No doubt, Karzai has been little more than a pawn to make the Bush administration look like it was doing something, but as Obama plans on escalating the war in the country, he seems to be looking for a more competent ringleader.  In any case, Karzai’s days are numbered as Afghan head of state.

Mr. Obama is preparing to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan over the next two years, perhaps to more than 60,000 from about 34,000 now… He [Gates] outlined plans for an increase of about 12,000 troops by midsummer but cautioned that any decision on more troops beyond that might have to wait until late 2009, given the need for barracks and other infrastructure.

So one campaign promise that Obama is living up to is upping the ass-whooping on Afghanistan.  I hate to bring up inconvenient lessons in history, but didn’t yet another superpower put all its eggs in the Afghan basket (while experiencing severe economic strains) and end up becoming a moot point?

Mr. Gates added that the United States should focus on limited goals. “My own personal view is that our primary goal is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack the United States and our allies, and whatever else we need to do flows from that objective,” he said.

Here’s a good thought experiment – did Gates make the above statement 6 years ago, or yesterday?  (Hint: We’ve seen this foreign policy already, and it hasn’t turned out so good).

Obama also persuaded House Democrats to remove provisions related to family-planning from the stimulus and — over the objections of many Democrats — inserted large tax cuts for businesses that Republicans wanted.

… and still no Republicans voted for it.  One wonders what the hell the Republican party, as a whole, would actually do if they had the agency or inclination to deal with the current economic crisis.  And one can’t help but be angry with them – not so much for opposing the stimulus package, but for setting the bar so low that they make the Democrats look responsible.

This suggests that “union boss” is a term of abuse and/or propaganda, not of analysis. My question here: are there circumstances in which the term is legitimately used?

A boss is someone who can fire or demote you, subject of course to legal and practical constraints. Bosses tell you what to do – if you don’t listen, you get fired. They hold power over you. You don’t elect them, though you may have the ability to walk away from them if the abuse gets to be too much, possibly at a substantial cost.

Union leaders are in most cases elected. If a union is functioning properly, the leaders don’t tell members what to do – members tell them what to do. They can’t get rid of you, but you can get rid of them. In short, they are elected officials, and therefore the servants of members, not their bosses. They are no more the bosses of unions than the President of the United States is the boss of the country.

Now, all of this is how it is supposed to work in the abstract. In reality, there are all kinds of constraints on bosses that may prevent them from firing you. For instance, you may belong to a union that has a just cause contract with the employer, requiring your boss to have a legitimate reason for firing you. Or you may be in a non-union workplace, but you’re such a productive and useful employee that while your boss can fire you in principle, she is constrained by the fact that she would lose money by doing so.

The reality is also that unions are not perfect democracies, just like our political system is not perfectly democratic. There are plenty of union leaders who are incompetent and corrupt, just like there are politicians who are incompetent and corrupt. Union leaders can subvert democratic processes, just like politicians can. Union leaders can try to act as though they are the bosses of the union, just like President Bush acts like he’s the boss of the country. But a key difference between a union leader and the President is that there are many more mechanisms of accountability in place to keep union leaders honest than there are to keep the President honest.

One is that people are free to opt out of their union, while one may not opt out of the legal regime of the country. In many states, individual workers cannot opt out of paying for the benefits that they receive from the union, in terms of better wages and working conditions. This is for the same reason that you can’t opt out of paying taxes, namely, that you’re “free riding” by taking the benefits of collective action without contributing to the costs. Workers who are *really* bothered by the union’s leaders can quit their job, just like if you *really* don’t like the president, you are free to leave the country.

If a majority of workers decide they don’t like the union’s leadership, they can petition to decertify the union. There is no analogous decertification process for Presidents, although there are automatic elections every four years.

Unions are typically guided by elected executive or steering committees, who are above the union president in the decision-making hierarchy. Typically, the highest decision-making body is the membership, which is asked to decide important questions, with the executive in charge of implementing the decision. The U.S. President, on the other hand, is the supreme executive authority. In theory, the Congress sets the agenda and the President implements it; in reality, the President wields a tremendous amount of independent power.

Perhaps most importantly, unions are subject to overall democratic and judicial oversight and regulation. In the U.S., unlike in most of the world, the fundamental rights of workers to unionize and bargain collectively are not recognized. Instead, they are subject to legislation. This provides another mechanism of accountability that is lacking in an institution like the Presidency. If unions become too corrupt, the public can step in and impose anti-corruption measures, as it did in the Landrum-Griffin Act.

