The Conservative Wing of the Democratic Party, the Obama Adminstration, and the Fight for Real Political Reform in the U.S.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrat_Coalition

All,

The New Democrat Coalition (NDC) is a prominent and powerful caucus group within the national Democratic Party. Significantly, Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel belongs to this "moderate" group (as does Bill & Hillary Clinton, and nearly ALL of the conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats in the Senate who are currently opposing the public option in national healthcare: Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, and Dianne Feinstein, among others). These facts go a long way toward explaining just how politically compromised the President really is with respect to not only national healthcare reform but to all other forms of progressive domestic and foreign policy. In fact, real progressives and leftists within the Democratic Party have consistently critiqued and opposed the NDC (New Democrat Coalition) throughout its controversial 12 year history and are doing so now. This is what accounts for the deep ideological and political fissures and conflicts within the majority political party and is largely responsible for the refusal or inability of the Democratic Party to unite around a progressive agenda for real, substantive reform in the government and the general society.

Unfortunately it is these disturbing political realities-- which are made much worse of course by the brazenly racist and maniacally protofascist strategies of the Republican far right-- that together are making it increasingly difficult for progressive reform legislation to be properly advocated, supported, and passed in Congress. So given these indisputable facts it is still very much an open question whether the actions of the President and the Democratic Party current majority control of the House and Senate will actually result in any consistently progressive or even classically liberal reform. Which is why more than ever the organized political and ideological pressure of a nationally committed and unified left is absolutely necessary if any genuine change of any value and meaning is to happen now or in the future. No kidding. Stay tuned...

Kofi



New Democrat Coalition

The New Democrat Coalition is a Congressional Member Organization within the United States Congress made up of Democrats who support an agenda that the organization describes as moderate and pro-growth. A July 2009 Press release described the organization as "the largest moderate coalition in the U.S. House of Representatives", announced the election of Representative Joseph Crowley (New York) as the Coalition's Chair and counted 68 Members in the House of Representatives[1]. In January 2009, at the end of the 110th Congress, there were 59 members listed on Chair Representative Ellen Tauscher's roster. The Senate New Democrat Coalition counted 21 members in the Senate in August 2002, 15 of whom remain in the Senate as of the beginning of the 111th Congress.


Overview

The New Democrat Coalition was founded in 1997 by Representatives Cal Dooley (California), Jim Moran (Virginia) and Timothy J. Roemer (Indiana) as a congressional affiliate of the avowedly centrist Democratic Leadership Council, whose members, including former President Bill Clinton, call themselves "New Democrats." As of July 2009, the House New Democrats are chaired by Representative Joseph Crowley (New York), with Vice-Chairs Representatives Melissa Bean (Illinois), Ron Kind (Wisconsin), Allyson Schwartz (Pennsylvania) and Adam Smith (Washington), who also serves as chair of the group's political action committee.
The Senate New Democrat Coalition was founded in the spring of 2000 by Senators Evan Bayh (Indiana), Bob Graham (Florida), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Joe Lieberman (Connecticut), and Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas).[2]

The NDC has worked to craft and pass legislation, including Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for the People's Republic of China, fast track Trade Promotion Authority, digital signatures, and H-1B visa reform and continues to work on matters such as privacy, broadband, expanding e-learning opportunities and making government more accessible and efficient through the use of technology. Many in the Democratic Party's left-wing criticize the group, however, accusing it of ignoring social justice and the poor.

The NDC is a member of the Alliance of Democrats international; the Democratic Party as a whole does not participate in any internationals on account of its political divisions, but does permit its affiliated organizations to do so.

New Democrat Coalition members (House)

The following 68 members of the House of Representatives currently belong to the New Democrat Coalition.[3]

Alabama
Bobby Bright (AL-2)
Parker Griffith (AL-5)
Artur Davis (AL-7)

Arizona
Harry Mitchell (AZ-5)
Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-8)

Arkansas
Vic Snyder (AR-2)

California
Lois Capps (CA-23)
Adam Schiff (CA-29)
Jane Harman (CA-36)
Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Loretta Sanchez (CA-47)
Susan Davis (CA-53)

Colorado
Diana DeGette (CO-1)
Jared Polis (CO-2)
Ed Perlmutter (CO-7)

Connecticut
John B. Larson (CT-1)
Joe Courtney (CT-2)
Jim Himes (CT-4)
Chris Murphy (CT-5)

Florida
Kendrick Meek (FL-17)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20)
Ron Klein (FL-22)
Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24)

Georgia
John Barrow (GA-12)
David Scott (GA-13)

Illinois
Melissa Bean (IL-8), Vice-Chair
Debbie Halvorson (IL-11)
Bill Foster (IL-14)

Indiana
André Carson (IN-7)

Kansas
Dennis Moore (KS-3)

Louisiana
Charlie Melancon (LA-3)

Maryland
Frank Kratovil (MD-1)

Michigan
Mark Schauer (MI-7)
Gary Peters (MI-9)

Missouri
Russ Carnahan (MO-3)

Nevada
Shelley Berkley (NV-1)

New Jersey
John Adler (NJ-3)
Rush D. Holt (NJ-12)

New Mexico
Martin Heinrich (NM-1)

New York
Steve Israel (NY-2)
Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4)
Gregory W. Meeks (NY-6)
Joseph Crowley (NY-7), Chair
Mike McMahon (NY-13)
Eliot L. Engel (NY-17)
Scott Murphy (NY-20)
Mike Arcuri (NY-24)
Dan Maffei (NY-13)
Brian Higgins (NY-25)

North Carolina
Bob Etheridge (NC-2), charter member
Mike McIntyre (NC-7), charter member

Ohio
Charlie Wilson (OH-6)
John Boccieri (OH-16)

Oregon
David Wu (OR-1)
Kurt Schrader (OR-5)

Pennsylvania
Jason Altmire (PA-4)
Joe Sestak (PA-7)
Patrick Murphy (PA-8)
Chris Carney (PA-10)
Allyson Schwartz (PA-13), Vice-Chair

Texas
Charlie Gonzalez (TX-20)

Virginia
Jim Moran (VA-8), charter member
Gerry Connolly (VA-11)

Washington
Jay Inslee (WA-1)
Rick Larsen (WA-2)
Brian Baird (WA-3)
Adam Smith (WA-9), Vice-Chair, charter member

Wisconsin
Ron Kind (WI-3), Vice-Chair, charter member

Former members

Former Representatives
Members who have left Congress:
Bob Matsui (CA-5), charter member, deceased
Juanita Millender-McDonald (CA-37), deceased
Jim Davis (FL-11), charter member, did not seek re-election
Peter Deutsch (FL-20), charter member, did not seek re-election
Denise Majette (GA-4), did not seek re-election
Ed Case (HI-2), did not seek re-election
James A. Barcia (MI-5), charter member, did not seek re-election
Bill Luther (MN-6), charter member, lost re-election following redistricting
John J. LaFalce (NY-29), charter member, did not seek re-election
Karen McCarthy (MO-5), charter member, did not seek re-election
Thomas C. Sawyer (OH-14), charter member, lost re-election following redistricting
Bob Clement (TN-5), charter member, did not seek re-election
Harold Ford (TN-9), did not seek re-election
Max Sandlin (TX-1), charter member, lost re-election following redistricting
Jim Turner (TX-2), charter member, did not seek re-election
Charles Stenholm (TX-17), charter member, lost re-election following redistricting
Ken Bentsen (TX-25), charter member, did not seek re-election
Chris Bell (TX-25), lost re-election following redistricting
Tim Mahoney (FL-16), lost re-election in 2008
Nick Lampson (TX-22), lost re-election in 2008
Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20), appointed to Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat
Ellen Tauscher (CA-10), appointed Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs

Disaffiliated members
Former members who remain in Congress, but who are no longer affiliated with the NDC:

Mike Thompson (CA-1)
Dennis Cardoza (CA-18)
Robert Wexler (FL-19), charter member
Pete Visclosky (IN-1), charter member
Mike Michaud (ME-2)
Bart Stupak (MI-1), charter member
Heath Shuler (NC-11) [1]
Brad Miller (NC-13)
Earl Pomeroy (ND), charter member
Bill Pascrell (NJ-8), charter member
Steve Rothman (NJ-9), charter member
Jim Clyburn (SC-6), charter member
Jim Cooper (TN-5)
Norman D. Dicks (WA-6), charter member

