‘Flip the Script’ –Jobs over Deficits

Job seekers waiting in line

The Republican Lock on Congress

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Progressive America Rising via billfletcherjr.com

There is a strategic question that faces progressives, one that is receiving increased attention.  Due to the 2010 elections and the Republican domination of state legislatures, Congressional Districts have been gerrymandered in order to guarantee a lack of any significant electoral challenges.  In other words, these Districts have Republican Congresspeople who are not worried about opposition.

As we saw in the lead up to the ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations/resolution, most Republicans felt no internal pressure to compromise.  It is quite likely that they will feel little pressure in their districts for at least ten years.  As a result the sort of pressure that they must feel must transcend their districts and actually be more at the societal level.  What this means is that while progressives absolutely need an independent electoral strategy that builds locally-based organizations capable of successfully running candidates for office–both inside and outside of the Democratic primary system–that is insufficient.

In fact, it is the Occupy Movement that pointed us in the direction of the other leg of such a movement. What the Occupy Movement accomplished, among other things, was to change the social discourse.  Despite every effort by the mainstream media to dismiss the Occupy Movement it not only grew but forced the country to start to address the question of economic inequality.

In the current context the implications should be clear.  If, for instance, we are to fight it out on the economy and specifically on unemployment, this will not happen on the basis of fights in the Republican Congressional Districts.  It will be a fight that we will have to take up in cities, including but not limited to state capitols, around the country.  It means social protests which are disruptive. 

In order for this to happen we must actually re-train many social movement activists and thinkers in the lessons of the 1930s labor movement, the 1950s-1960s freedom movements (including but not limited to the Civil Rights Movement), the movement against the Vietnam War, and the work of the early environmental movement. 

Occupy, in that sense, was onto something.  We must carry out a fight for space as part of the fight for power.  Land occupations, eviction blockades, boycotts, as well as mass demonstrations are all critical.  [Note: in fact, we need, right now, a series of REALLY mass marches for jobs.] In other words, the sort of pressure that needs to be brought about must be something that Republicans AND Democrats feel, and in fact, become a serious source of concern.

Before we find ourselves wallowing in self-pity as we worry about the Republican ‘lock’, let’s rethink our strategy and tactics.  We may be able to flip the script, and sooner rather than in the distant future.

The Secret of How the GOP Has a Lock on the House for the Foreseeable Future.

By Bill Berkowitz

Progressive America Rising via Alternet

Dec 29, 2012  - If somewhere in the recesses of your mind you were wondering how, despite President Barack Obama’s re-election victory and the Democratic Party’s gains in the Senate, Republicans continue to control the House of Representatives, think redistricting.

Redistricting is the process that adjusts the lines of a state’s electoral districts, theoretically based on population shifts, following the decennial census. Gerrymandering is often part and parcel of redistricting. According to the Rose Institute of State and Local Governments at Claremont McKenna College, Gerrymandering is done “to influence elections to favor a particular party, candidate, ethnic group.”

Over the past few years, as the Republican Party has gained control over more state legislatures than Democrats. And, it has turned redistricting into a finely-honed, well-financed project. That has virtually insured their control over the House. “While the Voting Rights Act strongly protects against racial gerrymanders, manipulating the lines to favor a political party is common,” the Rose Institute’s Redistricting in America website points out.

ProPublica’s Olga Pierce, Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer recently reported, in a piece titled “How Dark Money Helped Republicans Hold the House and Hurt Voters [3],” that “Republicans had a years-long strategy of winning state houses in order to control each state's once-a-decade redistricting process,” That strategy helped the GOP put a hammerlock on its goal of creating safe Republican districts that would allow it to control of the House.

“The Republican effort to influence redistricting overall was spearheaded by a group called the Republican State Leadership Committee [RSLC], which has existed since 2002,” ProPublica reported. “For most of that time, it was primarily a vehicle for donors like health care and tobacco companies to influence state legislatures, key battlegrounds for regulations that affect corporate America. Its focus changed in 2010 when Ed Gillespie, former counselor to President George W. Bush, was named chairman. His main project: redistricting.”

Under Gillespie’s leadership, the RSLC launched a project called the Redistricting Majority Project [4], or REDMAP, “to influence state races throughout the country.” In 2010, the RSLC had raised $30 million to pursue what Karl Rove had discussed earlier that year in a Wall Street Journal article headlined, “The GOP Targets State Legislatures,” and subtitled, "He who controls redistricting can control Congress."

The “Final REDMAP Report,” dated December 21, 2010 and posted on the Redistricting Majority Project website, pointed out that “Twenty legislative bodies which were previously split or under Democratic control are now under Republican control. This includes key chambers where the RSLC devoted significant resources, including the Michigan House, New York Senate, Ohio House, Pennsylvania House and the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate.”

The report also noted that “In comparison to past elections, Republicans had more success than either party has seen in modern history. Republicans gained nearly 700 seats on Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, outperforming the 628-seat Democratic gains in 1974, 472-seat Republican gains of 1994 and more than doubling the 322-seat Democratic gains of 2006. Before Election Day 2010, Democrats controlled 60 state legislative chambers to the Republicans’ 36. After the November 2nd elections, Democrats control 40 chambers, Republicans control 55 chambers, two remain tied and one (NE) is unicameral/non-partisan.”

The “Final REDMAP report” wasn’t shy about how some of its $30 million was spent, noting that it had “invested $18 million after Labor Day, alone”:

• “Spent $1.4 million targeting four New York State Senate seats, winning two and control of the New York State Senate.”

• “Spent nearly $1 million in Pennsylvania House races, targeting and winning three of the toughest races in the state (House Districts 39, 54, 130).”