So overall, characterizing union leaders as “bosses” is grossly inaccurate. There are, however, one circumstances in which it fits, and one in which it maybe, kinda, sorta fits.

With respect to the union’s staff under the direct control of the leadership, they are in a boss-worker relationship with the leaders. They can be fired or demoted by the leadership. This does not make the union leaders the bosses of the union, however, any more than the President is the boss of the nation because he can hire and fire White House staff.

The other situation, the one which kinda, sorta fits, is when a national union imposes a trustee on a local union. Trusteeships are permitted by the Landrum-Griffin Act in order to remedy corruption, mismanagement, or failure on the part of local leadership to run the union democratically. Trustees are imposed by the elected national leadership, not elected by the local, and they can themselves be highly undemocratic. When I was a union steward in UAW Local 2322, I participated in an effort to oppose imposition of a trusteeship on the local by the international. These days, they are highly controversial within the SEIU, with locals of the United Healthcare Workers West accusing the national SEIU of imposing trusteeships against the will of the members in order to control the locals.

That’s why when I hear someone say “union bosses,” I first check to see whether they’re talking about the relationship between union staff and the elected leadership, or about an imposed trusteeship. If they are not (and inevitably, they are not), I pretty much tune them out.

Postscript

I had been relatively disengaged from this blog for the last few weeks. This is not due to post-election having-nothing-to-talk-about, but rather due to me having to write several exams and one major paper. The paper is a linguistic analysis of a dispute between Justice Stevens and Justice Scalia in the District of Columbia v. Heller gun control case about the significance of the word “to”. I will post a link to it once I refine it a little bit and put it on the web, just in case someone is interested in seeing what such an analysis might look like.

I am proud to live in Obama’s America too. Long time coming. Let’s work together now to bring us back into the international fold.

- Steve, November 4, 2008

There are many lessons to be learned from the recent U.S. Presidential election – but many more lessons commentators claim we have learned.  It’s been a month since the election, and it’s time to look back with some perspective.

• It was a historic election – this should not be understated.  A Black man was elected to the highest office in a country where 2nd-class citizenship and economic inequality was written into our laws just 55 years ago.  A woman was a serious competitor for the candidacy of one of two major parties in a country where gender inequality is still rampant and largely unaddressed.  This represents progress along racial and gender lines.
• It was a historic election – but this should not be overstated.  Despite the competitive candidacies of a person of color and a woman, racial and gender disparities are real and ongoing.  They are not merely anecdotal, but devastatingly economic.  The average white household made $48k last year; the average Black household made $30k.  The fact of Obama as president is not going to close that gap.
• Symbolism is real, and has very real effects. Cornel West on CNN:

In a sense it ["post-racialism"] doesn’t exist – it just means that white fellow citizens are more likely to vote for a black candidate who has qualifications rather than be preoccupied with his pigmentation.  “Post-racial” means less racism on behalf of white voters – and that’s progress, but “post racial” ought not to mean “black” people disappearing, as if there’s no such thing as “black” people anymore.

… As we see the glass ceiling actually pierced at the highest level, and the symbolic impact – My god, the impact on children … it makes a *big* difference.  That means the sky is the limit for them.  And of course the impact on white children as well, they understand that the sky is the limit for children across the board.

The challenge now is from moving from symbol to substance.  What kind of policies?  Will you accent working people?  Will you accent poor people?  Who will be your advisors?  What will your cabinet look like?  Symbols matter – but then we move to substance.

• “Progress” is only superficially defined by “more black faces in higher places” – yes, folks of color in positions of power is a part of moving forward, but that’s just the surface of progress.  In fact, having people of color in positions of power should be one of the last achievements in a democratic society in breaking down racism and building up a more equitable society.  The real achievement is when persistent and brutal conditions for everyday folks are addressed and resolved.  We are a long, long way from that, and it is entirely unclear whether Obama has the will or desire to “cash the check” he was given, as put by Bruce Dixon from the Black Agenda Report:

The day Obama takes office, there will be an incredible 1.1 million African Americans behind bars, a proportion eight times that of whites. Before the mortgage market meltdown the wealth of black families was about one eleventh that of whites. Since then, it’s fallen off a cliff. Whether we look at education, at wages, at morbidity, mortality, unemployment or mass incarceration the gaps between whites and blacks in the US are wide and still growing. With the nation’s First Black President installed, many whites will solemnly assure us that the US is not now, if it ever was, a racist society. The First Black President-elect seems to agree with them, having told us all a year before electing him that we were “90% of the way” to a non-racist society.