Senate New Democrat Coalition members

The following Senators belong or belonged to the Senate New Democrat Coalition.[4][5][6]

Current senators

Blanche Lincoln (AR, founder)
Dianne Feinstein (CA, by 2001)
Thomas R. Carper (DE, by 2001; co-chair from 2003)
Joe Lieberman (CT, founder)
Bill Nelson (FL, by 2001)
Evan Bayh (IN, founder)
Mary Landrieu (LA, founder, co-chair from 2003)
John Kerry (MA, from 2000[7])
Debbie Stabenow (MI, by 2001)
Kent Conrad (ND, from 2000)
Ben Nelson (NE, by 2001)
Tim Johnson (SD, from 2000)
Maria Cantwell (WA, by 2001)
Herb Kohl (WI, from 2000)

Former senators
Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY, from 2001; retired from Senate in 2009 [8])
Bob Graham (FL, founder, chair from 2000-2003; retired from Senate in 2003)
Max Cleland (GA, from 2000; defeated in 2002)
Zell Miller (GA, from 2001; retired from Senate in 2004)
John Breaux (LA, from 2000; retired from Senate in 2004)
Jean Carnahan (MO, from 2001; defeated in 2002)
John Edwards (NC, from 2000; retired from Senate in 2004)
Bob Kerrey (NE, from 2000; retired from Senate in 2000)
Richard Bryan (NV, from 2000; retired from Senate in 2000)
Chuck Robb (VA, from 2000; defeated in 2000)

See also

Congressional Progressive Caucus
Blue Dog Coalition
New Democrats
Democratic Leadership Council

References

General
Congressional New Democrats homepage
DLC New Democrat Coalition page
DLC: New Democrats Form House Coalition (March 11, 1997)
NDC: New Democrat Coalition Adds 10 Freshmen Members To Its Ranks (January 31, 2003)
House New Democrat Coalition Announces New Leaders, Membership for 109th (February 9, 2005)
NDC government page[dead link]
Specific
^ New Democrat Coalition (July 2009). "New Dems Announce New Coalition Leadership: Rep. Crowley Elected Coalition Chairman". Press Release. New Democrat Coalition. Retrieved August 11, 2009.
^ About the Senate New Democrat Coalition (DLC)
^ NDC Member List
^ NDN: Senate New Democrat Coalition Members (August 2000)
^ NDN: Senate New Democrat Coalition Members (July 2001)
^ NDN: Senate New Democrat Coalition Members (August 2002)
^ Milligan, Susan (December 16), "Party Moderates to be Key Players", Boston Globe
^ Harwood, John (July 16), "Democratic Centrists Declare Cease-Fire with Liberals to Establish United Front", Wall Street Journal

In Conversation with Michael Moore and Naomi Klein: A Working Critique of Capitalism

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/09/americas-teacher




Michael Moore: America's Teacher
By Naomi Klein
September 24th, 2009
Published in The Nation.

On September 17, in the midst of the publicity blitz for his new cinematic takedown of the capitalist order--Capitalism: A Love Story-- Moore talked with Nation columnist Naomi Klein by phone about the film, the roots of our economic crisis and the promise and peril of the present political moment. To listen to a podcast of the full conversation, click here. Following is an edited transcript of their conversation.--The Nation Editors

Below, you can listen to the full audio recording of their thirty-minute conversation. How is President Obama handling the economic crisis? Who is taking on Wall Street? And who is letting Wall Street take advantage of us? Find out in this exclusive podcast conversation between The Nation's Naomi Klein and documentarian Michael Moore.

Listen here:


Naomi Klein: So, the film is wonderful. Congratulations. It is, as many people have already heard, an unapologetic call for a revolt against capitalist madness. But the week it premiered, a very different kind of revolt was in the news: the so-called tea parties, seemingly a passionate defense of capitalism and against social programs.

Meanwhile, we are not seeing too many signs of the hordes storming Wall Street. Personally, I'm hoping that your film is going to be the wake-up call and the catalyst for all of that changing. But I'm just wondering how you're coping with this odd turn of events, these revolts for capitalism led by Glenn Beck.

Michael Moore: I don't know if they're so much revolts in favor of capitalism as they are being fueled by a couple of different agendas, one being the fact that a number of Americans still haven't come to grips with the fact that there's an African-American who is their leader. And I don't think they like that.

NK: Do you see that as the main driving force for the tea parties?

MM: I think it's one of the forces--but I think there's a number of agendas at work here. The other agenda is the corporate agenda. The healthcare companies and other corporate concerns are helping to pull together what seems like a spontaneous outpouring of citizen anger.

But the third part of this is--and this is what I really have always admired about the right wing: they are organized, they are dedicated, they are up at the crack of dawn fighting their fight. And on our side, I don't really see that kind of commitment.

When they were showing up at the town-hall meetings in August--those meetings are open to everyone. So where are the people from our side? And then I thought, Wow, it's August. You ever try to organize anything on the left in August?

NK: Wasn't part of it also, though, that the left, or progressives, or whatever you want to call them, have been in something of a state of disarray with regard to the Obama administration--that most people favor universal healthcare, but they couldn't rally behind it because it wasn't on the table?

MM: Yes. And that's why Obama keeps turning around and looking for the millions behind him, supporting him, and there's nobody even standing there, because he chose to take a half measure instead of the full measure that needed to happen. Had he taken the full measure--true single-payer, universal healthcare--I think he'd have millions out there backing him up.

NK: Now that the Baucus plan is going down in flames, do you think there's another window to put universal healthcare on the table?

MM: Yes. And we need people to articulate the message and get out in front of this and lead it. You know, there's close to a hundred Democrats in Congress who had already signed on as co-signers to John Conyers's bill.

Obama, I think, realizes now that whatever he thought he was trying to do with bipartisanship or holding up the olive branch, that the other side has no interest in anything other than the total destruction of anything he has stood for or was going to try and do. So if [New York Congressman Anthony] Weiner or any of the other members of Congress want to step forward, now would be the time. And I certainly would be out there. I am out there. I mean, I would use this time right now to really rally people, because I think the majority of the country wants this.

NK: Coming back to Wall Street, I want to talk a little bit more about this strange moment that we're in, where the rage that was directed at Wall Street, what was being directed at AIG executives when people were showing up in their driveways--I don't know what happened to that.

My fear was always that this huge anger that you show in the film, the kind of uprising in the face of the bailout, which forced Congress to vote against it that first time, that if that anger wasn't continuously directed at the most powerful people in society, at the elites, at the people who had created the disaster, and channeled into a real project for changing the system, then it could easily be redirected at the most vulnerable people in society; I mean immigrants, or channeled into racist rage.

And what I'm trying to sort out now is, Is it the same rage or do you think these are totally different streams of American culture--have the people who were angry at AIG turned their rage on Obama and on the idea of health reform?

MM: I don't think that is what has happened. I'm not so sure they're the same people.

In fact, I can tell you from my travels across the country while making the film and even in the last few weeks, there is something else that's simmering beneath the surface. You can't avoid the anger boiling over at some point when you have one in eight mortgages in delinquency or foreclosure, where there's a foreclosure filing once every 7.5 seconds and the unemployment rate keeps growing. That will have its own tipping point.

And the scary thing about that is that historically, at times when that has happened, the right has been able to successfully manipulate those who have been beaten down and use their rage to support what they used to call fascism.

Where has it gone since the crash? It's a year later. I think that people felt like they got it out of their system when they voted for Obama six weeks later and that he was going to ride into town and do the right thing. And he's kind of sauntered into town promising to do the right thing but not accomplishing a whole heck of a lot.

Now, that's not to say that I'm not really happy with a number of things I've seen him do.

To hear a president of the United States admit that we overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran, that's one of the things on my list I thought I'd never hear in my lifetime. So there have been those moments.

And maybe I'm just a bit too optimistic here, but he was raised by a single mother and grandparents and he did not grow up with money. And when he was fortunate enough to be able to go to Harvard and graduate from there, he didn't then go and do something where he could become rich; he decides to go work in the inner city of Chicago.