• “Spent nearly $1 million in Ohio House races, targeting six seats, five of which were won by Republicans. Notably, President Obama carried five of these six legislative districts in 2008.”

• “Spent $1 million in Michigan working with the Michigan House Republican Campaign Committee and Michigan Republican Party to pick up 20 seats.”

• “Spent $750,000 in Texas as part of an effort that resulted in 22 House pick-ups.”

• “Spent $1.1 million in Wisconsin to take control of the Senate and Assembly, including spending nearly $500,000 to target Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker. The RSLC was the only group to target Decker who was defeated soundly by Republican Pam Galloway.”

• “Committed resources to Colorado (more than $550,000), North Carolina (more than $1.2 million), and Alabama ($1.5 million).”

• “The RSLC also invested more than $3 million across a number of other states including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington, Nevada, New Jersey and Oregon.”

Ultimately, weighted redistricting – which is done by both political parties -- allowed for Republicans to continue to control the House of Representatives even though Democratic congressional candidates received a million more votes than the GOP’s congressional candidates.

Dark Money Funds GOP Redistricting Project

The Republican Party did not build the highway leading to the U.S. House of Representatives by themselves. ProPublica’s investigation “found that the GOP relied on opaque nonprofits funded by dark money, supposedly nonpartisan campaign outfits, and … corporate donations to achieve Republican-friendly maps throughout the country.”

Millions of dollars was raised: “Two tobacco giants, Altria and Reynolds, each pitched in more than $1 million to the main Republican redistricting group, as did [Karl] Rove's super PAC, American Crossroads; Walmart and the pharmaceutical industry also contributed. Other donors, who gave to the nonprofits Republicans created, may never have to be disclosed.”

According to ProPublica, “To fund the work, the Republican State Leadership Committee used its previously dormant nonprofit arm, the State Government Leadership Foundation. Such dark money groups are increasingly popular because they are allowed to keep secret the identity of their donors. Federal tax law permits them to do this as long as they pledge that politics is not their primary focus.

“Flush with anonymous donors' cash, the Foundation paid $166,000 to hire [5] the GOP's pre-eminent redistricting experts, according to tax documents. The team leader was Tom Hofeller [6], architect of Republican-friendly maps going back decades.”

PtoPublica reported that Hofeller's “team was paid with dark money and [since] the redistricting process is so secretive, it is hard to know the full extent of its activities.” Team Hofeller “provided technical assistance to an aide to Rep. Paul Ryan as he drew new districts that favored Republicans. In Missouri, Hofeller was the sole witness called by attorneys representing the Republican legislators who drew the maps there.” And Hofeller also concentrated his efforts on North Carolina.

Perhaps no other state was transformed as much as North Carolina. As ProPublica detailed, dark money groups affiliated with longtime Republican Party funder Art Pope, who ProPublica called “the most influential conservative donor in the state,” worked its magic. Not only did Pope donate heavily to the GOP’s redistricting project, he threw a bundle of cash into the re-election campaign of Justice Paul Newby, which ultimately guaranteed that the 4-3 GOP majority on the state Supreme Court would continue, virtually assuring that any challenge to redistricting would be rebuffed.

In a piece earlier this year for The Nation titled “How the GOP Is Resegregating the South,” Ari Berman pointed out that redistricting, as conducted in North Carolina, is an extension of the GOP’s Southern strategy, “as Republicans attempt to turn this racially integrated swing state into a GOP bastion, with white Republicans in the majority and black Democrats in the minority for the next decade.”

Berman ominously noted that “In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans — to protect and expand their gains in 2010 — have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats.”

While 2010’s redistricting resulted in keeping the Republican Party’s electoral hopes alive, voter suppression efforts engineered mostly by GOP-controlled state legislatures were largely ineffective this time around. However, expect more voter suppression efforts in years to come.

And, there’s another electoral scheme the GOP is kicking around; gerrymandering the electoral college. Instead of the winner of the majority of votes in a state receiving all of that state’s electoral votes, those votes would be divided on the basis of congressional districts. In such swing states as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia, where Obama won largely because of big city turnout, Romney, who won more congressional districts, would have received the majority of electoral votes.

Gerrymandering the electoral college could become the Republican Party’s strategic push for 2016. In that case, chalk up another victory for the GOP’s redistricting project.

The Economic Platform for a Popular Front vs. Finance Capital & the Right

Let's Fight for a Progressive Agenda

By Senator Bernie Sanders
Progressive America Rising via HuffPost

Sept 29, 21012 - There are two major economic and budgetary issues which Congress must address in the lame-duck session or soon afterward. First, how do we reverse the decline of the middle class and create the jobs that unemployed and underemployed workers desperately need? Second, how do we address the $1 trillion deficit and $16 trillion national debt in a way that is fair and not on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick or the poor?

Both of these issues must be addressed in the context of understanding that in America today we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth and that the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider. Today, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent of Americans. In 2010, 93 percent of all new income went to just the top 1 percent. In terms of wealth, the top 1 percent owns 42 percent of the wealth in America while the bottom 60 percent owns just 2.3 percent.

In my view, we will not make progress in addressing either the jobs or deficit crisis unless we are prepared to take on the greed of Wall Street and big-money interests who want more and more for themselves at the expense of all Americans. Let's be clear. Class warfare is being waged in this country. It is being waged by the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adeslon, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and all the others who want to decimate working families in order to make the wealthiest people even wealthier. In this class war that we didn't start, let's make sure it is the middle class and working families who win, not the millionaires and billionaires.