Will the First Black President be of any use cashing the check for real racial justice, not just for black faces in high places? The clock is already ticking, and every day is an opportunity to lead lost.

The day the First Black President is sworn in the US economy will still be, in the words of economist Michael Hudson a polite fiction, based on phantom assets, phony profits, inflated valuations, and outright fraud, a house of marked cards where even the bankers know not to trust each other. Millions of families will still face foreclosure, eviction and bankruptcy. Tens of millions more are in debt up to their necks, afflicted with ever-rising interest rates thanks to the tireless efforts of Obama’s running mate Joe Biden, sometimes known as the Senator from MasterCard.

In his first true test of presidential leadership, while still a candidate the First Black President lobbied reluctant Democrats and urged them to pass the Bush-Cheney trillion dollar no-strings-attached parting gift to Wall Street, money that could have been used to fund education, jobs, infrastructure, human needs, and debt relief for ordinary families.

• This was not a landslide victory. It was clearly an electoral landslide, with a projected 365 to 173 vote difference.  But the popular vote was 53% to 46% – a difference of 7%.  McCain was dealt a hand of 8 years of Bush, embarrassing responses to 9/11, the largest Wall Street disaster in a lifetime, the ruins of Katrina, Republican corruption after corruption, an incompetent campaign with incompetent vice president, without a real message of substance to people who work for a living, and a sitting president who might be the worst president in the history of history, whose very name he could not freely speak aloud.  Ignoring everything about the Democrat’s candidate – MIckey Mouse should have handily beat the Republican party by 20 points.  That this was settled by a difference of 9 out of 129 million voters says quite a bit about the Obama victory.  That the Obama campaign spent 3/4 of $1 billion dollars to get such a margin of victory indicates something very wrong with our political system.
• As for that $750,000,000 spent by the Obama campaign, Noam Chomsky points out:

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that once again elections were bought: “The best-funded candidates won nine out of 10 contests, and all but a few members of Congress will be returning to Washington.” Before the conventions, the viable candidates with most funding from financial institutions were Obama and McCain, with 36% each. Preliminary results indicate that by the end, Obama’s campaign contributions, by industry, were concentrated among Law Firms (including lobbyists) and financial institutions. The investment theory of politics suggests some conclusions about the guiding policies of the new administration.

• The victory of Obama over McCain means that we have a little more time than we otherwise would have. A McCain victory would have meant continued economic disaster, a greater pace towards environmental ruin, slightly more lethal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and a tremendous blow to a great deal of (if not misplaced) hope for those millions of people, particularly youth and folks of color, which would make re-mobilization difficult and done from a less positive place.

Union leaders say the company failed to give workers the 60 days’ notice required by federal law, and that its bank, Bank of America, barred Republic from paying for the 60-day period or for vacations. The leaders also criticized a Wall Street bailout they say is leaving laborers behind.

“We’re doing something we haven’t done since the 1930s, so we’re trying to make it work,” declared Leah Fried, an organizer with the United Electrical Workers.

From the New York Times:

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said from the shuttered plant that he would talk to fellow senators about reminding banks that taxpayer dollars are not for dividends or executive salaries.

”We have been sending billions of dollars to banks like Bank of America and the reason we have sent them the money is to tell them that they had to loan this money out to companies just like Republic so that we can keep these companies in business and not lose these jobs here in the United States,” he said.

The governor, meanwhile, said the state plans to pursue a court injunction Tuesday to make sure federal law is followed in giving workers benefits. And state Attorney General Lisa Madigan was investigating the company.

Nezua at The Unapologetic Mexican writes a little about “how this type of strike has long been a function of Latin American worker solidarity” and also points out some of the ways that The New York Times coverage of the story quietly continues to change (their first on-line publication noted that “Most of the factory’s workers are Hispanic.”) Hmm.

In a positive turn of events, Obama has expressed support for the workers.

“Reality … for most rural people is that farming is not how we make our living,” says Dee Davis of the Center for Rural Strategies, a Kentucky-based group that tries to attract attention to rural issues. “You’ve only got about 1 percent of rural America making their primary living on the farm. So what’s important is to think about those other 99 percent and what’s possible for them.”