Oh, and he decides to change his name back to what it was on the birth certificate--Barack. Not exactly the move of somebody who's trying to become a politician. So he's shown us, I think, in his lifetime many things about where his heart is, and he slipped up during the campaign and told Joe the Plumber that he believed in spreading the wealth.

And I think that those things that he believes in are still there. Now, it's kind of up to him. If he's going to listen to the Rubins and the Geithners and the Summerses, you and I lose. And a lot of people who have gotten involved, many of them for the first time, won't get involved again. He will have done more to destroy what needs to happen in this country in terms of people participating in their democracy. So I hope he understands the burden that he's carrying and does the right thing.

NK: Well, I want to push you a little bit on this, because I understand what you're saying about the way he's lived his life and certainly the character he appears to have. But he is the person who appointed Summers and Geithner, who you're very appropriately hard on in the film.

And one year later, he hasn't reined in Wall Street. He reappointed Bernanke. He's not just appointed Summers but has given him an unprecedented degree of power for a mere economic adviser.

MM: And meets with him every morning.

NK: Exactly. So what I worry about is this idea that we're always psychoanalyzing Obama, and the feeling I often hear from people is that he's being duped by these guys. But these are his choices, and so why not judge him on his actions and really say, "This is on him, not on them"?

MM: I agree. I don't think he is being duped by them; I think he's smarter than all of them.

When he first appointed them I had just finished interviewing a bank robber who didn't make it into the film, but he is a bank robber who is hired by the big banks to advise them on how to avoid bank robberies.

So in order to not sink into a deep, dark pit of despair, I said to myself that night, That's what Obama's doing. Who better to fix the mess than the people who created it? He's bringing them in to clean up their own mess. Yeah, yeah. That's it. That's it. Just keep repeating it: "There's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

NK: And now it turns out they were just being brought in to keep stealing.

MM: Right. So now it's on him.

NK: All right. Let's talk about the film some more. I saw you on Leno, and I was struck that one of his first questions to you was this objection--that it's greed that's evil, not capitalism. And this is something that I hear a lot--this idea that greed or corruption is somehow an aberration from the logic of capitalism rather than the engine and the centerpiece of capitalism. And I think that that's probably something you're already hearing about the terrific sequence in the film about those corrupt Pennsylvania judges who were sending kids to private prison and getting kickbacks. I think people would say, That's not capitalism, that's corruption.

Why is it so hard to see the connection, and how are you responding to this?

MM: Well, people want to believe that it's not the economic system that's at the core of all this. You know, it's just a few bad eggs. But the fact of the matter is that, as I said to Jay [Leno], capitalism is the legalization of this greed.

Greed has been with human beings forever. We have a number of things in our species that you would call the dark side, and greed is one of them. If you don't put certain structures in place or restrictions on those parts of our being that come from that dark place, then it gets out of control. Capitalism does the opposite of that. It not only doesn't really put any structure or restriction on it. It encourages it, it rewards it.

I'm asked this question every day, because people are pretty stunned at the end of the movie to hear me say that it should just be eliminated altogether. And they're like, "Well, what's wrong with making money? Why can't I open a shoe store?"

And I realized that [because] we no longer teach economics in high school, they don't really understand what any of it means.

The point is that when you have capitalism, capitalism encourages you to think of ways to make money or to make more money. And the judges never could have gotten the kickbacks had the county not privatized the juvenile hall. But because there's been this big push in the past twenty or thirty years to privatize government services, take it out of our hands, put it in the hands of people whose only concern is their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders or to their own pockets, it has messed everything up.

NK: The thing that I found most exciting in the film is that you make a very convincing pitch for democratically run workplaces as the alternative to this kind of loot-and-leave capitalism.

So I'm just wondering, as you're traveling around, are you seeing any momentum out there for this idea?

MM: People love this part of the film. I've been kind of surprised because I thought people aren't maybe going to understand this or it seems too hippie-dippy--but it really has resonated in the audiences that I've seen it with.

But, of course, I've pitched it as a patriotic thing to do. So if you believe in democracy, democracy can't be being able to vote every two or four years. It has to be every part of every day of your life.

We've changed relationships and institutions around quite considerably because we've decided democracy is a better way to do it. Two hundred years ago you had to ask a woman's father for permission to marry her, and then once the marriage happened, the man was calling all the shots. And legally, women couldn't own property and things like that.

Thanks to the women's movement of the '60s and '70s, this idea was introduced to that relationship--that both people are equal and both people should have a say. And I think we're better off as a result of introducing democracy into an institution like marriage.

But we spend eight to ten to twelve hours of our daily lives at work, where we have no say. I think when anthropologists dig us up 400 years from now--if we make it that far--they're going to say, "Look at these people back then. They thought they were free. They called themselves a democracy, but they spent ten hours of every day in a totalitarian situation and they allowed the richest 1 percent to have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined."

Truly they're going to laugh at us the way we laugh at people 150 years ago who put leeches on people's bodies to cure them.

NK: It is one of those ideas that keeps coming up. At various points in history it's been an enormously popular idea. It is actually what people wanted in the former Soviet Union instead of the Wild West sort of mafia capitalism that they ended up with. And what people wanted in Poland in 1989 when they voted for Solidarity was for their state-owned companies to be turned into democratically run workplaces, not to be privatized and looted.

But one of the biggest barriers I've found in my research around worker cooperatives is not just government and companies being resistant to it but actually unions as well. Obviously there are exceptions, like the union in your film, United Electrical Workers, which was really open to the idea of the Republic Windows & Doors factory being turned into a cooperative, if that's what the workers wanted. But in most cases, particularly with larger unions, they have their script, and when a factory is being closed down their job is to get a big payout--as big a payout as they can, as big a severance package as they can for the workers. And they have a dynamic that is in place, which is that the powerful ones, the decision-makers, are the owners.

You had your US premiere at the AFL-CIO convention. How are you finding labor leadership in relation to this idea? Are they open to it, or are you hearing, "Well, this isn't really workable"? Because I know you've also written about the idea that some of the auto plant factories or auto parts factories that are being closed down could be turned into factories producing subway cars, for instance. The unions would need to champion that idea for it to work.

MM: I sat there in the theater the other night with about 1,500 delegates of the AFL-CIO convention, and I was a little nervous as we got near that part of the film, and I was worried that it was going to get a little quiet in there.

Just the opposite. They cheered it. A couple people shouted out, "Right on!" "Absolutely!" I think that unions at this point have been so beaten down, they're open to some new thinking and some new ideas. And I was very encouraged to see that.

The next day at the convention the AFL-CIO passed a resolution supporting single-payer healthcare. I thought, Wow, you know? Things are changing.

NK: Coming back to what we were talking about a little earlier, about people's inability to understand basic economic theory: in your film you have this great scene where you can't get anybody, no matter how educated they are, to explain what a derivative is.

So it isn't just about basic education. It's that complexity is being used as a weapon against democratic control over the economy. This was Greenspan's argument--that derivatives were so complicated that lawmakers couldn't regulate them.

It's almost as if there needs to be a movement toward simplicity in economics or in financial affairs, which is something that Elizabeth Warren, the chief bailout watchdog for Congress, has been talking about in terms of the need to simplify people's relationships with lenders.

So I'm wondering what you think about that. Also, this isn't really much of a question, but isn't Elizabeth Warren sort of incredible? She's kind of like the anti-Summers. It's enough to give you hope, that she exists.

MM: Absolutely. And can I suggest a presidential ticket for 2016 or 2012 if Obama fails us? [Ohio Congresswoman] Marcy Kaptur and Elizabeth Warren.

NK: I love it. They really are the heroes of your film. I would vote for that.

I was thinking about what to call this piece, and what I'm going to suggest to my editor is "America's Teacher," because the film is this incredible piece of old-style popular education. One of the things that my colleague at The Nation Bill Greider talks about is that we don't do this kind of popular education anymore, that unions used to have budgets to do this kind of thing for their members, to just unpack economic theory and what's going on in the world and make it accessible. I know you see yourself as an entertainer, but I'm wondering, do you also see yourself as a teacher?

MM: I'm honored that you would use such a term. I like teachers.

