probably not. They, after all, line your pockets, line the pockets of your fellow politicians, your lobbying family members. They pay for your hand-tailored suits, no doubt delivered right to your office. Do you have any idea what the average American has to do, the ill-fitting suits bought off the rack, on high-priced credit, required to keep a job that fails to keep up with his mounting costs?

None of this is in your little grifter’s mind, sir, and we all know it. When you talk of “average Americans”, you are aping the Republicans, playing games with people’s resentments, their fears, their prejudices and hatreds. You hope that when the easily-duped “centrist” voters, running in place in their tract homes, hear those words, that they will think, “that’s MY FAMILY” and not some other family that you and the other hacks running the Democratic Party are preparing to abandon to the vagaries of the marketplace, the swirling waters of the floods, the flesh-stripping winds of a far-flung desert.

When you spew forth terms like “average American”, you are appealing to DIVISION. You are appealing to fear and anger and bigotry and homophobia and misogyny and all of the other cancers bedeviling the American soul, because you, sir, are little different from the characters in the other party. Hell, you want to BE the other party, and you are unwilling or unable to see that this country is crying out for political leaders who will address the problems facing the greater majority of Americans. There is no “average” American. Averages are mathematical constructs, fake distinctions, the province of the accountant and the statistician, NOT the realm inhabited by real leaders, visionary leaders.

Sadly, though, the people look around and find no leaders. We’re offered hazy rememberances of murdered leaders dead decades ago, and cold stone monuments to unfulfilled dreams. No, we are left mainly with wealthy corrupt hacks like you, with conmen masquerading as statesmen, liars instead of giants. You can’t find it within yourself to offer unity and shared ground, only more division and lazy Hallmark sentiment.

We will get nowhere in this country, we will continue down our disasterous path, as long as we allow ourselves to be divided with such talk. Workers, families, men, women and children need to face the basic truth that none of us are free until ALL of us are free. Labor will get nowhere until women have control of their bodies. Families will never find steady ground until ALL families can find equal protection under the law to secure their future, their assets, their right to love one another. You, Senator Schumer, contribute to ugly divisions already exploited and incited by the ugly tactics of the Republican Party, and for that you should be ashamed.

Please, sir, contemplate these words, spoken by a soon-to-be slaughtered leader to commemorate the loss of Dr. King, for whom more cold stone is to be erected beside the memorial of another murdered hero:

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

(Interrupted by applause)

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love – a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.

Sadly, I doubt that you have it within your cold, cynical heart to look upon those words with anything but a smirk. There are no “average Americans” sir, there is only us, your fellow citizens, the people who entrusted you with high office, looking for leadership, not cynical exploitation. A people who might very well rise to support a party that bothered to embrace them and the organizations that they turned to for lack of anywhere else to make their voices heard. If you or the other Democrats can’t offer them that opportunity, I promise you that the other party will offer up a demogogue to further feed on their fear and desperation, and if we go down that road, this long experiment in representative Democracy will come to its bitter end.

Liberal Street Fighter

Dear Friends and Supporters,

On Sunday, November 12th in Racine, I will hold my 1000th Listening Session with the people of Wisconsin. Before reaching that milestone, I want you to know that I’ve decided to continue my role as Wisconsin’s Junior Senator in the U.S. Senate and not to seek the Democratic nomination for President in 2008.

With that statement, Senator Russ Feingold has left the field of putative Democratic hopefuls for the Presidential nomination. He has left the left in this country without a voice in the upcoming vital national conversation. As he himself notes in a story about his announcement in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal:

Asked about the Democratic field, Feingold made it clear he preferred a nominee who shared his views on the war.

“The first choice would be somebody who voted against this unfortunate Iraq war. That may not be available,” said Feingold, who was the only Senate Democrat considering a run who voted against authorizing the use of force in Iraq.

“Second choice is somebody who at least said it was a bad idea. . . . I would be happy if Obama or (Al) Gore ran,” said Feingold, who said he was not offering an endorsement.

Clinton, the presumed party front-runner, voted in 2002 to authorize force in Iraq. “Those who were there and came to the judgment the Iraq war was a good idea have to answer for some concerns I have about their judgment. That was a really bad judgment. I’m prepared to support a Democrat who voted for that war, but I think the American people would prefer a president who had the judgment to see it was not a good idea,” he said.

In this party of cowards and millionaires beholden to the investor class, there seems little or no chance that anybody will fill this vacuum, at least not from within the party. There will be more deaths from this criminal war, there will be more children without a voice as they go without medical care, without adequate shelter or hope for a better tomorrow. It’s likely that a run by Senator Feingold wouldn’t have changed any of that, but at least the questions would have been raised on the national stage. Now they likely won’t, and one can’t help but wonder again if it’s far past time for the left to completely walk away from a party that is so broken that it is all-but impossible for a voice of reason like Senator Feingold’s to prevail.