In terms of deficit reduction, let us remember that when Bill Clinton left office in January of 2001, this country enjoyed a healthy $236 billion SURPLUS and we were on track to eliminate the entire national debt by the year 2010.

What happened? How did we go from significant federal budget surpluses to massive deficits? Frankly, it is not that complicated.

President George W. Bush and the so-called "deficit hawks" chose to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but "forgot" to pay for those wars -- which will add more than $3 trillion to our national debt.

President Bush and the "deficit hawks" provided huge tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans -- which will increase our national debt by about $1 trillion over a 10-year period.

President Bush and the "deficit hawks" established a Medicare prescription drug program written by the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, but they "forgot" to pay for it -- which will add about $400 billion to our national debt over a 10-year period.

Further, as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was driven into the worst recession since the Great Depression which resulted in a massive reduction in federal revenue.

And now, as we approach the election and a lame-duck session of Congress, these very same Republican "deficit hawks" want to fix the mess they created by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and education, while lowering income tax rates for the wealthy and large corporations. Sadly, they have been joined by some Democrats.

The fiscal crisis is a serious problem, but it must be addressed in a way that will not further punish people who are already suffering economically. In addition, it is absolutely imperative that we address the needs of 23 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed.

What should working families of this country demand of Congress in response to these crises? Let me be specific:

First, at a time when the effective tax rate for the rich is the lowest in decades, we must repeal the Bush tax breaks for the top 2 percent which will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

Second, we must recognize that Wall Street caused the economic crisis, and that it has a responsibility to reduce the deficit. Establishing a 0.03 percent Wall Street speculation fee, similar to what we had from 1914-1966, would dampen the dangerous level of speculation and gambling on Wall Street, encourage the financial sector to invest in the productive economy and reduce the deficit by $350 billion over 10 years. Importantly, this fee, like similar levies in many other countries, would not apply to ordinary investors, retirees or parents saving to send their kids to college. Rather, it would apply to Wall Street investment houses, hedge funds and speculators who sell credit default swaps, derivatives and operate other risky financial schemes that nearly brought down the entire economy.

Third, we have got to prohibit offshore tax shelters. Each and every year, the United States loses an estimated $100 billion in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses by the wealthy and large corporations. The situation has become so absurd that one five-story office building in the Cayman Islands is now the "home" to more than 18,000 corporations. According to a recent report by James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey, the wealthiest people in the world are hiding between $21 trillion to $32 trillion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes. About a third of this amount, according to one estimate, is from wealthy Americans. The wealthy and large corporations should not be allowed to avoid paying taxes by setting up tax shelters in Panama, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas or other tax haven countries. Cracking down on these tax evaders could reduce the deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade.

Fourth, at a time when we have almost tripled military spending since 1997 and spend nearly as much on the military as the rest of the world combined, we must reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending at the Pentagon. According to a number of experts, the Pentagon today cannot account for hundreds of billions of dollars in its budget. Even Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), perhaps the most conservative senator in this country, believes that we could reduce defense spending by $1 trillion over a 10-year period while ensuring that the United States continues to have the strongest and most powerful military in the world.

Fifth, we have got to eliminate tax breaks for companies shipping American jobs overseas. Today, the United State government, despite our losing over 55,000 factories in the last 10 years, continues to reward companies that move U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas through loopholes in the tax code. Eliminating these loopholes would raise more than $582 billion in revenue over the next ten years and bring jobs back home to America.

What else? Ending corporate welfare for big oil, gas and coal companies; requiring Medicare to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices; taxing capital gains and dividends the same as work; establishing a progressive estate tax; and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse at every agency in the federal government would reduce spending by more than $350 billion and raise a significant amount of revenue without harming the middle class.

Taking these steps would reduce the deficit by more than $5 trillion.

Finally, and importantly, with these kinds of savings we could invest aggressively in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and restoring our manufacturing base. That investment could create millions of decent paying jobs, make our country more productive and help us lead the world in addressing the crisis of global warming.

Despite what virtually all Republicans and some Democrats want, we must not balance the budget on the backs of a collapsing middle class or the poorest people in our society.

Despite what virtually all Republicans and some Democrats want us to ignore, we must create the millions of jobs working families still desperately need.

The American people have been very clear, in poll after poll, that they do not want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' needs, education and other vitally important programs. They also have been clear that they do want the wealthy and large corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. This agenda, the agenda of the American people, is what I will be taking into the lame-duck session. I ask for your support.

Follow Sen. Bernie Sanders on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SenSanders

Saving Obama, Saving Ourselves

 

By Tom Hayden

Progressive America Rising

The threat of a Romney-Ryan regime should be enough to convince a narrow American majority to vote for Barack Obama, including the disappointed rank-and-file of social movements.

A widening of economic and racial inequality. Cuts in Medicare and Medical. More global heating. Strangling of reproductive rights. Unaffordable tuition. The Neo-cons back in the saddle. Two or three more right-wing Supreme Court appointments to come. Romney as Trojan horse for Ryan the stalking horse and future presidential candidate.

The consolidation of right-wing power would put progressives on the defensive, shrinking any organizing space for pressuring for greater innovations in an Obama second term.

Where, for example, would progressives be without the Voting Rights Act programs such as Planned Parenthood, or officials like Labor Secretary Hilda Solis or EPA administrator Lisa Jackson?

But the positive case for More Obama and Better Obama should be made as well. History will show that the first term was better than most progressives now think. A second-term voter mandate against wasteful wars, Wall Street extravagance, and austerity for the many, led by elected officials including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Lee, Raul Grijalva, Jim McGovern and Keith Ellison, would be a target-rich field of opportunities as they say in the Pentagon.