Interview with Fernando Solanas on the Social Power of Film

by Chuleenan Svetvilas

Fernando Solanas has not only been a filmmaker but he has also served as a representative in Argentina’s national parliament. In 2002, the veteran director began filming A Social Genocide, which was released in 2004. The Dignity of the Nobodies, his second documentary about Argentina, screened in the San Francisco International Film Festival in 2006. Chuleenan Svetvilas interviewed Solanas in San Francisco. This interview originally appeared in the July 2006 issue of DOX the magazine of the European Documentary Network.

Nearly 40 years ago, you directed The Hour of the Furnaces and then you and Octavio Getino wrote your manifesto “Towards a Third Cinema.” In your manifesto, you say that documentary “is perhaps the main basis for revolutionary filmmaking.” What do you think is the role of the documentary filmmaker today?

He plays a great role, culturally, socially, and politically. The majority of our countries live in “mediated” democracies, where the media has an importance greater than universities or political parties in the formation of public opinion and in the public imagination. That is a society where the majority of public opinion is very strongly informed by the news media. And the media are responsible for some great tragedies. It is a very violent machinery of censorship. And the vast majority of the media are private firms financed by advertising.

In this country [the United States], like Argentina, the advertising is actually inside of the news stories, that is to say that they have financed the programs and they determine the content. In Europe, it’s not so much that way, there’s a stricter division between advertising and content. In Argentina, it’s really a tragedy, the media have made the public believe some enormous lies. To put it in a phrase, the public doesn’t have a good source of information from the news media. And that is why today there is a growing audience that goes to a movie theater to see a documentary. This was not the case ten years ago. Because they are finding information that they cannot find anywhere else. So, I think that good documentaries are treating issues that have been censored, social themes or historic social occurrences and stories that have essentially been censored out of existence, themes of social reality and of war.

In “Towards a Third Cinema,” you also mentioned that “revolutionary cinema is not passive,” but it “attempts to intervene in a situation providing thrust or rectification.” How involved were you with the people you filmed in The Dignity of the Nobodies?

This is an open film in that it helps those who intervene, but there is no end to the dignity of these people. There is no resolution of their situations. When you look at the end of the film, some have been resolved and some haven’t. In the characters of the Dignity of the Nobodies, there are people of all stripes. Some people belong to no political party, they are just social activists. There are some activists who belong to different leftist groups. For example, some were just social activists like the two women hospital workers are union activists and that’s about it.

As to the relationship that I have to the people in the film, people like me, everybody likes me. I’m a public figure. They all know me. “Ciao, Pino,” they say. So when I tell people I want to film them, they are very happy and they invite me to have mate (tea) at their house. It’s not so much because they are relating to me politically. They know that I defend their interests in a general way. And they know that I make films that represent what they think and feel.

The Dignity of the Nobodies is your second film about Argentina and you intend to do three more films about your country. What inspired you to do this ambitious project?

Fernando Solanas: As I got deeper into A Social Genocide, a film about the exceptional crisis that the country was experiencing, I saw it would be impossible to make one film with all that material. So the concept was born that the first one would be about the politics of power--how did we get into this situation? The second film was born out of the ending of the first one. The ending of the first film is a synthesis of ten years of a popular struggle against the situation. So but for the audience, what remains, what they see is the masses of people in activities like demonstrations. So what was lacking there was humanity. Who are all these people? How do they think? What do they feel?

So that’s where the idea was born of putting a magnifying glass on the people that formed the individual parts of this mass. And in this first film I got to know some people who were playing a huge influential role in these uprisings but were anonymous. I was tempted to make an advocacy film based on some of those stories. But then people would ask, “What am I seeing here, is this reality or is it fiction?”

So what this has actually turned into is a great testimony about the life of my country in this era. I did not invent the stories of “the nobodies.” This is a film made by someone as a historian, a chronicler of this struggle. I know that these films are going to stay around as references of a social reality. And now, because this is my profession as a filmmaker I have also attempted to make a good film. However, it could maybe not be a great film but still have the same value as a testimony. So working like this. five ideas came about. And that’s as far as I can say.

What is the audience response in Argentina to your documentaries?

Solanas: The audience is divided. The people who are in the film and the people who agree with the film, they love it. It is their expression; it’s their film. And the people who don’t agree with it, despise it, and they won’t go see it. This debate started even way back with The Hour of the Furnaces (1968) where some people were saying we should make a film to inform everyone, to inform the public but we knew that that was not what we were going to make. We were going to make a film of opinion. We were going to state our case and it would be signed. People would know that it was our opinion, just like an article in the newspaper is signed. Society is divided. There are a large number of people who are undecided. And they hear that a film like this is a good film, [The Dignity of the Nobodies] won prizes and so they overcome their prejudice against the film and they go see it.

How did you find the people in the stories in The Dignity of the Nobodies?

Solanas: I found them while I was filming A Social Genocide--in the neighborhoods. Everyday I get 10 or 15 invitations to show the film and talk about it in this or that neighborhood, which I could not possibly do or I couldn’t be making films. I have been getting to know these people and their wonderful stories. I had about 40 or 50 stories to choose from and there were probably another 100 that were just as good that were lying around. So I tried to choose stories that were a little different from one another. There are not only just picketers without work. Since I already have a story about unemployed picketers, I had to also get a story about workers that were employed and very well organized. But the whole story of my country is not just [about] the unemployed and the unionized but there are the workers in the public sector. You have the story of the teacher who lives in poverty and yet he’s a public school teacher or the middle class guy who writes and delivers packages on his motorcycle.

Then there are the women in the countryside who own small parcels of land – the typical rural petite bourgeoisie. They do not have a good education. They are not cultured. Women in a situation like this never get involved in social issues. But when their husbands got sick, and they realized their land was going to be sold out from under them, they defended what they had. So a woman like Lucy, back in ’94, she started to fight the auctions of the bankrupt farmers and I filmed her in 2004 and 2005. A person like that really emerged in that ten-year period. In the film you will see them singing the national anthem. But there’s something else you don’t see in the film. In the beginning, they tried to disrupt the auctions by praying out loud—“Our Father who art in Heaven”— but since they don’t really believe in God anyway, it wasn’t very effective, so they started singing the national anthem to disrupt the auctions. It was out of total naïveté. It’s not because they had such a well-formed political strategy.

Where did the footage of the farm auctions come from?

Most of the auctions are archival footage. The only auction I filmed is the one that’s at the very end of the film. Mid-April last year when the film was already edited and I was just getting into the final cut, somebody called me on the phone about another auction. I could never go to the auctions because they are in such remote areas. But on this occasion there was an auction 150 kilometers from where I lived. My first reaction was, “Well what do I need this for? The film’s already over.” But the women insisted, so I went and that is the final sequence 27 April 2005. I went into the auction just like any other TV station in the town. We filmed the whole thing. It was such a powerful scene that it ended up as the finale of the film.

Some of the stories in Dignity of the Nobodies are of people who are surviving everyday.

I observe them a lot and spend a lot of time with them. I taped them in preparation for filming and sometimes when I come back to film, it’s not as good as what I got when I was just observing. In something like this, things are never really prepared--that’s why you always have to take your camera. Sometimes you take your camera not because you are going to film but just because what you observe with your camera is so amazing.

For example, in the death of Darío Santillán, the unemployed man that the police shoot and kill. The beginning and the end [of that part of the film] are archival. And the images of him at the train station where he was dying, they were archival. There were probably 50 video cameras there for that event and probably another 200 still cameras. The police commissioner made an official statement that they had nothing to do with the death of Darío Santillán and it was other unemployed people who had shot him. But because we have freedom of the press, the following day, every daily newspaper showed a series of photographs that clearly showed that it was the police that shot him to death, not to mention the video footage. So in that particular chapter of the film, that was what was archival and everything else I shot myself.

The following day I went to the memorial observance in the neighborhood where Darío Santillán was from. I was the only person with a camera that they allowed to go inside and film the funeral. All the footage of him in the coffin is unique. I went around and filmed his friends and his girlfriend. His story was born with the event of his death. Starting with the enormity of that event is what made me go to the funeral. I went back to film another day to see him, not only through the eyes of his activist friends, but through the eyes of his girlfriend. And I got a little more and a little more and I kept going back day after day. I didn’t know those people before but they received me with great affection.

What’s happening with your other films on Argentina?