This isn’t about just Senator Feingold. The constant need in this country for a hero to ride in to save us is a recipe for disaster. Look what happened to the left when Bobby Kennedy was killed … it all-but folded, breaking into balkinized little fiefdoms of activist groups, concerned as much with raising funds as with actually effecting change. The attraction of a run by the Senator wasn’t in HIM, but rather in his quiet, reserved willingness to acticulate for a vast untapped well of people who want this country to be better: a standard bearer, not a savior.

How many of us hear our voice reflected in the halls of government? How many of us feel the blood rushing through our heads whenever we’re subjected to a media that continually denigrates or distorts the left, a political conversation that has rendered our entire point-of-view out of bounds? There may now be a socialist in the US Senate, but the idea that we should take care of one another using government BEFORE we blow most of our resources killing people gets little or no play on the public stage.

A run for President by Senator Feingold could have helped change that. Tactically, it’s hard to argue with his decision, but strategically it’s sadly true that the desire for change, for this country to have a more civilized humane course, has NO way of injecting itself into our nations politics if someone doesn’t make the case on a stage that our worthless media will pay attention to. Senator Feingold states:

Yet, while I’ve certainly enjoyed the repeated comments or buttons saying, “Run Russ Run”, or “Russ in ’08”, I often felt that if a piece of Wisconsin swiss cheese had taken the same positions I’ve taken, it would have elicited the same standing ovations. This is because the hunger for progressive change we feel is obviously not about me but about the desire for a genuinely different Democratic Party that is ready to begin to reverse the 25 years of growing extremism we have endured.

How can that hunger be sated without leaders to fight for that change? Maybe it’s not yet time. Maybe we have to sink further before people become desperate enough to open their minds beyond the mindless propaganda of our political parties and corporate owners. The left wasn’t truly able to inject itself into government until the Depression. This isn’t to say that anybody WANTS that to happen, but as we refuse to entertain a truly broad debate in this country, it is nearly impossible to rationally avoid the rocks that the captains of state are stearing us toward. As the middle class disappears, as our healthcare system melts down, as more blood and destruction spread at the point of our explosive spears, we on the left who might inject some compassion and reason into the deliberations are ruled out-of-bounds, so the long slide continues.

The left will continue to work locally, but with this announcement it’s painfully clear that it will be years before we have a chance to offer this country some choices other than greed, envy, division, hatred and fear. Americans can be a stubborn people, sheep-like, unwilling to slow down and consider that perhaps our flock is running in the wrong direction. Historically we’ve only corrected course after disaster.

It’s unclear whether the next Presidential contest is even worth paying attention to. Who will bear the left’s message forward? The candidates being bandied about; Vilsack, Biden, Clinton, Edwards … they’re a paltry lot. Some want to draft Vice President Gore, but is he any more likely to fight now than he was six years ago? The only national figure I can think of is one that was suggested by Molly Ivans:

Here’s what we do. We run Bill Moyers for president. I am serious as a stroke about this. It’s simple, cheap and effective, and it will move the entire spectrum of political discussion in this country. Moyers is the only public figure who can take the entire discussion and shove it toward moral clarity just by being there.

She suggested this some months ago, and for many of the same reasons I’ve explored here:

Do I think Bill Moyers can win the presidency? No, that seems like a very long shot to me. The nomination? No, that seems like a very long shot to me.

Then why run him? Think, imagine, if seven or eight other Democratic candidates, all beautifully coiffed and triangulated and carefully coached to say nothing that will offend anyone, stand on stage with Bill Moyers in front of cameras for a national debate … what would happen? Bill Moyers would win, would walk away with it, just because he doesn’t triangulate or calculate or trim or try to straddle the issues. Bill Moyers doesn’t have to endorse a constitutional amendment against flag burning or whatever wedge issue du jour Republicans have come up with. He is not afraid of being called “unpatriotic.” And besides, he is a wise and a kind man who knows how to talk on TV.

It won’t take much money—file for him in a couple of early primaries and just get him into the debates. Think about the potential Democratic candidates. Every single one of them needs spine, needs political courage. What Moyers can do is not only show them what it looks like and indeed what it is, but also how people respond to it. I’m damned if I want to go through another presidential primary with everyone trying to figure out who has the best chance to win instead of who’s right. I want to vote for somebody who’s good and brave and who should win.

National politics is lost to the left, and it will never open back up until years of local work are done, but a national run by a principled voice like Moyers could at least inject some of our ideas back into the contest. There is little or no left nationally, and with Senator Feingold’s announcement it has shrunk further. We’re in for long, dark days, for many years to come.