Many rural Americans are challenged by a rural economy that tanked sooner and deeper than the nation’s economy. Thousands of rural manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. High energy prices have made food and long commutes more expensive. And most rural places are losing population.

So while quick agricultural reform is an increasingly urgent necessity, it must be implemented alongside others as well to have a significant and long-lasting effect on rural communities.

“Internet access is not just for watching YouTube. It’s an instrument of commerce and education,” Kozikowski says.

In fact, rural areas lag behind cities and suburbs in access to broadband, making economic growth more difficult. Kozikowski also wants attention given to the basic infrastructure of asphalt and concrete. “Bringing us into the age of technology for new commerce and educational opportunity doesn’t mean anything if you can’t bring your product across a safe road or bridge.”

Both moves would help “overcome the friction of distance. Or overcome the costs that are associated with distance to these locations,” as Gimpel puts it. He wants the new administration to recognize something else fundamental about rural life: “Key to the rural economy really is the notion of self-employment. Self-employment is much higher in rural America than it is anywhere else,” he says.

Davis also points out that there are many exciting possibilities for incorporating rural areas into new economic recovery plans for the entire country, focusing mainly on their potential for growing renewable energies systems and economies.

“We don’t have to think of rural as a deficit. We can think of it as a strength,” Davis says. “We can think of it as the way to begin to reimagine our economy.”

Can, and should.

UMass Amherst Green Energy Conference

I’m at the Mass Mutual Center in Springfield, MA, attending the “Clean Energy Connections” Conference, put together by the University of Massachusetts Amherst (my school). The topic is the new “green economy” – what it is, why we need it, and examples of what it will look like in the future.

The introductory talk was given by Bracken Hendricks, from the Center for American Progress (a Washington Think Tank) and also an advisor to Prez-Elect Obama.  He made some good (and by now, obvious) points, but as he went through the list of economic and environmental benefits of renewable energy, rewiring the grid, building insulation, the crux of what he was saying (that he outright came to in his conclusion) is that the primary reason that our species (and many others) face extinction is the failure of political leadership.  No doubt he’s correct – the effect of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere has been understood by chemists since the early twentieth century, creation of cars with much higher fuel efficiency has been around for at least 40 years, and basic technology to insulate housing has been around since, well, since people used mud to keep the heat in their huts.

What has quickly become a cliche, Hendricks slapped the iconic red, white and blue image of Obama with the subtitle “HOPE” and “PROGRESS” on the screen, and proceeded to talk about how the country is “turning a new corner”, how the new president allows a “window to the future”, and generally how hopeful he was about the future.  But although he is likely unrealistic about Obama’s capacity to bring sufficient change, he did repeat what I’ve heard (thankfully) from many folks on the left side of the spectrum: We must “hold him [Obama] accountable” to the change that’s contained in the promise of his campaign.  I’m not sure who “we” is, and I’m not sure by what mechanism we have the ability to hold him accountable, but I’m grateful for this small bit of healthy cynicism when referring to the next president.

Other notes of interest from the conference:

• There’s no such thing as “green job” – building and installing wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, solar hot water heaters, installing insulation, and the many other direct and indirect forms of energy conservation and renewability needs accountants, secretaries, IT professionals, managers, and everything else we currently have.  The folks involved in installing and manufacturing might need some training or retraining, but moving to a greener economy does not mean a revolution in how we “do” stuff.  It’s just about changing the impact of what we do.
• The coming greening of the economy – that is, making energy consumption cleaner, more efficient, and utilizing renewable energy – is inevitable.  As one of the speakers mentioned, there’s too much money to be made in the private sector, particularly given the rising price of petroleum and the risks associated with it, to stop investment and innovation in better energy.  The more important question is: Are we going to green our lifestyles just enough to improve the traditional economy, or are we going to green our world enough to prevent the longer term devastation of global warming?
• Growth DOES NOT EQUAL prosperity.  As one of the speakers on a financial panel pointed out, “growing” does not mean we’re going to be better off, it just means that someone, somewhere, is reaping higher profits.  The type of growth that we do, as a country, is important – and the type of growth that has been aspired to has brought us to a dead-end, time and time again.  We need a shift in how we gain wealth, work, and spend money.
• The question of the daunting costs of installing solar panels and other technology came up in the financial panel, and the prospect of taking on debt to facilitate such an investment.  While solar panels are likely still beyond the capacity of many folks, it was pointed out that there are two types of debt: (1) consumer debt that’s used to buy stuff, and (2) self-liquidating debt, that is used to invest in something that will eventually give you a return on an investment.  The debt of type (1) is “bad” debt, which has unfortunately been keeping our economy afloat more and more, whereas debt of type (2) is “good” debt – debt that in the long run produces wealth, returns the cost of the investment, and largely benefits society overall.  Debt of type (2) are things like college loans, home equity loans, and so forth.  Moving from type (1) to type (2) is going to be essential for any sustainable economy.