The third, fourth, and fifth films are pretty far along. And the third [Argentina Latente (Latent Argentina)] will be finished in September or October. The fourth one [La Tierra Sublevada (The Roused Land)] six or seven months later. The fifth one perhaps May or June next year.

Chuleenan Svetvilas is a writer and editor based in Oakland, California. Her writings on film have appeared in Dox, Documentary, and Release Print magazines.

The Politics of Lying and the Culture of Deceit in Obama's America: The Rule of Damaged Politics

http://www.truthout.org/092109R?n

by Henry A. Giroux
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
21 September 2009


Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.
--Hannah Arendt[1]


In the current American political landscape, truth is not merely misrepresented or falsified; it is overtly mocked. As is well known, the Bush administration repeatedly lied to the American public, furthering a legacy of government mistrust while carrying the practice of distortion to new and almost unimaginable heights. Even now, almost a year after Bush left office, it is difficult to forgot the lies and government-sponsored deceits in which it was claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Iraq was making deals with al-Qaeda and, perhaps the most infamous of all, the United States did not engage in torture. Unlike many former administrations, the Bush administration was engaged in pure political theater,[2] giving new meaning to Hannah Arendt's claim that "Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings."[3] For instance, when the government wasn't lying to promote dangerous policies, it willfully produced and circulated fake news reports in order to provide the illusion that the lies and the policies that flowed from them were supported by selective members of the media and the larger public. The Bush deceits and lies were almost never challenged by right-wing media "patriots," who were too busy denouncing as un-American anyone who questioned Bush's official stream of deception and deceit. Ironically, some of these pundits were actually on the government payroll for spreading the intellectual equivalent of junk food. And some of them were actually being paid by the Bush government to make such claims.

In such circumstances, language loses any viable sense of referentiality, while lying, misrepresentation and the deliberate denial of truth become acceptable practices firmly entrenched in the wild West of talk radio, cable television and the dominant media. Fact finding, arguments bolstered by evidence and informed analysis have always been fragile entities, but they risk annihilation in a culture in which it becomes difficult to distinguish between an opinion and an argument. Knowledge is increasingly controlled by a handful of corporations and public relations firms and is systemically cleansed of any complexity. Lying and deceitfulness are all too often viewed as just another acceptable tactic in what has become most visibly the pathology of politics and a theater of cruelty dominated by a growing chorus of media hatemongers inflaming an authoritarian populist rage laced with a not too subtle bigotry.[4] Truth increasingly becomes the enemy of democracy because it does not support the spectacle and the reduction of citizens either to mere dupes of power or commodities. Ignorance is no longer a liability in a culture in which lying, deceit and misinformation blur the boundaries between informed judgments and the histrionics of a shouting individual or mob. Talk radio and television talk show screamers, in particular, seem to delight in repeating claims that have been discredited in the public arena, demonstrating a barely disguised contempt for both the truth and any viable vestige of journalism. These lies and deceits go beyond the classic political gambit, beyond the Watergate-style cover up, beyond the comic "I did not have sex with that woman." The lies and deceptions that are spewed out everyday from the right-wing teaching machines - from newspapers and radio shows to broadcast media and the Internet - capitalize on both the mobilizing power of the spectacle, the increasing impatience with reason and an obsession with what Susan J. Douglas describes as the use of the "provocative sound bites over investigative reporting, misinformation over fact."[5] Lying and deception have become so commonplace in the dominant press that such practices appear to have no moral significance and provoke few misgivings, even when they have important political consequences. In the age of public relations managers and talk show experts, we are witnessing the demise of public life. At a time when education is reduced to training workers and is stripped of any civic ideals and critical practices, it becomes unfashionable for the public to think critically. Rather than intelligence uniting us, a collective ignorance of politics, culture, the arts, history and important social issues, as Mark Slouka points out, "gives us a sense of community, it confers citizenship."[6] Our political passivity is underscored by a paucity of intellectual engagement, just as the need for discrete judgment and informed analysis fall prey to a culture of watching, a culture of illusion and circus tricks. Shame over the lying and ignorance that now shape our cultural politics has become a source of national pride - witness the pathetic response to Joe Wilson's outburst against President Obama. Or, for that matter, the celebrated and populist response to Sarah Palin's lies about death panels, which are seized upon not because they distort the truth and reveal the dishonesty and vileness of political opportunism - while also undermining a viable health care bill - but because they tap into a sea of growing anger and hyped-up ignorance and ratchet up poll ratings. Lying and deceit have become the stuff of spectacle and are on full display in a society where gossip and celebrity culture rule. In this instance, the consequences of lying are reduced to a matter of prurience rather than public concern, becoming a source of private injury on the part of a Hollywood star or producing the individual humiliation of public figure such as John Edwards.

The widespread acceptance of lying and deceit is not merely suggestive of a commodified and ubiquitous corporate-driven electronic culture that displays an utter contempt for morality and social needs: It is also registers the existence of a troubling form of infantilization and depoliticization. Lying as common sense and deceit as politics-as-usual joins the embrace of provocation in a coupling that empties politics and agency of any substance and feeds into a corporate state and militarized culture in which matters of judgment, thoughtfulness, morality and compassion seem to disappear from public view. What is the social cost of such flight from reality, if not the death of democratic politics, critical thought and civic agency? When a society loses sight of the distinction between fact and fiction, truth-telling and lying, what happens is that truth, critical thought and fact finding as conditions of democracy are rendered trivial and reduced to a collection of mere platitudes, which in turn reinforces moral indifference and political impotence. Under such circumstances, language actually becomes the mechanism for promoting political powerlessness. Lying and deceit are no longer limited to merely substituting falsehoods for the truth; they now performatively constitute their own truth, promoting celebrity culture, right-wing paranoia and modes of government and corporate power freed from any sense of accountability.

While all governments resort to misrepresentations and lies, we appear to have entered a brave new world in which lies, distortions and exaggerations have become so commonplace that when something is said by a politician, it is often meant to suggest its opposite, and without either irony or apology. As lies and deceit become a matter of policy, language loses its grip on reality, and the resulting indeterminacy of meaning is often used by politicians and others to embrace positions that change from one moment to the next. Witness Dick Cheney, who once referred to torture as "enhanced interrogation" so as to sugarcoat its brutality, and then appeared on national television in 2009 only to defend torture by arguing that if such practices work, they are perfectly justified, even if they violate the law. This is the same Cheney who, appearing on the May 31, 2005, "Larry King Live" show, attempted to repudiate charges of government torture by claiming, without irony, that the detainees "have been well treated, treated humanely and decently." This type of discourse recalls George Orwell's dystopian world of "1984" in which the Ministry of Truth produces lies and the Ministry of Love tortures people. Remember when the Bush administration used the "Healthy Forest Initiative" to give loggers access to protected wilderness areas or the "Clear Skies Initiative" to enable greater industrial air pollution? President Obama also indulges in this kind of semantic dishonesty when he substitutes "prolonged detention" for the much maligned "preventive detention" policies he inherited from the Bush-Cheney regime. While Obama is not Bush, the use of this type of duplicitous language calls to mind the Orwellian nightmare in which "war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength."

When lying and deceit become normalized in a culture, they not only serve as an index of how low we have fallen as a literate society, but also demonstrate the degree to which language and education have become corrupted, tied to corporate and political power and sabotaged by rigid ideologies as part of a growing authoritarianism that uses the educational force of the culture, the means of communication and the sites in which information circulate to mobilize ignorance among a misinformed citizenry, all the while supporting reactionary policies. Especially since the horrible events of 9/11, Americans have been encouraged to identify with a militaristic way of life, to suspend their ability to read the word and world critically, to treat corporate and government power in almost religious terms and to view a culture of questioning as something alien and poisonous to American society. Shared fears rather than shared responsibilities now mobilize angry mobs and gun-toting imbeciles, who are praised as "real" Americans. Fear bolstered by lies and manufactured deceptions makes us immune to even the most obvious moral indecencies, such as the use of taser guns on kids in schools. Nobody notices or cares - and one cause and casualty of all of this moral indifference is that language has been emptied of its critical content just as the public spaces that make it possible are disappearing into the arms of corporations, advertisers and other powerful institutions that show nothing but contempt for either the public sphere or the kind of critical literacy that gives it meaning.