Why Obama's achievements are dismissed or denied by many on the white liberal-left is a question worth serious consideration. It may only be a matter of legitimate disappointment after the utopian expectations of 2008. It could be pure antipathy to electoral politics, or a superficial assessment of how near-impossible it is to change intransigent institutions. It could be a vested organizational interest in asserting there is no difference between the two major parties, a view wildly at odds with the intense partisan conflicts on exhibit every day. Or it could even be a white blindness in perceptions of reality on the left. When African American voters favor Obama 94-0 [that's right] and the attacks are coming from the white liberal-left, something needs repair in the foundations of American radicalism.

I intend to explore these questions further during the election season. The point here is that they cumulatively contribute to the common liberal-left perception that Obama is only a man of the compromised center, a president who has delivered nothing worse celebrating. The anger with Obama on the left, combined with broad liberal disappointment with the last three years, results in a dampened enthusiasm at the margins which could cost him the election.

By their nature, the achievements of social movements are lesser versions of original visions. As the venerable socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas used to lament, when asked if he was proud of Social Security being carried out, "they carried it out in a coffin." The limits of the 1935 Social Security Act lay in its token payments, limited eligibility, and lack of health insurance- all a result of political compromises thought necessary at the time. Because paying for the program in by taxation was much too controversial, Social Security was based on employer and employee contributions. That's what Norman Thomas apparently meant in describing the program as the death of his original vision.

While the forerunners of social progress are disappointed in the results they achieve, it should be of some comfort that the gravediggers have been trying to bury Social Security for 75 years without success so far.

As the Port Huron Statement [1962] concluded, "if we appear to seek the unattainable, let it be said we do so to avoid the unimaginable." With dreams like that, it was inevitable that most of us cynically viewed the reforms of the Kennedy and later Johnson administrations as tokenism. Many young radicals of my time [SNCC and SDS] distrusted the Kennedy’s as too gradual and Martin Luther King as too accommodating.

But despite all the inherent tensions and faction fights, social movements do achieve significant reforms, which I would define as empowering the powerless, opening up spaces previously closed, and expanding material benefits for those previously denied them. Prominent examples included:

- The 1965 Voting Rights Act, which racists and Republicans have attempted to thwart from its passage to the present day;

- The enfranchisement of young people who could be drafted but could not vote;

- Migrant worker protections achieved by the United Farm Workers;

- Medicare and Medicaid [1965];

- The US-Soviet nuclear test ban treaty [1963] was a response to global pressure for peace;

- Creation of the Peace Corps in response to a student campaign;

- The birth of opposition to the Cold War [1965 SDS march and teach-ins].

We could neither anticipate nor stop the Vietnam escalation starting in 1965, nor the growth of the National Security State thereafter. The collaboration that existed on domestic issues - cresting in the unity of labor and the civil rights movement in the 1963 March on Washington - did not extend to foreign policy where labor and the Democratic establishment were battling communist-connected insurgencies. But the achievements were not as token as we feared. Under moral and political pressure, Kennedy evolved from early managerialism to become a crucial partner on voter registration, civil rights and the arms race before his 1963 assassination. Were it not for the assassinations of that time, our movements would have been participants in a broad coalition that came to power. A strategy for social change grew from our direct experience, that of outside [often radical] forces taking direct action to awaken and link with establishment insiders to achieve all that was possible, and to lay the foundations for later movements.

After several historical zigs and zags, a similar progressive moment came in the year 2000, when a popular American majority elected Al Gore president only to be thwarted by the US Supreme Court. Gore would have given us a ten-year head start in facing global warming, tested the limits of an environmental presidency and, arguably, kept us out of the trillion-dollar Iraq War.

Some on the left still believe that Kennedy was an imperialist who would have been no different than Lyndon Johnson in sending500,000 Americans to Vietnam, and that Gore was no different than George Bush. Such opinions are wrong on both the facts and conjectures, driven more by ideology or disdain for two-party politics than by the weight of historical evidence.

What these cynical worst-case analyses leave out is the role of strong social movements and progressive constituencies in shaping the political character of the presidency. Just as Abraham Lincoln was influenced by the slaves and Abolitionists, and just as Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was shaped by labor and populist movements, so the student, women's, civil rights and environmental movements carved an essential place for themselves in the future that might have been under John Kennedy and, later, Al Gore.

Barack Obama, like Lincoln, FDR and John Kennedy, has been criticized as too incremental by his base and too radical by his enemies. An irate Thomas Frank concludes that Obama will never pursue a second New Deal because "that is precisely what Obama was here to prevent." [Harpers, September 2012]. In much analysis, Obama's role seems to be to give austerity and global imperialism an African-American face. Liberal icons share the disappointment from their perspective too. Paul Krugman, who supported Hillary Clinton, wrote of the 2009 stimulus package that "Mr. Obama's victory feels more than a bit like defeat." [237]. A common complaint from the left and liberals was that Obama was too timid, as if oratory could have achieved the public option in health care.

There is another explanation, as first described in my The Long Sixties, from 1960 to Barack Obama. It goes like this. Obama was elected on the wings of social movements going back to slavery time and, concretely, by an extraordinary campaign that challenged the Democratic Party establishment and Iraq orthodoxy in 2008. "Hope" and "change" were code words for Obama's signal achievement, becoming the first African-American president. In doing so, he opened the door to the presidency to Latinos, women, Jews, gays and lesbians and others long assumed to be "unqualified." In victory, however, Obama inevitably fueled emotions ranging from anxiety to hatred among the legions that became the Tea Party counter-movement. Vast numbers of Hillary Clinton Democrats accepted the Obama victory with mixed emotions, while most of the new president's constituency relaxed their energy after two years of grueling campaigning.