That’s it for now!

Last week, The Rolling Stone published an article on the Wall Street bailout by an author I think is always well worth the read: Naomi Klein. Klein examines the deals made in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.’ most recent economic disaster and contextualizes them. She points out that the orchestration of the bailout is fundamentally the same as that of the Iraq War and its “rebuilding.” Both adhere to the rules of the Shock Doctrine and allow private contractors to profit from the crises they’ve helped to create*. Again, even if you think you already understand how the meltdown came to be, what’s at stake, and why it will take a long, long time to see real results, I recommend always taking what Naomi Klein has to say into consideration. An excerpt:

It didn’t have to be this way. Five days before Paulson struck his deal with the banks, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown negotiated a similar bailout — only he extracted meaningful guarantees for taxpayers: voting rights at the banks, seats on their boards, 12 percent in annual dividend payments to the government, a suspension of dividend payments to shareholders, restrictions on executive bonuses, and a legal requirement that the banks lend money to homeowners and small businesses.

In sharp contrast, this is what U.S. taxpayers received: no controlling interest, no voting rights, no seats on the bank boards and just five percent in dividend payouts to the government, while shareholders continue to collect billions in dividends every quarter. What’s more, golden parachutes and bonuses already promised by the banks will still be paid out to executives — all before taxpayers are paid back.

And a question:

This raises an interesting point: Has the Treasury partially nationalized the private banks, as we have been told? Or is it the other way around? Is it Treasury that has been partially privatized by Wall Street, its massive rescue plan now entirely in the hands of a private bank it is directly subsidizing?

Read the rest here.

*Read her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism if you can and haven’t already!

A brief summary:

Michael Pollan argues that the way we produce and distribute food in this country is not only unhealthy, inefficient, and endangered, but that it takes an underestimated toll on many vital systems currently in crisis. Namely the energy, climate change, and health care crises.

Our modern, specialized mono-cropping agricultural system is dependent upon the same cheap fossil fuels that we’re running out of and must be seeking independence from. It results in myriad severe pollutions. As we’ve learned many times in the past few years from wide-scale food scares (e. coli, etc.), mass, centralized production puts consumers at risk. It’s not wise to keep all you’re eggs in one basket… And government subsidies to big, corporate food producers encourage what’s cheapest for them, not what’s good for the average eater.

All of this and rising food costs on top of the recent economic meltdown. And elder generations of farmers are not being replaced.

But the prospect of inescapable doom is countered with possibilities for real reform. This, Pollan explains, will necessarily be an important imperative for the next presidency. Pollan proposes the following actions/shifts:

1. Government rewards for diversified farming–Quit subsidizing corporate monoculture!

2. A return to nurturing animal/plant symbiosis–Re-unite farm animals and crops!

3. Include farming in carbon trading schemes.

4. Organize a strategic grain reserve.

5. Support efforts to recruit farmers–these are the “green-collar jobs” we need, after all.

6. Work to preserve available farmland.

7. Re-regionalize the food system.

8. Move “food culture” away from mindset that food should be quick, cheap, on-demand, or the “cheap energy mind”.*

He’s got some cute ideas for managing the White House itself, too.

(See the video for more detail).

Our food system is an integral part of many others which are failing. Michael Pollan is correct; reforming the food system will be a much bigger deal for the next administration than has previously been suggested.

*I find it hard to fully reconcile this one as a core tenet considering the implications that it has for people who are poor and don’t have the luxury of time for things like the slow-food movement etc., but that’s another post, I think…

Key problems with the bailout are:

• Despite rumors to the contrary, the revised bailout bill (which failed yesterday) does not put restrictions on CEO pay. And even if it did, restricting the salaries of a handful of executives in a handful of firms is not going to make this bill more accountable nor going to prevent any of this from happening again. (How much of a punishment is it to pay someone $400,000 a year?).
• Oversight of the bailout is unclear at best, and effectively absent at worst.
• Henry Paulson, the same man who insists that our economy is on the edge of collapse, whose plan included giving him unprecedented, non-reviewable power to distribute $700,000,000,000 with full immunity, was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs just a few years ago – one of the same institutions that he’s proposing giving billions of dollars to. Even if he has the best of intentions, despite having the very definition of a conflict of interests, he’s the same guy that said in early August that “We have the strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime,” How is this not a case of the crazy people running the asylum?
• The drumbeat of disaster and economic ruin if we do not immediately give a third of the U.S. annual budget to banks is eerily reminiscent of the passage of the PATRIOT Act and the vote on the war on Iraq.
• There’s no guarantee that the huge bailout will actually fix the problem!
• In the past week, we’ve seen false reporting from NPR to the New York Times to columnists like David Brooks. It is not possible to make a rational, appropriate decision in such a short period of time in such a misleading and frenetic environment.
• There’s much more to comment on (keeping this short in the interest of getting this post published).

Where do the Democrats stand on this?
Obama, unbelievably, has privately urged the Democrats to not support bankruptcy reform. This is the most fundamental component of any economic stability package, would affect the folks trying to pay their mortgages, and according to Dennis Kucinich, the Democrat Presidential candidate is opposed to it. Given that Obama’s top contributor is Goldman Sachs, with JP Morgan, Citigroup, UBS, Lehman Brothers, and Morgan Stanley in his top 16, we should not be surprised.

Some folks are bringing some perspective and courage to the debate. Marcy Kaptur (D, Ohio) gave this revealing and measured response before she cast her “No” vote. Sheila Jackson also delivered some words of wisdom on the floor of the House: “America has been diagnosed, but we need a second opinion”. And recall it was mostly Republicans which stopped the bailout from being passed. What we’re witnessing is the tug of war on politicians between the people who fund them and the people who vote for them.

What to Do!
1.) Call Your Congressperson!
This is a list of how every House Representative voted for the bailout – how did yours vote? Call your House Representative (find them here) and tell them not to pass the bailout – tell them the current bailout bill is unacceptable, and anything that they pass to address the situation must include comprehensive and wide-ranging relief for those who are paying off home mortgages.
2.) Join organizations like CODEPINK and United for a Fair Economy in calling for alternatives to the bailout, like a Bailout for Main Street.
3.) Read more, get informed, know what’s going on. The greatest problem we have right now is a dearth of information and understanding. This is not a topic that’s going to go away soon, so we better know what we’re all getting (or are being put!) into.

UPDATE: Paul Krugman offered a framework to understand the current financial breakdown on Wall Street:

1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.

2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.

3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.

4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”

Now, the leadership who brought this bill are likely going to urge people that all is not lost – another bill can be reconsidered, and even this particular bill can be re-voted on.  But that’s not going to come for at least a couple of days, and we don’t know whether legislators are going to (1) succumb to their voters and further distance themselves away from a bailout or (2) come together after having made a poignant political point.

As just reported on CBS news (a special televised report), the bottom fell out when House Republicans, supposedly upset at being kept out of high-level negotiations (mostly done by the Senate) largely voted against the bill, with 67%  of those Republicans casting ballots opposed.  House Democrats, on the other hand, were recorded as voting only 40% opposed, with 60% of Democrat members of the House voting in favor of the plan.

Was this a political opportunity for House Republicans, in a very bad election environment for them, to strike a blow against Bush and the Democrats to distinguish themselves as being “for the average citizen”?  The financial crisis on Wall Street certainly presents an opportunity to take the populist road and, incidentally, the right thing in refusing to issue a blank check to Wall Street.  The question is: will Democrats follow suit and listen to their constituents, leading to a bail-out that nationalizes the banks or protects homeowners, or is this just a temporary ploy on party of the electorally-starved Republican party?

UPDATE (2:49pm EST): As news of the defeat of the bailout plan spreads, the stock market has begun to plummet, with the Dow falling 600 points in course of 30 minutes (including falling an additional 200 points when I began updating this post).  Stories such as “Stocks Tumble as Bailout Plan Fails in House” are beginning to crop up on major news outlets, and many more are likely to come. The question is: How low will it go?

Though it’s reported that the program LaBruzzo is considering might include vasectomies for men “to avoid charges of gender discrimination,” his primary target is women, to whom he would offer $1,000 to undergo tubal ligation. However:

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.

So it’s not fewer children he wants on behalf of North Americans, it’s less children born to poor women, primarily women of color. Bad economic policy is not an apt cover for this sort of discrimination.

Now, my point is not only to point fingers at this one guy. Taken from a response written by the Women’s Health and Justice Initiative and the New Orlean’s Women’s Health Clinic and posted at Elle, Phd, LaBruzzo’s plan is but one example of the injustices that spring from the overlapping ideologies and culturally integrated practices of: eugenics, reproductive violence, sterilization abuse, devaluation of poor women’s sexuality and motherhood (and fatherhood, I would add), and other classic -ism’s.

Even if sterilization is voluntary, POVERTY IS NOT! Poverty, economic insecurity, and lack of sustainable livelihood can cause a woman to consider this aggressive sterilization incentive a viable option.

LaBruzzo talks about poverty as though it were an infectious disease—a though poor people will eventually make everyone poor—rather than a condition people are condemned to by Louisiana’s lack of investment in education, employment, affordable housing, and quality health care programs, services, and resources…

We are basically witnessing a two front war against poor and working class black communities right now. On one hand, we have the Bush administration fighting to push an economic corporate welfare bailout plan to save Wall Street, and on the other, we have an elected official blaming the bodies and reproductive decisions of poor black women for the social conditions caused by corporate greed.

Read the whole thing.

Story via Womanist Musings.

Also, more on blaming people of color for the economic meltdown of late at Feministe.

At the insistence of House Republicans, who threatened to sidetrack negotiations at midweek, the insurance provision was added as an alternative to having the government buy distressed securities. House Republicans say it will require less taxpayer spending for the bailout.

But the Treasury Department has said the insurance provision would not pump enough money into the financial sector to make credit sufficiently available. The department would decide how to structure the insurance provisions, said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., one of the negotiators.

The bailout bears the echoes of Iraq in its buildup.  Its being rushed through, with a Sunday vote by the House, and a Monday vote by the Senate.  700 Billion is a lot of debt to saddle us all with.  Especially with concern about the long term impact.  But what about the short term impact? (Angry Bear via Time Blog, Emphasis Mine):

[T]he problem is the price, in this case the premium. If it is vastly less than the probability of default, the House Republicans have found a way to throw money at bankers and financial arsonists instead of just bankers. If it is actuarily fair, it will force liquidity constrained firms to unload the securities — they could wait and hope for no default, but they can’t pay actuarily fair premiums. When you are insolvent, risk, variance, double or nothing is your only hope of survival. Thus aside from the contribution to financial arson (which I guess will be huge) the plan would also force distressed banks etc to unload mortgage backed securities at fire-sale prices. Now I don’t think the current problem is mainly due to systemic margin calls due to mark to market and capital requirements, but making that problem vastly worse would hasten the collapse of the US financial system even without financial arson.

Awesome.

Then he responded (Amanda, Think Progress, emphasis mine):

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) just gave a press conference responding to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) suggestion that they both suspend their campaigns, postpone Friday’s debate in Mississippi, and return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis. Obama said that he would like to the debate to go forward as planned because “it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once”

That powerful and contained a statement deals a sharp blow to McCain’s sacrifice theme.  Sacrifice only works politically if you give up something important out of necessity.  It’ll backfire in a second if it looks like either the importance or the necessity aren’t genuine.

Which is why McCain’s stumble juggling David Letterman and Katie Couric is devastating (Amanda, Think Progress, emphasis mine):

As part of his plan to suspend his campaign activities, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) today decided to cancel his appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. McCain’s campaign reportedly told Letterman that the senator was “racing back to Washington.” That, however, didn’t happen. In his show to air tonight, Letterman shows footage of McCain sitting down with CBS’s Katie Couric for an interview at the same time he was supposed to be on his show.

You couldn’t find a brighter color to paint McCain’s campaign politically opportunistic.

Obama’s counterpoint and McCain’s dishonesty play directly to McCain’s weakness and Obama’s opposing strength at the same time.  John McCain is increasingly viewed as the precise stripe of unethical politician he once fought against.  He’s a man who goes for political points at any cost.  Barack Obama is definining himself as a politician who tries to approach problems rationally and seriously, putting the demands of the problem at hand above the political cost of doing so.

A politician’s greatest responsibility alongside governance is maintaining a connection to the people he or she represents.  The debates this friday are a central part of that, and thanks to a quick and effective response, heading in its advantage Obama.

Its deliciously ironic that subtle variations of that quote can be found throughout the web.  Even when you’ve reached through the superficial and grabbed the spirit of the truth your hands have nothing tangible to close on.  Certainty feels increasingly academic the more closely you pay attention.

Orwell’s idea matches up stunningly with the essence of Gandhi’s Satyagraha.  It essentially means “truth power”.  But saying the truth is powerful doesn’t immediately reveal its effective usage.  Often compared to a double edged sword, it does share this in common: it has a point.  To use the truth well one must aim carefully.

NancyP over at Pam’s House Blend insightfully invites us to confront conservatives with their immediate truth, framed perfectly as the question: “Are YOU better off than you were 8 years ago?”.  Paraphrasing Altemeyer (an expert on analyzing authoritarianism, emphasis mine):

Cognitive dissonance has to be extreme, and personally very uncomfortable/painful, for authoritarian followers to abandon their Authority of the Hour. Some authoritarian followers will remain loyal to their Authority despite severe personal injury (pastor schtupps follower’s wife or minor daughter or son; leader loses follower’s life savings – see Bakker or Bush 43 for that). Even for the less injured followers, the tendency is to defend the old leader by blaming subordinates (“the Leader is wise but was misled by evil advisors”).  If the follower has finally decided that his Leader has damaged him intolerably, he will treat the situation as the breaking of an (often intimate) personal relationship – an individual moral failure of that Leader, having nothing to do with policies or competence of that Leader. Thus, the authoritarian follower can claim, without the least discomfort, that the New Leader is nothing like the (now discredited) Old Leader, even though New Leader voted with the Old Leader, continues the Old Leader’s policies, and uses the same advisors.

This immediately sets the game plan and the stakes.  We need to make this election about the immediate impact of the economy, and about the Democratic party’s fiscal prowess.  NancyP notes this:

I really think that the Dems are fools for not sticking to the “It’s the economy, stupid” campaign strategy. Eight years ago we had a budget SURPLUS. Now we are looking into a large black pit without a visible bottom.

The problem is that both McCain and Obama are being mushy centrists on the bailout.  (The Caucus, NYTimes, emphasis mine):

Senator Barack Obama this afternoon urged Treasury and Federal Reserve officials to include four conditions that he and other Democrats are seeking in the proposed $700 billion federal bailout for financial firms – though he stopped short of saying he would vote against the bailout if his terms were not met.

The pressure is building as the administration attempts to equate congressional delays directly with stock market dips and plunges.  Much of congress is taking the Democratic party’s standard operating procedure of the past 8 years to heart: equivocate and compromise till it hurts (Reuters, emphasis mine):

“What they have sent us is not acceptable,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said after a five-hour hearing on the plan. His Republican counterpart, Sen. Richard Shelby, also vowed not to “rubberstamp” the proposal.

That’s a very polite way of saying they’ll take a look at it, make very serious and thoughtful comments, and then pass it with minor modifications.  For agents of change, both Obama and McCain are surprisingly in step with the establishment when it comes to the bailout.  They are providing a united front (NYTimes, emphasis mine):

With pressure mounting on Congress to pass a $700 million bailout of financial firms, Senator John McCain struck a more urgent tone Tuesday on the need to act quickly, but he and Senator Barack Obama insisted on conditions that had to be met in the final plan.

This bill is going to pass.  Which brings us back to truth.  George Bush’s successor as “Dear Leader” is united with his opponent in supporting the most visible economic bill before the election.  Their opposition is purely superficial.  This idea of whipped supporters crawling back to their leader is one we might be tempted to cast purely on the conservatives.  But if we are honest with ourselves, and ask that very same question, we need to realize how sorely we’ve been hurting for an opposition party these past 8 years.

While the economic hardship more and more Americans face drags us all eagerly towards a cliff, asking directly “are you better off now than you were 8 years ago” is risky.  Canny Republicans can point to cringing Democratic officials and suggest they were all in it together, and gosh darn it we need a maverick.  Keep in mind that Democrats have been trying unsuccessfully to convince not-filthy-rich Republicans they are voting against their economic interests for decades.

Working with someone truly stuck in an authoritarian mindset is possible, but results won’t necessarily come quickly enough for November.  (For a start, read Cracks in the Wall parts One, Two, and Three).

If you want to effect the upcoming election (especially if you live in a swing state), your best bet is to reach out to Democrats and Independents and help them make it to the polls registered and ready November 4.