Obama's presence on the national political scene gave literacy, language and critical thought a newfound sense of dignity, interlaced as they were with a vision of hope, justice and possibility - and reasonable arguments about the varied crises America faced and civilized. Such practices as Obama compromised, if not surrendered, some of his principles to those individuals and groups that live in the vocabulary of duplicity, the idealism that shaped his language began to look like just another falsehood when measured against his continuation of a number of Bush-like policies. In this case, the politics of distortions and misrepresentations that Obama's lack of integrity has produced may prove to be even more dangerous than what we got under Bush because it wraps itself in a moralism that seems uplifting and hopeful while it supports policies that reward the rich, reduce schools to testing centers and continue to waste lives and money on wars that should have ended when Obama assumed his presidency. Obama claims he is for peace, and yet the United States is the largest arms dealer in the world. He claims he wants to reduce the deficit, but spends billions on the defense industry and wars abroad. He says he wants everyone to have access to decent health care, but makes backroom deals with powerful pharmaceutical companies. Orwell's ghost haunts this new president and the country at large. Reducing the critical power of language has been crucial to this effort. Under such circumstances, democracy as either a moral referent or a political ideal appears to have lost any vestige of credibility. The politics of lying and the culture of deceit are inextricably related to a theater of cruelty and modes of corrupt power in which politics is reduced to a ritualized incantation, just as matters of governance are removed from real struggles over meaning and power.

Beyond disinformation and disguise, the politics of lying and the culture of deceit trade in and abet the rhetoric of fear in order to manipulate the public into a state of servile political dependency and unquestioning ideological support. Fear and its attendant use of moral panic not only create a rhetorical umbrella to promote right-wing ideological agendas (increased military spending, tax relief for the financial and corporate elite, privatization, market-driven reforms and religious intolerance), but also contribute to a sense of helplessness and cynicism throughout the body politic. The collapse of any vestige of critical literacy, reason and sustained debate gives way to falsehoods and forms of ignorance that find expression in the often racist discourse of what Bob Herbert calls "the moronic maestros of right wing radio and TV,"[7] endlessly haranguing the public to resist any vestige of reason. How else to explain the actions of parents who refuse to let their children listen to a speech on education by - Should I say it? - an African-American President? How else to fathom the dominant media repeating uncritically the views of right-wing groups that portray Obama as Hitler or Lenin, or consistently making references that compare him to a gorilla or indulge in other crude racist references - in recent days, these groups have been given ample media attention, as if their opinions are not simply ventriloquizing the worst species of ignorance and racism.

The politics of lying and the culture of deceit are wrapped in the logic of absolute certainty, an ominous harbinger of a kind of illiteracy in which one no longer has to be accountable for justifying opinions, claims or alleged arguments. Stripped of accountability, language finds its final resting place in a culture of deceit in which lying either is accepted as a political strategy or is viewed as simply another normalized aspect of everyday life. The lack of criticism surrounding both government practices and corporations that now exercise unparalleled forms of power is more than shameful; it is an utter capitulation to an Orwellian rhetoric that only thinly veils an egregious form of authoritarianism and racism. In the face of such events, we must develop a critical discourse to address the gap between rhetoric and deeds of those who hold economic, political and social power. As Hannah Arendt has argued, debate is central to a democratic politics, along with the public space in which individuals can argue, exercise critical judgment and clarify their relationship to democratic values and public commitments. Critical consciousness and autonomy are, after all, not merely the stuff of political awareness, but what makes democratic accountability possible in the first place. They are also the foundation and precondition for individuals, parents, community groups and social movements to mobilize against such political and moral corruptions. Democracy is fragile, and its fate is always uncertain, but during the last decade we have witnessed those in commanding political and corporate positions exhibit an utter disregard for the truth, morality and critical debate. The Enron template of lying and deception has turned an ethos of dialogue and persuasion into its opposite: dogmatism and propaganda. In doing so, the American public has been bombarded by a discourse of fear, hate and racism, coupled with a politics of lying that undermines any viable vestige of a democratic ethos. We now find ourselves living in a society in which right-wing extremists not only wage a war against the truth, but also seek to render human beings less than fully human by taking away their desire for justice, spiritual meaning, freedom and individuality.

Politics must become more attentive to those everyday conditions that have allowed the American public to remain complicitous with such barbaric policies and practices. Exposing the underlying conditions and symptoms of a culture of lying and deceit is both a political and a pedagogical task that demands that people speak out and break through the haze of official discourse, media-induced amnesia and the fear-producing lies of corrupt politicians and the swelling ranks of hatemongers. The politics of lying and deceit at the current historical moment offers up the specter of not just government abuse, mob hysteria and potential violence, but also an incipient authoritarianism, one that avidly seeks to eliminate intelligent deliberation, informed public discussion, engaged criticism and the very possibility of freedom and a vital democratic politics. The spirit of critique is meaningless without literacy and an informed public. For such a public to flourish, it must be supported with public debate and informed agents capable of becoming both a witness to injustice and a force for transforming those political, economic and institutional conditions that impose silence and perpetuate human suffering. The distortions, misrepresentations and lies that have become an integral part of American culture present a serious threat to an aspiring democracy because they further what John Dewey called the "eclipse of the public," just as they empty politics of its democratic values, meanings and possibilities. The hate, extremism and pathology that have come to define our national political and popular landscapes - heard repeatedly in the prattle of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, to name only two of the most popular examples - are legitimated by an appeal to absolute certainty, which becomes the backdrop against which a politics of lying and a culture of deceit, fear, cruelty and repression flourish. We are witnessing in the politics of lying and the culture of deceit a disconnection between language and social responsibility, politics and critical education, market interests and democratic values, and privately felt pain and joys and larger public considerations. And this undermining of the value of human dignity, truth, dialogue and critical thought is the offspring of a debate over much more than simply meaning and language, or even the widespread legitimacy of individual and institutional ignorance and corruption. At its core, it is a debate about power and those corporate and political interests that create the conditions in which lying becomes acceptable and deceit commonplace - those forces that have the power to frame in increasingly narrow ways the conventions, norms, language and relations through which we relate to ourselves and others. How we define ourselves as a nation cannot be separated from the language we value, inhabit and use to shape our understanding of others and the world in which we want to live. As the language of critique, civic responsibility, political courage and democracy disappears along with sustained investments in schools, media, and other elements of a formative culture that keeps an aspiring democracy alive, we lose the spaces and capacities to imagine a future in which language, literacy and hope are on the side of justice, rather than on the side of hate, willful ignorance and widespread injustice.

NOTES

1. Hannah Arendt, "Lying in Politics," in "Crisis of the Republic" (New York: Harvest/HBJ Books, 1969), p. 6

2. Frank Rich, "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (New York: Penguin, 2007).

3. Ibid., Hannah Arendt, "Lying in Politics," p. 4.

4. See Bob Herbert's courageous article, "The Scourge Persists," New York Times (September 19, 2009), p. A17.

5. Susan J. Douglas, "Killing Granny with the Laziness Bias," In These Times (September 17, 2009). Online at: www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/4897.

6. Mark Slouka, "A Quibble," Harper's Magazine (February 2009), p. 9.

7. Ibid., Herbert, "The Scourge Persists," p. 17.
»


Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. Related work: Henry A. Giroux, "The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence" (Lanham: Rowman and Lilttlefield, 2001). His most recent books include "Take Back Higher Education" (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006), "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex" (2007) and "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed" (2008). His newest book, "Youth in a Suspect Society: Beyond the Politics of Disposability," will be published by Palgrave Mcmillan in 2009. Henry A. Giroux's latest book, "Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability?," has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan




THE REAL CRISIS FACING PRESIDENT OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION

http://www.truthout.org/092109E?n

All,

An excellent, accurate, and fair analysis. I hope the President is listening for both his sake and ours. Otherwise we will all soon be in even deeper trouble than we already are...


Kofi


Obama's Presidency Isn't Too Big to Fail
by Robert Scheer
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
21 September 2009


A president has only so much capital to expend, both in tax dollars and public tolerance, and Barack Obama is dangerously overdrawn. He has tried to have it all on three fronts, and his administration is in serious danger of going bankrupt. He has blundered into a deepening quagmire in Afghanistan, has continued the Bush policy of buying off Wall Street hustlers instead of confronting them and is now on the cusp of bargaining away the so-called public option, the reform component of his health care program.