This was not the Civil War when slaves and Abolitionists pushed the president towards Appomattox. Not the New Deal with 40 percent unemployment, thousands of workers occupying auto and steel plants, and a rising Left resisting the threat of fascism at home and abroad. Nor was it the Kennedy era when 200,000 marched for jobs and justice under the leadership of civil rights, labor and clergy organizations. Not even close.

In fact, polls as early as 2009 showed that government was as much the enemy as banks and corporations. By a huge margin of 63-28, Americans preferred austerity to stimulus and that cutting taxes was better than government programs. [186]. IN 2010, a 52-19 majority believed erroneously that Obama had raised middle-class taxes. [393]. Surveys by Democratic consultants indicated the same thing, that voters pinched in an economic recession were reluctant to part with their tax dollars for a bureaucracy they didn't trust. There was a racial dimension that few pundits mentioned: white voters in places like western Wisconsin, the land of Paul Ryan, were less than enthused about sending their tax dollars to black Milwaukee.

The surprising truth, according to Time Magazine's Michael Grunwald in The New New Deal, is that the stimulus program - the American Recovery Act - worked beyond anyone's expectations. Which is true, Krugman's repeated story that the stimulus was inadequate, Frank's claim that Obama's role was to prevent more radical change, or Grunwald's conclusion that it was both an historic achievement and all that Obama could achieve? Grunwald's documented account, based on two years of writing, holds up - and should be read by any doubters.

At the beginning of the Obama administration, the American economy was losing a net 700,000 jobs per month. In the first month alone of Obama's presidency, 818,000 jobs vanished. "The shocks of 2008 were nastier than the crash of 1929", Grunwald asserts, citing the eight trillion dollars in housing wealth that vanished overnight. [427] That terrifying situation only began to improve when stimulus dollars began to flow. The Recovery Act funded direct employment for people in 100,000 projects including:

Roads, bridges, subways, water pipes, sewer plants, bus stations, fire stations...federal

buildings, Grand Canyon National Park, trails, libraries courthouses...hospitals, Ellis

Island,seaports, airports, dams, locks, levees, INdian reservations, fish hatcheries, coral

reefs, passport offices, military bases, veterans cemetaries, historically-black colleges,

particle accelerators, and much more. [13]

The green stimulus package transformed the Energy Department into the "world's largest green energy investment fund." [17] The US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy grew from $1.2 billon to $16.4 billion in two years. Ninety billion in stimulus funds were invested in green energy programs [which leveraged another $100 billion in private funds.] An advanced battery industry was built from scratch, and 680,000 low-income homes have been weatherized, 120,000 buildings retrofitted for energy efficiency, ten million smart meters have been installed, and 400,000 LED streetlights and traffic signals. [pp. 425, 439] Renewable electricity doubled in three years, as promised. Wind, solar and geothermal projects approved on federal lands grew from zero to 29. [435] Solar installations went from 280 megawatts in 2008 to 1,855 in 2011. Just five years earlier, the Clinton administration barely pushed through a five-year $6.3 billion clean energy initiative, just three percent of Obama's $200 billion. Two Obama administration mandates on fuel efficiency, one in 2009 and another last week, will increase the standard from 29 mpg to 54.5 mpg by 2025.

In addition to providing unemployment benefits to millions of Americans, the Recovery Act "pushed 39 states to rewrite their eligibility rules in order to qualify for stimulus bonuses, dragging the New Deal-era unemployment system into the computer age [and] permanently extending the counter-cyclical safety net to part-time workers and domestic abuse victims." [435]

Grunwald sums up as follows: the Obama Recovery Act, in constant dollars, was the biggest and most transformative energy bill US history, the biggest and most transformative education bill since the Great Society, a big and transformative health care bill, too, the biggest foray into industrial policy [the auto bailout] since FDR, the biggest expansion of anti-poverty programs since LBJ, the biggest middle class tax cut since Ronald Reagan, the biggest infusion of research money ever, and it extended high-speed Internet to under-served communities, a twist on the New Deal rural electrification program. And it contained virtually no earmarks.

And, Grunwald adds, the stimulus became a huge liability in the face of nine percent unemployment, the rise of the Tea Party, and a Republican Party strategy to punish any Republicans who cooperated with Obama. The Republican obstructionism was unprecedented: whereas the Gingich-era Republicans sought to stop the Congress during the Clinton era, the new Republicans had no qualms in trying to stop the president from acting at all during the worst economic and credit crisis in 70 years.

Democrats flinched. They even stopped talking about the stimulus. They even let Jay Leno get away with joking that it was communism, "or, as we call it in this country, a stimulus package." [8]. A CBS-NYT poll in February 2010 revealed that only six percent of Americans believed the stimulus had created any jobs. [486]. More Americans thought Elvis was alive.

OBAMACARE

Perhaps more than any other policy, Obamacare fed the disillusionment of the liberal-left with the new administration. They agonized in watching Obama retreat over months from his preferred single-payer position to a public option and finally to the only option which could pass the Congress, a huge subsidy to private insurers that resembled the bailout of banks. Liberals blamed Obama for his retreat more than the dinosaur Democrats and obstructionist Republicans who insisted on the final outcome. Thus Obama received no liberal credit for being the first president to sign the biggest expansion of coverage since 1965. Obamacare adds 32 million more people to the rolls, including those with pre-existing conditions, women seeking birth control options, and young people up to the age of 26. The provisions of Medicaid in the Obama budget will support elderly and disabled people, and children, as well as middle-class people needing future nursing home care. These Medicaid expansions will be slashed under the Romney-Ryan administration, in addition to Medicare being degraded into a voucher program.