Those are not happy sentences to write for one who is still on the e-mail list of campaign supporters urged to back the president in the face of attacks that are stupidly small-minded. But to remain silent about his errors, just because most of his critics are so vile, is hardly an example of constructive concern for him or the country.

Yes, Obama was presented with a series of crises not of his making but for which he is now being held accountable. He is not a "socialist" who grew the federal budget to astronomical proportions. That is the legacy of George W. Bush, who raised the military budget to its highest level since World War II despite the end of the Cold War and the lack of a formidable military opponent — a legacy of debt compounded by Bush's decision to first ignore the banking meltdown and then to engage in a welfare-for-Wall-Street bailout. And it was Bush who gave the pharmaceutical companies the gift of a very expensive government subsidy for seniors' drugs.

But what is nerve-racking about Obama is that even though he campaigned against Bush's follies, he has now embraced them. He hasn't yet managed to significantly reduce the U.S. obligation in Iraq and has committed to making a potentially costlier error by ratcheting up America's "nation-building" role in Afghanistan.

Just as he was burdened with the Afghanistan situation, Obama was saddled with a banking crisis he didn't cause, and the worst that can be said of his attempted solutions to the financial mess is that they were inherited from Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. But Obama, who raised questions before his election about the propriety of a plan that would rescue the banks but ignore the plight of ordinary folks, has adopted that very approach as president. He elevated Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, the two Democrats most closely aligned with Paulson's policy, to top positions in his government.

Obama's proposed new regulations, while containing some kind words about better informing consumers, do not portend any breakup of the "too big to fail companies" whose problems were permitted to fester by previous deregulatory measures. His answer is to increase the regulatory capacities of the Federal Reserve, which failed to use its already existing and considerable powers to avoid the debacle.

The promise is that next time the Fed will behave better. As Obama put it Monday, "So our plan would put the cost of a firm's failures on those who own its stock and loaned it money. And if taxpayers ever had to step in again to prevent a second Great Depression, the financial industry will have to pay the taxpayer back every cent."

Why not now? And why has he accepted the Wall Street line that all this represents a "collective failure," as if the con men and the conned had equal responsibility? According to Obama: "It was a failure of responsibility that led homebuyers and derivative traders alike to take reckless risks that they couldn't afford to take. It was a collective failure of responsibility in Washington, on Wall Street and across America that led to the near-collapse of our financial system one year ago."

Hogwash. The chicanery of the financial system, securitizing highly suspect mortgages, was codified into laws that made the hustle legal.

That insistence on equating the swindled with the swindlers is also what is wrong with the evolving health care reform plan. The assumption from the beginning, when Obama reached out to insurance companies to come up with a deal, was that they had the interest of their customers at heart. They don't, and it is the purpose of government regulation in the area of health as well as banking to even the scales between the powerful corporations and the consumers from whom they profit. That is the purpose of a public option worth its name.

Without a government program as a check on medical costs, Obama will end up with a variant of the Massachusetts program, one that forces consumers to sign up with private insurers and costs 33 percent more than the national average. He will have furthered the Bush legacy of cultivating an ever more expensive big government without improving how the people are served.


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Michelle Obama Helps Lead Healthcare Reform Fight

First lady Michelle Obama listens to remarks during a forum at the White House on Friday


Hyungwon Kang/Reuters
Michelle Obama discussing women and health care at the White House on Friday



.
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/michelle-obama-health-care-overhaul-important-to-women/?nl=us&emc=politicsemailema3


Michelle Obama: Health Care Overhaul ‘Next Step’ for Women

By JEFF ZELENY
September 18, 2009
New York Times



First Lady Michelle Obama said Friday that overhauling the nation’s health care system was of critical importance to women and part of “the next step” in the long quest to assure full opportunities and equality for women.

“Women aren’t just disproportionately affected by this issue because of the roles that we play in families,” Mrs. Obama said. “Women are affected because of the jobs that we do in this economy.”

In a morning speech at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the grounds of the White House, the first lady took one of her biggest steps yet into the health care discussions under way in Congress. She urged women to pay attention and get involved in the debate, saying it should be of particular concern to them and their families.

“We all know that women are more likely to work part-time or to work in small companies or businesses that don’t provide any insurance at all,” Mrs. Obama said. “Women are affected because, as we heard, in many states, insurance companies can still discriminate because of gender. And this is still shocking to me.”

In some states across the country, she said, insurance companies can still discriminate because of gender. She recalled instances where women had been denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition – “like having a C-section, or having had a baby.”

“These are the kind of facts that still wake me up at night,” she said.

In her speech, Mrs. Obama also told the story of one of their daughters, Sasha, who would not stop crying when she was 4 months old. A doctor’s visit revealed that she might have meningitis, which she ultimately did not, but the illness produced a scare.

“It is that moment in our lives that flashes through my head every time we engage in this health-insurance conversation. It’s that moment in my life because I think about, what on earth would we had done if we had not had insurance?” Mrs. Obama said. “What would have happened to that beautiful little girl, if we hadn’t been able to get to a pediatrician, who was able to get us to an emergency room?”

In the first eight months of the Obama presidency, the first lady has only occasionally weighed in on policy discussions, a strategy intended to keep her away from controversial topics. But the speech on Friday, delivered to leaders of several women’s groups, signaled the beginnings of an increasing role for her in the health care debate.

“She’s obviously a very popular figure in America,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. “If she can help out, we’re happy to have her.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/18/michelle.obama.health.reform/

All,

Very important support and advocacy for healthcare reform by Michelle Obama...

Kofi

Michelle Obama could be secret weapon in health care reform

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

First lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks on health care reform Friday
Obama recalls personal health stories about her daughter and father
Analysts say her personal touch on the thorny issue could help her husband



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- She stood by her husband throughout the contentious 2008 presidential campaign and during heated health care reform debates during his presidency.


First lady Michelle Obama listens to remarks during a health care forum at the White House on Friday.

Now, as the debate is reaching a fever pitch, first lady Michelle Obama is weighing in on the issue by focusing on how health care can affect families.

"What she's doing is putting a personal and human face on the issue ... there's nothing more crucial," said Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn. "Everybody gets sick, and everybody has someone in the family that gets sick."

"I think if you can humanize it and personalize it, it suddenly brings it home to people -- especially those who are screaming and yelling about the government taking over," Quinn said.

On Friday, the first lady, a former hospital administrator, spoke about the issue to a crowd at the White House, highlighting her own family's experience with health care.

In one touching moment, Obama recalled when daughter Sasha exhibited signs of potentially deadly meningitis when she was 4 months old.

"We didn't know what, but he [the doctor] told us she could have meningitis, so we were terrified. He said get to the emergency room right away," she said. "Fortunately, things worked out."

"But it is that moment in our lives that flashes through my head every time we engage in this health insurance conversation. It's that moment in my life, because I think about what on earth would we have done if we had not had insurance."

Mrs. Obama not only faced the issue as a mother, but also as a daughter.

"My father had multiple sclerosis. He contracted it in his 20s. ... He was able to get up and go to work every day, even though it got harder for him as he got sicker and more debilitated. And I find myself thinking what would we had done as a family on the south side of Chicago if my father hadn't had insurance."

Quinn says that personal story is critical in the health care debate -- something that has been lacking in the president's message so far, which has often been deemed by pundits as too policy-oriented and too surgical in nature.

"What she's doing is she's humanizing the issue. And I think that has been missing in their [White House] campaign," she says. "He's been so focused on the details and the strategy and the money that the individual problems and issues have seemed to have gotten lost in the fray."

Gloria Borger, a CNN senior political analyst, agreed.

"I think she's always been a great asset to him," she said. "She can help in this health care debate by not getting involved in the minutiae of the bills, but essentially emphasizing the reason we need health care reform. And that's what she will stick to."

Michelle Obama was a lightning rod -- both good and bad -- throughout her husband's presidential campaign. Now, in her role as first lady, she has garnered greater support among American voters from both parties.

A national survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press in April found that the first lady's positive ratings have increased since her husband took office. The poll found that 76 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of her, which is up from 68 percent in January.

"Much of the change has come among Republicans, especially Republican women," the organization noted. "About two-thirds of Republican women [67 percent] have a favorable impression of Michelle Obama, a gain of 21 points since January."

But a first lady's involvement in health care reform is nothing new.

In the early '90s, first lady Hillary Clinton spearheaded the Clinton administration's push for reform, holding meetings, testifying before congressional committees and, in general, taking charge of the issue.

"Hillary Clinton was the architect of health care reform," Borger said.

As for whether Michelle Obama is mirroring Clinton's role, the answer from both Borger and Quinn is absolutely not.

"I don't see any parallels at all. ... The Clintons came in, and they had run on the platform of buy one, get one free, a co-presidency and all of that. And she took over this huge thing herself. Bill wasn't doing it," Quinn said.

She said the president, not Michelle Obama, was the was the one who pushed health care reform in his early domestic agenda.

"He promised in his campaign, and then he's the one that did it. This is not Michelle's plan. She hasn't been doing the town meetings and the national press conferences," she added.


Borger said that the first lady is playing a completely different role.

"It's a much more supportive role, and it's a role out of the policy arena, but more in the arena of just why we ought to think we need reform."

All About Michelle Obama • Health Care Policy

The Racist Double Standard in American Sports and its Heavily Biased Treatment of the Black Athlete, Part III

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090928/zirin


Double Standard For Serena Williams
by Dave Zirin
The Nation
September 18, 2009

A top-ranked tennis player in a moment of rage cursed out a judge and shocked the world, headlining every sports and news program from ESPN to MSNBC. Meanwhile, another champion tennis player hurled expletives at a judge and the media barely yawned. While the tennis world still reels from Serena Williams's f-bomb-laced tirade against a line judge on September 12, the "classy" Roger Federer pulled a similar tantrum two days later and didn't get half as much coverage.

In US Open finals on September 14, Federer lost in five sets to the previously unheralded Juan Martin del Potro. In a tense third set, after a challenge by del Potro, Federer became infuriated with the line judge. After the judge told Federer to settle down, he said, "Don't tell me to be quiet, OK? I don't give a [expletive] what [del Potro] said, OK?" The 6-foot-6 power-serving Argentinean frustrated Federer throughout, and the favored player lost his famous cool. But after the match, there were no press conference apologies from Federer. And there were no calls for him to be suspended, fined or sanctioned. This despite the fact that his profanity was directed toward del Potro, a serious breach in tennis etiquette.

Williams without question lost control as well. After being called for a critical foot fault in her semifinal match against Kim Clijsters, she said to the line judge, "If I could, I would take this [expletive] ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat." The foot fault was a terrible call, and it cost Williams the match. After her rant, she was given a point penalty, and the match was effectively over as Clijsters looked on in a state of bewilderment. It's worth mentioning that the call by the line judge was the equivalent of calling a technical foul in Game 7 of the NBA finals with the score tied in the closing seconds.

The behavior of Federer and Williams in these matches are examples of bad sportsmanship at its worst. But the double standard is enough to make you want to swallow your tennis ball. When Williams lost it on the court, she later apologized and admitted idolizing tennis's infamous enfant terrible John McEnroe. McEnroe, now an announcer on CBS, responded, "I guess she idolized me for the wrong reasons, apparently. I feel like I'm on the hot seat now.... I can't defend the indefensible." His co-anchor, Mary Carillo, was even harsher, saying, Williams "could have won the Oscar" for her calm performance at the press conference after the match.

On September 13 on ESPN2, Carillo called for Williams's suspension, saying, "If you care about the integrity of your sport, you throw somebody out of the game for a while." Later, she called Williams's $10,500 fine a "joke" and an "embarrassment." By contrast, when Federer cursed, CBS broadcaster Dick Enberg drew a distinction that it was not "venomous."

The question is not whether Williams was right or Federer was wrong. They were both wrong. The question is whether hypocrisy is acceptable. The double standard is obvious if we perform the gender flip test: if Williams were a man, would her behavior have been met with similar outrage?

To ask the question is to answer it: from McEnroe to Jimmy Connors, male players who blow their tops are part of tennis lore. McEnroe has repeatedly made calls for current pros to not be "robots" and have the "passion" he displayed. But in the country-club white-skirt-and-ponytail world of womens tennis, different behavior is expected. Williams, to put it mildly, doesn't wear white. She is the person who introduced the "cat suit" to the tennis court. Her physical dominance is heretical to demure expectations that still permeate the sport.

When you couple gender expectations with racial ones, the inconsistency is no longer just obvious, it's glaring. If Williams were a petite blonde, like 17-year-old American Melanie Oudin, and was called for a match-ending foot-fault-cum-disqualification, the US Open crowd would have turned Arthur Ashe Stadium into Attica. But Williams was booed throughout the match against Clijsters; and when her outburst began, the booing intensified. The next day when she played doubles with her sister Venus, Serena Williams was repeatedly heckled. Her "Americanness" at the US Open was in open question in the way a white player's cultural heritage never would be. Ironically, her most infamous match against Clijsters, as all tennis fans know, was at Indian Wells in 2001 where she was subjected to repeated racial taunts and slurs. She has boycotted Indian Wells ever since and has said she will continue to do so, even though she has been threatened with fines and sanctions.

The Williams sisters' ascendance from Compton to queens of the tennis world has been well documented and earned them millions of dollars plus fans around the world. But it has also gained them tons of detractors, from the stands to the blogosphere. This doesn't excuse Serena Williams's conduct, and it's not an attempt to "play the race card"; it's just a fact. When it comes to conquering race and gender in tennis, we are nowhere near match point.



Dave Zirin is The Nation's sports editor. He is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket) and A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press). His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated.com and The Progressive. He is the host of Sirius/XM's Edge of Sports Radio.

Contact him at edgeofsports at gmail.com.

Serena Williams is A Human Being--Not a Robot (or Scapegoat)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/09/15/serena.williams.outburst/#cnnSTCText


Serena Williams tries to move on from uproar over outburst

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Tennis star's obscenity-laced tirade at the U.S. Open stays in the spotlight
She's fielding questions about it as she promotes new book
Williams says she was "in the moment" and doesn't remember all that was said
Her young fans can now see "she's human, she made a bad decision," she says


Editor's note: Watch the full interview with Serena Williams on "Your $$$$$" Saturday at 1 p.m. ET and Sunday at 3 p.m. ET on CNN.


By Christine Romans and Jennifer Icklan
Wed September 16, 2009
CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Serena Williams just wants to move on. But the controversy around her obscenity-laced tirade at a line judge at the U.S. Open continues.

Williams, 27, said she was "in the moment" and doesn't really remember her now-famous outburst at a line judge who had called a foot fault. It was a 12-second verbal attack that has played over and over for three days.

"It was a really tough point in the match and it was really close and got a really tough call that wasn't the correct call, and, you know, things got a little heated and I had a conversation with the line judge that didn't go so well," Williams said.

Williams, ranked No. 2 in the world by the Women's Tennis Association, said she does not recall moments of Saturday's incident but believes she apologized for her actions promptly and completely.

"I couldn't apologize any sooner, and then also I learned from my mistakes ... I was talking to [former Giants defensive end] Michael Strahan earlier today and he said how, when he's out there you're so intense. Obviously, when you get a bad call, it's like 'What's going on?' So when you're in the moment, you are just there. You don't really quite remember exactly what's going on," Williams said.

Williams found herself explaining her outburst while promoting her recently published memoir, "On the Line," in which she details growing up the youngest of five sisters, her struggles on the court and off, and her positive messages of inspiration, especially to her younger fans.

"Those kids probably just need to know it's great to be a competitor, how passionate someone is, and just making the right decisions at the right time -- realizing that, hey, everyone falls, 'Wow, she's human, she made a bad decision, a bad choice.' "

Williams added, "I am not a robot. I have a heart and I bleed."

In the aftermath of Saturday's match, tournament officials fined Williams $10,000 for unsportsmanlike conduct and $500 for smashing a racket during the same event. So far, no suspensions have been served, but the United States Tennis Association has said that it has launched an investigation into the incident.

All About Serena Williams • U.S. Open - Tennis • Tennis