Like the stimulus package, however, Obamacare fueled the Tea Party's massive protests against the bogeyman of "big government", even producing hallucinatory right-wing calls to save "our Social Security" from the State. Timid Democrats retreated from their legislative product again, at least for one year. The media headlined polls showing that Obamacare was wildly unpopular [though a closer reading would show that a slight majority either supported the legislation or didn't think it went far enough.]

Was this an optical problem? Did the passage of Obamacare appear to be a step backwards when viewed against the original single-payer proposal? Or did the liberal-left actually think the spectrum of American politics ranged from themselves to Obama, leaving out the inconvenient truth that hordes of right-wingers were both numerous and highly-organized. It had taken 75 years to add health insurance to FDR's original Social Security concept, but the politics had changed scarcely at all.

IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

Obama was the first presidential candidate to succeed on a platform of pulling US troops out of an ongoing war [unless you count Richard Nixon's secret plan for peace in 1969 and "peace is at hand" promise of 1972]. By any rational standard, Obama fulfilled that pledge when the last American troops departed Iraq last year.

Many in the peace movement didn't believe it then and dismiss it now. To the extent this is a rational objection - and not blindness - it rests on two arguments. First, some claim that Obama was only following the withdrawal plan already agreed to by George Bush. It's an interesting question for future historians to uncover what shadow entity orchestrated the Iraq-US pact between the end of Bush and the coming of Obama. That aside, it's logical to conclude that the immanence of Obama's victory pushed the Bush administration to wrap up the best withdrawal agreement possible before the unpredictable newcomer took office. In addition, Obama increased his previous withdrawal commitment in February 2009 to include virtually all American forces instead of leaving behind a "residual" force of 20-30, 000. It is true that as the endgame neared, Obama left open the possibility of a residual force after American ground troops departed, saying he would be responsive to the request of the Baghdad regime. Some on the left seized on these remarks to later claim that Obama had to be forced by the Iraqis to finally leave. There is no evidence for this claim, however. It is equally possible - and I believe more credible - that Obama was simply being Obama, knowing that the Iraqis could not possibly request the Americans to stay.

Dissecting diplomacy, like legislation, is like making sausage, in the old saying. Obama certainly knew that he would gain political cover if he could say with credibility that he was only following Bush's withdrawal plan and Iraq's request.

A more bizarre left criticism of Obama on Iraq is that the war itself never ended but instead morphed into a secret war with tens of thousands of Americans fighting as Special Ops or private contractors. Why it would be more effective to continue a losing war with fewer troops has never been asked. After all the talk of tens or hundreds of thousands of US personnel being left behind, the most recent numbers are these: in June of this year there were 1,235 US civilian employees in Baghdad along with 12, 477 private contractors [not all Americans]. That was a decline of 10-20 percent over the previous three months. The personnel are for intelligence, embassy security and customary logistical support, not an extraordinary number in a country seething with anti-Americanism. South Korea has up to 28,500 US military personnel, and Japan some 34,000, not including thousands of dependents- that's what a post-war occupation looks like.

AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN AND THE LONG WAR

Like many who campaigned for Obama in 2008, I opposed the continuing US wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the military doctrine of the "Long War" against Islamic fundamentalism. Obama has proven true to his word, the critics have been proven right in our warnings.

According to Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars [2010], Obama granted his generals an increase of 33,000 troops for an Afghan surge but drew the line there and insisted that those troops would start coming home in 2011, a pledge he has kept. The 33,000 figure was disappointing to those of us, including Rep. Barbara Lee, who demanded that at least 50,000 being pulled out by the end of this year. Instead Obama has promised the pullout of US ground troops and an "Afghan lead" by 2014. In doing so, Obama has triggered a dynamic towards the exits favored by overwhelming numbers of Americans and NATO citizens. [Mitt Romney has opposed deadlines while at the same time accepting the 2014 framework].

While it will take years to know the truth, I believe there is a strategic and political reason for Obama's 2014 timetable. He knows that Afghanistan is a lost cause which cannot be acknowledged and dealt with during the election season. Between 2013 and 2014, Obama will have a narrow window to replace Hamid Karzai with a power-sharing arrangement, and make enough deals with the Taliban, the Haqqanis, Pakistan, China and yes, Iran - to salvage and perhaps partition Afghanistan. At present, the neo-cons running Romney's foreign policy team won't permit any diplomatic contacts with the insurgency even if it means leaving an American soldier, Bowe Bigdahl, in captivity somewhere in North Waziristan. An ultimate political agreement to try stabilizing Afghanistan will require diplomacy with several countries at the top of the neo-cons enemies' list. Even then, implosion and defeat are Afghan possibilities which Obama dares not mention.

Others in the peace movement, along with civil libertarians, rage against Obama because of his secret escalating drone attacks. They are right morally to keep making righteous noise, especially about the official cover-up of casualty rates. But it will take a political-diplomatic strategy of ending the Afghan war in order to stop the drones. Civil liberties and human rights groups who are vociferous against the drones still refuse to oppose the Afghan war itself, which is the primary cause of the drone killings. Such groups also oppose the assassinations of Al Qaeda leaders and the prosecution of whistleblowers without opposing the underlying wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

In summary, Obama's withdrawal from Iraq has been clouded in left disbelief and overshadowed by criticism of his policies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and beyond. On the merits, these criticisms are entirely justified. When they lead to opposing Obama's re-election, they help Romney and the return of the neo-cons.

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE

The white liberal-left, however modest in numbers, is hugely important in a close presidential election, where the margin of difference may be one percent or less in states with large progressive constituencies. If Obama loses, it will be unfair to blame the left but they will be blamed nonetheless. As a consequence they will become more marginal, far less able to connect with the progressive constituencies and mass movements with vital stakes in Obama's re-election.

The potential toll can be glimpsed already, in the current decline of the radical left amidst the greatest economic meltdown in seven decades. Of course radical movements will rise again, but more likely from the activist networks who tried to stop Romney and re-elect Obama, not from those who sat on their hands and believed it was all another circus.

There is plenty of time to still make a difference. First, some people on the left will have to become used to the idea that partial power only brings partial results. While we can establish enclaves for dreamers from Mendocino to Brooklyn, from Madison to Austin, we have to win support from the center in battleground states or risk losing decades.

The second lesson is for self-defined radicals to be immersed in the everyday problems of the mass constituencies that depend on presidents to make a small margin of difference in their lives. [One small example of how it works: there would be no federal consent decrees over brutal police departments were in not for Al Sharpton hammering at Bill Clinton to include lawsuits for unconstitutional "patterns and practices" in his otherwise draconian Omnibus Crime legislation in 1994.]

Third, election seasons are perfect organizing moments when large numbers of people are open to persuasion on public issues. It may be springtime before the next cycle of activism comes around again. Now is the time to build local lists and structures for voter turnout in November and street turnouts thereafter.

This particular election offers the perfect moment to build opposition to Citizens United

and "corporate personhood", for a renewed movements for a constitutional right to vote, the deeper regulation of Wall Street and a constitutional right to vote for campaigns down the road. Does anyone seriously believe that the Dreamers and marriage-equality movements will accept a return to second-class status without the fight of their lifetimes?

It can be time to begin a realignment of the electoral left as well. The active Green Party networks need to shed their reputation as "spoilers" just as the Progressive Democrats of America [PDA] needs to shed its appearance of only "tailing" the Democrats. Labor insurgents like National Nurses United, and even the formidable SEIU, are demanding a more independent role in coalition politics. One can almost feel a new politics trying to be born in the so-called womb of the old, a third "party of the people" both inside and outside the two-party system. What if the Green Party decided to invest in places of the richest electoral opportunity instead of campaigning vigorously where the stakes are 50-50? Why not a negotiated merger of the Greens and PDA in the close races, and PDA support for Green candidates where they are most viable? It's entirely possible to visualize creative leaps out of electoral traps while strengthening an independent left within the institutions of state power. Protestors in the streets should serve as a permanently challenging - and threatening - disruptive presence in constant orchestrated interaction with forces on the inside too, not simply serve as occasional "street heat" to be enlisted when pressure is needed by the insiders.

Now through November, the radical left can be the effective One Percent. The 99 Percent will be appreciative. #

[For a thoughtful left perspective, see also Aug. 09, 2012 Alternet essay by Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson.]

Battleground: Democracy vs. The Right

By Tom Hayden
Progressive America Rising

Only you and I can save democracy this time and for times to come. If we all play our part now, Obama and his popular majority will win. If not, we need to be clear and fortified for big confrontations ahead. Let's look at where democracy movements must intervene to stop the hemorrhaging before a final collapse. Democracy movements must try to stop the stolen elections now, and delegitimize any mandates claimed from them in the future. 

The theme song should be Leonard Cohen's 'Democracy Is Coming to the USA'

1. LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE - STOP VOTER SUPPRESSION. Among "registered but unlikely" voters, Obama leads Romney 43%-20%, and in favorability by 55%-25% [New York Times, Aug. 18]. Examples: a Pennsylvania Republican leader bragged in June about a voter ID law "which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania - done!" The Republican governor blocks plans in that state allowing voters to apply for absentee ballots or to register online.

The naked Republican strategy is to make it as hard as possible for people of color, students and the elderly to vote. Thanks to the civil rights movement, the 1965 Voting Rights Act provides tools to fight to maximize voter turnout. Local activists should be attacking their Governors, legislators and registrars for erecting unconstitutional barriers to voting, and for their refusal to permit early voting or provide enough accessible ballot boxes and election observers. Civil rights lawyers should mobilize to monitor and protest wherever the machines break down and the lines become too long in freezing weather. Ballot boxes should be installed on campuses.

2. STOP SECRET CORPORATE MONEY. Buckley v. Valeo [1976] and Citizens United [2010] have opened the sewage gates to secret money's power to pollute the democratic process. In the next two months, all people can do is make righteous noise against these pernicious threats and force their disclosure in the media on an everyday basis. Besides attacking Sheldon Adelson [war against Iran] and the Koch brothers [ big oil], the movement must make the case that this flow of private funds is creating a legitimacy crisis for democracy. This same worry apparently led Chief Justice John Roberts to narrowly approve Obamacare [but not Medicaid] while delegating its ultimate fate to the voters this November. President Obama has endorsed a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United, a good basis for a long-term organizing strategy. But what is really needed is a new generation of law students who aspire to be the Thurgood Marshalls of campaign finance reform, attacking the Buckley v. Valeo as a perverted violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments [money is not an unfettered instrumentality of speech]. Currently the weakest link in the Supreme Court's case is the secrecy afforded big donors until after the election. A militant demand for disclosure before the election will put the Court and the Republicans on the defensive.

There are other battlefronts in the fight for democracy, from greater transparency in the derivatives market, to disclosure of thousands of unregistered corporate lobbyists, to the need for a rewrite of the War Powers Act to rein in drones and secret wars. But the sharp point of the spear in the next two months are [1] the Republican plan to keep people from voting, and [2] the Republican plan to keep millions in campaign contributions secret until after the election. These lines of attack are complements to the growing hubbub about unprecedented levels of deceit by the Romney-Ryan ticket. They and Karl Rove believe that enough secret money and voter suppression can prevail.

Dollarocracy Over Democracy, 2012

One Percenters Buying Themselves an Aristocracy

By Leo Gerard
USW President, via Huffington Post

August 30, 2012 - The U.S. Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. What this nation needs now is separation of wealth and state.

Without such a protection, Americans stand to lose their democracy. They'll be ruled instead by an aristocracy of 1 percenters.

That's the 1 percenters' plan. To them, it was no more than a perk when the U.S. Supreme Court enabled politicians to open their wallets for unlimited, anonymous campaign contributions. That's because way before the 2010 Citizens United ruling, 1 percenters were working on a takeover. If the 99 percent don't stop them soon, don't establish some sort of separation of wealth and state, then the nation will lose its founding precepts -- that all men are created equal and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Aristocracies can ignore the governed.

Already the 1 percenters have been extraordinarily successful. The rich really do enjoy advantages. They've succeeded in stuffing Congress with their peers. In America, fewer than 1 percent of all people are millionaires. In Congress, 47 percent are. The median net worth of a U.S. senator in 2010 was $2.56 million.

Those guys haven't experienced what it's like to try to pay a mortgage, fix the car and keep food on the table for the average household with a median income of less than $52,000. They're completely out of touch with the 50 million Americans who don't have health insurance.

In addition, the 1 percenters implemented a system to influence even those lawmakers who are not millionaires. It's called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Corporations and the rich, like the billionaire Koch brothers, give ALEC money, which it uses to write "model" legislation, like voter suppression laws. ALEC's lawmaker members, mostly conservative Republicans, pay dues of $50 a year. ALEC entices them to attend swanky conferences with freebies, like ALEC-paid hotel rooms, ALEC-paid plane rides and God knows what else ALEC-paid. Of course, those aren't bribes. But the free vacations may incline lawmaker members to introduce ALEC-written legislation.

ALEC is sly. It doesn't come right out and say its "model" voter identification laws are intended to suppress balloting by Democrats. ALEC contends they're designed to prevent voter fraud. Within the past two years, 10 states passed these laws.

But in-person voter fraud, the kind these identification laws are supposedly intended to prevent, barely exists. In the dozen years since 2000, only 10 cases occurred in the entire United States, according to a study funded by the Carnegie and Knight foundations.

That's one case for every 15 million eligible voters. By contrast, as many as 11 percent of eligible voters lack the government-issued identification these laws typically require. That's millions of disenfranchised people in those 10 states.

And studies have found that those people tend to be young, women, minorities, the elderly, low income, the disabled and more likely to vote Democrat -- if they could vote. In fact, a prominent Republican in Pennsylvania, the largest battleground state to have adopted a voter suppression law, admitted it. Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai said passing the state's voter suppression law was an achievement for the GOP because it meant Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would win the state. That's a state where Democrats have a registration edge and Obama has a lead in polls.

That's how it's done. That's how the 1 percent creates an aristocracy for themselves. They make the wealthy few more powerful by buying elimination of that nettlesome one-person-one-vote democracy problem. The rich count more when the riffraff don't count at all.

A handful of one-tenth-of-one-percenters, including billionaires Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, and hedge funders Kenneth Griffin, Cliff Asness and Paul Singer, will spend $500 million to install their chosen candidates in the White House. Adelson by himself is expected to give $100 million to elect Romney and Paul Ryan, one tenth of the billion the Republicans are expected to spend. That kind of money will buy Adelson a little more than a couple of overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom.

In addition to ALEC, these billionaires bought for themselves shadow parties, as writer Matt Bai described them in the New York Times. They fund groups like Club for Growth, which defeats Republican candidates they deem not conservative enough. They finance groups like Americans for Prosperity, which promotes ultra-conservative economic ideas.

They're willing to buy influence, but not pay taxes to support their country. The Ryan Roadmap budget would reduce millionaire Romney's tax rate from about 14 percent to less than 1 percent. And, for the 99 percent, Ryan would destroy Medicare as we know it.

In the early days of this republic, John Adams worried about the country creeping toward aristocracy. As he prepared to take the office of vice president, some leaders, including Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, argued that government officials should serve without pay. Here's what biographer David McCullough wrote about the incident in his biography of Adams:

"Were a law to be made 'that no man should hold an office who had not a private income sufficient for the subsistence and prospects of himself and family,' Adams had written earlier while in London, then the consequence would be that 'all offices would be monopolized by the rich; the poor and the middling ranks would be excluded and an aristocratic despotism would immediately follow.'"

Here's the difference between George Washington and John Adams. The general was a wealthy Virginia planter whose riches were made in part on the backs of slaves. Adams was a middle-class Massachusetts farmer who opposed slavery and never owned a human being.

Congress agreed with Adams. Aristocracy was forestalled. Today's middle-class farmers, mechanics and nurses now inherit that responsibility to separate wealth and state.

This post is part of the HuffPost Shadow Conventions 2012, a series spotlighting three issues that are not being discussed at the national GOP and Democratic conventions: The Drug War, Poverty in America, and Money in Politics.

HuffPost Live will be taking a comprehensive look at the corrupting influence of money on our politics August 29th and September 5th from 12-4 pm ET and 6-10 pm ET. Click here to check it out -- and join the conversation.

Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger