The heart of our political malaise is that the middle class, so long a powerhouse of US prosperity, is being crushed as never before No one can accuse the candidates on stage at Monday’s Republican debate of not discussing a broad range of topics. They talked about big issues like social security, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy independence, repealing healthcare reform and the need for job creation. And they talked about small issues for political point-scoring: like HPV vaccines for girls. But missing from the debate – and, in fact, much current discussion of America’s politics – is the single biggest issue facing the country: the destruction of the American middle class. For stories on how America is bifurcating into haves and have-nots, with precious little in between, you have to dive behind the headlines of the latest Washington political bun-fight and find the devil in the details. Take a story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal Monday . The tale is nominally one about marketing strategy and it looks at how giant firm Procter & Gamble sells its household goods to its customers. But the picture that emerges is terrifying. P&G, it transpires, is cutting back on marketing to the disappearing middle classes, instead selling more and more to either high-income or low-income customers and abandoning the middle. Other big firms, like Heinz, are following suit. The piece reveals there is even a word for this strategy, helpfully coined by Citibank: the Consumer Hourglass Theory – because it denotes a society that bulges at the top and bottom and is squeezed in the middle. The story contains some scary figures, such as the fact that the net worth of the middle fifth of American households has plunged by 26% in the last two years. Or that the income of the median American family, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than in 1998. Or look at a story in the New York Times Tuesday . It starkly shows how the plight of the American working person has worsened. Solid jobs that once provided a secure grasp on middle class aims (a house, college for the kids, a retirement) have changed to become low-wage ones. It looks at the situation of some Detroit auto-workers, pointing out that new hires can find themselves working opposite long-term colleagues who do similar jobs yet earn twice as much. The system is called a “two tier” wage structure. Perhaps that system can be justified as an emergency measure to keep Detroit’s auto-industry alive and help it survive the current tough times. But, like the Consumer Hourglass Theory, it actually looks far more like the permanent shape of things to come. American society is bifurcating, squeezing the middle class out of existence. The ranks of the poor and low-income earners are growing and the rich are doing just fine – and no one is talking about it, much less doing anything about it. The black-and-white facts of the case should stun Americans on both sides of the political divide. At the start of this week, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders published a report on poverty called “Is Poverty a Death Sentence?” It showed that in 313 counties in America, life expectancy for women has actually declined over the last 20 years. It showed six million more people have fallen into poverty since 2004. Indeed, this week the US Census Bureau has released a survey showing that one in six Americans now live in poverty: the highest number ever reported by the organisation. It also showed that real median household incomes dropped 2.3% in 2010 from the year before, reflecting the decline of the middle class. At the same time, the richest 20% of the US population now controls 84% of the wealth. In fact, so staggeringly unbalanced has America become that the richest 400 American families have the same net worth as the bottom 50% of the nation. I do not care if you are a Tea Party activist or a Socialist party USA organiser, you should be able to agree on one thing, at least: this is unsustainable. Something has to give. But no one in the current political system looks they have an answer. Poverty US politics Republicans United States US economy US economic growth and recession Automotive industry Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Declaring war on the military contractors’ invasion of Washington | Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe
September 14, 2011 No Comment
As the budget super-committee convenes, the war industry has begun a huge lobbying effort to protect its taxpayer-paid profits The new deficit commission held its first substantive meeting on 13 September, and the military contractors were out in force to protect their profits. They’ll be working to cash in on hundreds millions of dollars in campaign donations and lobbying spending, and they will deploy their favourite (and bogus) “jobs” spin. But members of the committee should not be fooled. The war industry is interested in one thing: continuing profits at our expense. Tuesday morning, a campaign called ” Second to None “, backed by the largest names in the military contracting industry, staged a “march to the Hill”. These contractors are armed with fresh talking points and backed by 843 lobbyists (many of whom are former staffers of deficit committee members), along with deep campaign donation histories with members of Congress. Every bit of this influence will be used to prevail upon the committee not to call for cuts to military spending in its final report to Congress. The persuasion effort aimed at committee members will be largely an inside game, so we have launched a counter campaign, War Costs , launched with a full-page ad Monday in a Capitol Hill insider publication to call for cuts to the war budget. But since the contractors’ game beyond the back rooms will be waged using predictable talking points, committee members should know that the central thrust of the contractors’ case for continued huge war budgets is false. War spending costs us jobs compared to other ways of spending the money. For every billion dollars we spend on war, instead of education, renewable energy technology or even simple tax cuts for consumption, we lose between 3,200 and 11,700 jobs, at least. War spending is terrible at job creation, period. Now, keep that several-thousand-jobs cost per $1bn in mind when you look at the following list. It’s the amount in revenues that each of the top five military contractors made in 2010, strictly through doing business with the US government, according to their annual reports: Lockheed Martin: $38.4bn (84% of total 2010 revenues) Northrop Grummon: $32.1bn (92% of total 2010 revenues) Boeing: $27.7bn (43% of total 2010 revenues) General Dynamics: $23.3bn (72% of 2010 revenues) Raytheon: $22.3bn (88% of total 2010 revenues) Every one of these corporations was cited for misconduct in 2010 (misconduct varying from contract fraud to environmental or labour violations ). The committee members should remember that when these guys come calling to Capitol Hill, especially since one of the instances of misconduct for which Lockheed Martin was cited last year was a violation of the False Claims Act in an attempt to grab more US taxpayer dollars . The company paid $2m to settle the justice department suit. Between 2007 and the present, these corporations donated $1.4m to the 12 committee members’ campaigns and PACs alone, according to information compiled from OpenSecrets.org , and they have spent $210m in the last 18 months on lobbying . You can bet they’ll spend more, much more, to keep the billions flowing from our hands into their pockets. What happens in the deficit committee over the next several weeks will be a test of whether our representatives can make decisions in the name of the common good, or whether our government really is up for sale. US military US Congress Public finance United States US politics US taxation Robert Greenwald Derrick Crowe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Injury added to insult as Democrats lose New York seat | Ana Marie Cox
September 14, 2011 No Comment
Ceding Anthony Weiner’s former seat to Republican Bob Turner is a humiliation. But voters right now are angry at everyone Americans’ prudishness almost never looks good (or quite sincere) in retrospect. In the case of the special election in New York’s 9th district , which straddles of Brooklyn and Queens, to replace congressional sexter Anthony Weiner, the Democratic party is probably pining for a chance to re-examine its decision to boot the randy representative: Republican Bob Turner becomes the first Republican elected to Congress from that district since 1920 . Conservative pundits claim that the defeat of the Democratic nominee, David Weprin , signals the depth of voters’ disappointment in the Obama administration. That may be true, but it’s not exactly bad news – or at least, it’s not as though it’s much of a surprise. Voters in special elections tend to vote according to whatever emotions are running high at the moment; with Obama’s approval rating in the district running at 31%, it’s no wonder that constituents would strike a symbolic vote against the administration by rejecting the candidate that represents the status quo. It’s just a good thing for the GOP that they didn’t already control that seat – a referendum on the job they’re doing would probably reflect their 15% approval rating. (These numbers reflect Americans’ negative and “negativer” feelings about the President and Congress nationwide.) The loss is embarrassing to the Democratic party, there’s no doubt – it might even be more embarrassing than a member’s inability to mind his member. Certainly, the Democratic congressional campaign committee’s belated, desperate dumping of almost half a million dollars into the race suggests as much. But the election that actually counts – at least, counts on a national level (intensely though poor Weprin may feel this loss) – is 14 long months away. Time enough for the economy to recover – or not – if only barely enough time for Turner to enjoy his victory before redistricting likely disappears the seat entirely (also in 2012). Then again! Turner may get a chance to vote against Obama’s jobs bill, an action that itself could be much more meaningful, or at least symbolic, when it comes to 2012. Republicans are counting on the economy to continue to drag Obama down; how far will they go to ensure that he and it remain as downcast as they are now? Will they vote against measures that have a chance of making Americans’ lives better? Will they water down those measures and hope for the worst? Will they vamp madly until it’s too late and hope to play Obama off the stage? Turner, in his life before politics, was a producer of “The Jerry Springer Show”, a three-ring circus of transvestites who had their uncles’ baby and chair-throwing adulterous housewives. In all seriousness (I guess?), episodes included guests opining on such topics as “I’m Happy I Cut Off my Legs” and “I’m a Breeder for the [Klu Klux] Klan”. Democrats who thought ousting Weiner would conform to Americans’ desire for propriety clearly don’t watch enough TV. New York US politics Republicans Democrats Anthony Weiner United States US Congress Obama administration Ana Marie Cox guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Injury added to insult as Democrats lose New York seat | Ana Marie Cox
September 14, 2011 No Comment
Ceding Anthony Weiner’s former seat to Republican Bob Turner is a humiliation. But voters right now are angry at everyone Americans’ prudishness almost never looks good (or quite sincere) in retrospect. In the case of the special election in New York’s 9th district , which straddles of Brooklyn and Queens, to replace congressional sexter Anthony Weiner, the Democratic party is probably pining for a chance to re-examine its decision to boot the randy representative: Republican Bob Turner becomes the first Republican elected to Congress from that district since 1920 . Conservative pundits claim that the defeat of the Democratic nominee, David Weprin , signals the depth of voters’ disappointment in the Obama administration. That may be true, but it’s not exactly bad news – or at least, it’s not as though it’s much of a surprise. Voters in special elections tend to vote according to whatever emotions are running high at the moment; with Obama’s approval rating in the district running at 31%, it’s no wonder that constituents would strike a symbolic vote against the administration by rejecting the candidate that represents the status quo. It’s just a good thing for the GOP that they didn’t already control that seat – a referendum on the job they’re doing would probably reflect their 15% approval rating. (These numbers reflect Americans’ negative and “negativer” feelings about the President and Congress nationwide.) The loss is embarrassing to the Democratic party, there’s no doubt – it might even be more embarrassing than a member’s inability to mind his member. Certainly, the Democratic congressional campaign committee’s belated, desperate dumping of almost half a million dollars into the race suggests as much. But the election that actually counts – at least, counts on a national level (intensely though poor Weprin may feel this loss) – is 14 long months away. Time enough for the economy to recover – or not – if only barely enough time for Turner to enjoy his victory before redistricting likely disappears the seat entirely (also in 2012). Then again! Turner may get a chance to vote against Obama’s jobs bill, an action that itself could be much more meaningful, or at least symbolic, when it comes to 2012. Republicans are counting on the economy to continue to drag Obama down; how far will they go to ensure that he and it remain as downcast as they are now? Will they vote against measures that have a chance of making Americans’ lives better? Will they water down those measures and hope for the worst? Will they vamp madly until it’s too late and hope to play Obama off the stage? Turner, in his life before politics, was a producer of “The Jerry Springer Show”, a three-ring circus of transvestites who had their uncles’ baby and chair-throwing adulterous housewives. In all seriousness (I guess?), episodes included guests opining on such topics as “I’m Happy I Cut Off my Legs” and “I’m a Breeder for the [Klu Klux] Klan”. Democrats who thought ousting Weiner would conform to Americans’ desire for propriety clearly don’t watch enough TV. New York US politics Republicans Democrats Anthony Weiner United States US Congress Obama administration Ana Marie Cox guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …In through the out door: how lobbyists rule Congress | Pratap Chatterjee
September 14, 2011 No Comment
The revolving door between the lobbying industry and Capitol Hill makes the lavishly funded K Street the real hub of power Every weekday, groups of scrubbed and shiny 14 year olds pile out of the Washington subway on school trips to visit the halls of the US Congress on Capitol Hill. They come to watch how their elected representatives govern “the land of the free and the home of the brave” in the real-life version of what they have studied in their civics textbooks. Alas, every last student goes to the wrong place. The real power in Washington is not on Capitol Hill, nor even at the White House, but rather a few blocks to the north on the much less exciting road of nondescript modern office buildings known as K street. Indeed, K street has become a euphemism for the world of lobbyists. According to an exhaustive new study just published by LegiStorm , a Washington watchdog group, there are 11,700 registered lobbyists in Washington, DC – almost one for each of the 14,000 staff that work in Congress. “You can’t tell your story unless you get your foot in the door,” a lobbyist by the name of William Chasey once told filmmaker Michael Moore in 1994 . “And if you already have your foot in the door it makes it a lot easier.” For the measly sum of $5,000, Chasey agreed to try to convince Congress to name one day in the year after “TV Nation” – the name of Moore’s satirical TV news show. Not only was Chasey able to introduce a bill, he even got a Republican (Howard Coble of North Carolina) to sponsor it. Moore got himself a bargain. Perhaps the most scandalous operative on K street was lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who charged six Native American tribes $85m between 1995 to 2004 to lobby on behalf of their casinos, even as he accepted money from other interests to do the opposite. Many a member of Congress accepted lavish gifts from such lobbyists – although few match Tom DeLay of Texas. In 2006, two activist groups – Campaign for America’s Future and Public Campaign Action Fund – took out a TV ad to hammer home how much DeLay had received: “Forty-eight trips to golf resorts, 100 flights aboard company jets, 200 nights at world-class resorts and hotels. One million dollars from Russian tycoons to allegedly influence his vote,” intones the announcer. In a 2005 report published by Public Citizen , “The Journey from Congress to K Street”, the watchdog group calculated that more than four out of ten members of Congress had gone to work on K Street after they left elected office. Six years later, the story hasn’t really changed. In the last decade, 393 members of Congress have gone to work on K street to lobby their former colleagues, according to LegiStorm. All told, some 5,400 congressional staffers have worked as lobbyists over the same time period. And the revolving door works both ways – today, 605 former lobbyists work for members of Congress. There is a very simple reason – there is a lot of money to be made. Last year, these lobbyists spent a whopping $3.5bn, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics . Over the last 13 years, one group alone – the US Chamber of Commerce – spent over $750m trying to push its agenda in Congress . In 1863, Abraham Lincoln invoked the idea of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as his vision for the country, in his famous Gettysburg address. A century and a half later, LegiStorm’s new study suggests that Washington has become a government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, for special interest groups. But you won’t find that in a civics book. The lobbyists will make sure of that. US Congress Washington DC United States US politics Pratap Chatterjee guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …In through the out door: how lobbyists rule Congress | Pratap Chatterjee
September 14, 2011 No CommentThe revolving door between the lobbying industry and Capitol Hill makes the lavishly funded K Street the real hub of power Every weekday, groups of scrubbed and shiny 14 year olds pile out of the Washington subway on school trips to visit the halls of the US Congress on Capitol Hill. They come to watch how their elected representatives govern “the land of the free and the home of the brave” in the real-life version of what they have studied in their civics textbooks. Alas, every last student goes to the wrong place. The real power in Washington is not on Capitol Hill, nor even at the White House, but rather a few blocks to the north on the much less exciting road of nondescript modern office buildings known as K street. Indeed, K street has become a euphemism for the world of lobbyists. According to an exhaustive new study just published by LegiStorm , a Washington watchdog group, there are 11,700 registered lobbyists in Washington, DC – almost one for each of the 14,000 staff that work in Congress. “You can’t tell your story unless you get your foot in the door,” a lobbyist by the name of William Chasey once told filmmaker Michael Moore in 1994 . “And if you already have your foot in the door it makes it a lot easier.” For the measly sum of $5,000, Chasey agreed to try to convince Congress to name one day in the year after “TV Nation” – the name of Moore’s satirical TV news show. Not only was Chasey able to introduce a bill, he even got a Republican (Howard Coble of North Carolina) to sponsor it. Moore got himself a bargain. Perhaps the most scandalous operative on K street was lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who charged six Native American tribes $85m between 1995 to 2004 to lobby on behalf of their casinos, even as he accepted money from other interests to do the opposite. Many a member of Congress accepted lavish gifts from such lobbyists – although few match Tom DeLay of Texas. In 2006, two activist groups – Campaign for America’s Future and Public Campaign Action Fund – took out a TV ad to hammer home how much DeLay had received: “Forty-eight trips to golf resorts, 100 flights aboard company jets, 200 nights at world-class resorts and hotels. One million dollars from Russian tycoons to allegedly influence his vote,” intones the announcer. In a 2005 report published by Public Citizen , “The Journey from Congress to K Street”, the watchdog group calculated that more than four out of ten members of Congress had gone to work on K Street after they left elected office. Six years later, the story hasn’t really changed. In the last decade, 393 members of Congress have gone to work on K street to lobby their former colleagues, according to LegiStorm. All told, some 5,400 congressional staffers have worked as lobbyists over the same time period. And the revolving door works both ways – today, 605 former lobbyists work for members of Congress. There is a very simple reason – there is a lot of money to be made. Last year, these lobbyists spent a whopping $3.5bn, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics . Over the last 13 years, one group alone – the US Chamber of Commerce – spent over $750m trying to push its agenda in Congress . In 1863, Abraham Lincoln invoked the idea of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as his vision for the country, in his famous Gettysburg address. A century and a half later, LegiStorm’s new study suggests that Washington has become a government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, for special interest groups. But you won’t find that in a civics book. The lobbyists will make sure of that. US Congress Washington DC United States US politics Pratap Chatterjee guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …In the annals of Russian censorship, this barely makes a ripple. But it’s a great excuse to run video of Dmitry Medvedev grooving at a college reunion. The video went viral in Russia when it first surfaced, and a comedy troupe recently won top prize in a TV competition for…
Continue reading …
My time with the Unitarians provided a welcome break from some of the more violent undertones of Christian worship I went to a Unitarian service on Sunday, near where I’m living in Brooklyn. I didn’t know much about this denomination. I knew that they don’t believe in the Trinity, but that doesn’t narrow things down very much – nor do Muslims or Richard Dawkins. Do they believe in God at all? They don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, but do they nevertheless see him as a unique moral teacher? I knew that they originally believed very strongly in God, back in the late 18th century, and rejected his threeness as irrational: they believed in the God of the rational Enlightenment, and saw Jesus as the heroic communicator of this superstition-busting deity. Could it be that they still believed in that? I also knew that, in its early days, this movement was favoured by some of the Founding Fathers. Jefferson once expressed the hope that soon all young men in America would be Unitarians (I suppose he was less optimistic about young women). John Adams was also a big fan. And some decades later the movement influenced the Transcendentalism of Emerson and others. I wanted to know what had become of this early strain of the American soul. We gathered in a surprisingly crowded church hall. The service was led by a group of laywomen who had recently put on a play called Mother Wove the Morning. Between gentle, participatory songs, some accompanied by a ukelele, these women spoke on a jittery hand-held mike. The first spoke of her “journey into the goddess”. She briefly mentioned her childhood image of God, a cross between Santa Claus and Jesus – this produced a small ripple of knowing laughter in the congregation. It was the only time that Jesus was mentioned I think. Another woman spoke of the sexism she had encountered in the financial industry, and of the succour she had found in Native American folklore, and of the need to keep taking “buffalo medicine” which I think was a metaphorical substance. Another spoke “as a therapist” about some of the issues raised in the play they had performed. Another, who identified herself as a humanist, noted that Unitarianism had in the past “committed heresy” by overemphasising oneness, as if there were just one path to the divine. As she spoke I noticed a row of old photographs of men, many wearing facial hair, all wearing serious expressions, as if pondering the saving oneness of God. They looked on unimpressed at our final song, Ancient Mother, I Hear you Calling, for which baskets containing percussion instruments were handed round. It was a fun atmosphere; some people got really into it and made surprising whooping animal noises. I have no idea whether this spiritualised feminism is a regular component of this community; maybe most weeks it’s burly men doing the talking, about the sense of rational peace they have while out fishing. But at least three quarters of the congregation was female. And it felt as if the language of therapeutic self-affirmation, whether feminist or not, was very well rooted here. It is now seemingly the Unitarian fashion to deny any single path to truth, but there is still an element of oneness to justify the denomination’s name: its very deep respect for Number One. I came away with the feeling that it was very harmless. And maybe that’s the key difference from Christian worship. In Christian worship there’s a certain sense of risk: we risk affirming an idea of truth that is somewhat at odds with natural wisdom, inner peace. And we risk affirming a tradition that has an aura of violence – the violent rhetoric about the Lord of hosts and so forth – and the references to death and blood in the sombre ritual. There’s a sense of potential danger in Christianity – this religion has been used for violent ends, and people have suffered martyrdom for it too. There’s a disturbing absoluteness. Unitarianism carries about as much sense of dangerous otherness as a tots’ singalong at the local library. Christianity Religion New York United States Theo Hobson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Troy Davis faces execution on 21 September, despite seven of nine non-police witnesses recanting. Where is the justice in that? Death brings cheers these days in America. In the most recent Republican presidential debate in Tampa, Florida , when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked, hypothetically, if a man who chose to carry no medical insurance, then was stricken with a grave illness, should be left to die, cheers of “Yeah!” filled the hall. When, in the prior debate, Governor Rick Perry was asked about his enthusiastic use of the death penalty in Texas, the crowd erupted into sustained applause and cheers. The reaction from the audience prompted debate moderator Brian Williams of NBC News to follow up with the question, “What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?” That “dynamic” is why challenging the death sentence to be carried out against Troy Davis by the state of Georgia on 21 September is so important. Davis has been on Georgia’s death row for close to 20 years, after being convicted of killing off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah. Since his conviction, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining the testimony. There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the murder. Last March, the US supreme court ruled that Davis should receive an evidentiary hearing, to make his case for innocence. Several witnesses have identified one of the remaining witnesses who has not recanted, Sylvester “Redd” Coles, as the shooter. US District Judge William T Moore Jr refused, on a technicality, to allow the testimony of witnesses who claimed that, after Davis had been convicted, Coles admitted to shooting MacPhail. In his August court order, Moore summarised , “Mr Davis is not innocent.” One of the jurors, Brenda Forrest, disagrees. She told CNN in 2009, recalling the trial of Davis , “All of the witnesses – they were able to ID him as the person who actually did it.” Since the seven witnesses recanted, she says: “If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row. The verdict would be not guilty.” Troy Davis has three major strikes against him. First, he is an African American man. Second, he was charged with killing a white police officer. And third, he is in Georgia. More than a century ago, the legendary muckraking journalist Ida B Wells risked her life when she began reporting on the epidemic of lynchings in the Deep South. She published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases in 1892 and followed up with The Red Record in 1895, detailing hundreds of lynchings. She wrote: “In Brooks County, Georgia, 23 December, while this Christian country was preparing for Christmas celebration, seven Negroes were lynched in 24 hours because they refused, or were unable to tell the whereabouts of a colored man named Pike, who killed a white man … Georgia heads the list of lynching states.” The planned execution of Davis will not be at the hands of an unruly mob, but in the sterile, fluorescently lit confines of Georgia diagnostic and classification prison in Butts County, near the town of Jackson. The state doesn’t intend to hang Troy Davis from a tree with a rope or a chain – to hang, as Billie Holiday sang, like a strange fruit: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black body swinging in the Southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” The state of Georgia, unless its board of pardons and paroles intervenes, will administer a lethal dose of pentobarbital. Georgia is using this new execution drug because the federal Drug Enforcement Administration seized its supply of sodium thiopental last March, accusing the state of illegally importing the poison. “This is our justice system at its very worst,” said Ben Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Amnesty International has called on the state board of pardons and paroles to commute Davis’ sentence. “The board stayed Davis’ execution in 2007, stating that capital punishment was not an option when doubts about guilt remained,” said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “Since then, two more execution dates have come and gone, and there is still little clarity, much less proof, that Davis committed any crime. Amnesty International respectfully asks the board to commute Davis’ sentence to life and prevent Georgia from making a catastrophic mistake.” It’s not just the human rights groups the parole board should listen to. Pope Benedict XVI and Nobel peace prize laureates President Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, among others, also have called for clemency. Or the board can listen to mobs who cheer for death. • Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. © 2011 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate Capital punishment State of Georgia United States Human rights US supreme court Amy Goodman guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Palin’s strategic genius has been leveraging speculation about a 2012 presidential run to create an unassailable political celebrity There’s always been a strong undercurrent of jealousy and fear in the venomous attacks on former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, not only from liberals and the left, but increasingly from Republicans. Republicans like Karl Rove, the former top George W Bush adviser, who’s tried every which way to force Palin out of contention for the GOP nomination, while promoting his own favoured “centre-right” candidates, most notably Bush’s younger brother, Jeb. And yet, in the face of open hostility from the men who largely built the current GOP, there the shameless diva sits jealously guarding third place in the latest Washington Post/ABC and CNN opinion polls . Without even announcing that she will run – and despite many predictions that she has no intention of so doing – Palin’s not only within striking distance of Mitt Romney (for months, the GOP’s putative “front-runner”), Palin is also far ahead of Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann. Bachmann became a Tea party darling in her own right and has tried desperately hard to inherit Palin’s mantle. But, judging from her sagging poll numbers and her listless performance in last week’s GOP debate at the Reagan Library in California, she is already falling short of that ambition. Monday’s GOP debate in Tampa, Florida (site of next year’s GOP nominating convention, in fact) won’t include Palin, of course – because she is not a formally declared candidate and is keeping everyone guessing, to the chagrin of many Republicans anxious to declare their party’s contest a “two man race”. But don’t think the “Thrilla from Wasilla”, who recently wowed audiences with rousing campaign-style speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire , won’t be there in spirit. The event’s chief host, the Tea Party Express, is about as pro-Palin as the Tea Party gets, and indeed, it is far more so than its two friendly rivals, the Tea Party Patriots, an arm of which just launched a broadside against Palin for her media antics , and FreedomWorks USA, a group founded by former House majority leader Dick Armey, which is so staunchly libertarian and, at times, pro-big business, that the other two Tea Party groups have all but denounced it as a “fraud”. The founder of the Tea Party Express, Sal Russo , started his career as a young operative for Ronald Reagan, and he’s gone on to support numerous Republican campaigns, including, of course, Palin’s in 2008, when she ran with John McCain as his VP candidate. Russo was one of the first to sense the enormous political potential of the Tea Party concept, and alone among the three national groups, he’s proven highly adept at organising – and personally profiting from – its national advertising campaigns and nationwide bus tours. Palin has leveraged her access to these to emerge as one of the Tea Party’s most powerful and recognisable advocates. But significantly, unlike Bachmann, Palin has never really billed herself as a Tea Party leader . She’s built strong ties to key figures in the GOP establishment like McCain and, of course, Rick Perry, whom she helped get elected last November. She has even opposed local Tea Party candidates when it suited her, including a key figure in New Hampshire, which could cost Palin in the Granite State, should she still decide to run. But her special gift from the start has been her ability to bridge the Tea Party and the establishment – a role that Perry now seems anxious to assume, and which Palin’s continued presence on the scene clearly jeopardises. It’s the unspoken, but simmering, Perry-Palin rivalry that accounts for the content and tone of remarkable – but little-noticed – 40-minute speech in Iowa two weeks ago. In a clear swipe at Perry, she lambasted the “permanent political class” and the corrupt “crony capitalists” who like to co-opt grassroots movements like the Tea Party, she claimed, promising them smaller government and lower taxes, but running up huge deficits and expanding the reach of government into their daily lives. And she reminded her adoring fans – many of them cheering, as always, “Run, Sarah, Run” – that she’d taken on the “good ol’ boys” of the GOP when she ran for and served as Alaska governor, and would gladly do so again, if needed. Palin, it seems, is recalculating her political options and recalibrating her message. She clearly wants to be taken seriously as a party spokesperson; and with funds from her still-thriving SarahPAC, she functions as a playmaker. Running for president still seems one possible option, but keeping her profile in the GOP race high enough to serve as an influential power-broker among the candidates is another. She seemed to relish the fact that Romney appeared in New Hampshire the same day she did, but to much smaller crowds. If only to further tweak Perry, she even hinted that she’d support Romney if he ended up the nominee. But don’t think that Palin is necessarily limiting her political horizons to the 2012 residential race. Judging from her actions and remarks over the past several months , she is also seriously considering moving in the direction of a third-party bid, perhaps on a separate Tea Party ticket, following in the footsteps of an independent candidate like H Ross Perot, who built an enormous following and name for himself by launching the Reform America movement in the early 1990s. He won a remarkable 20% of the popular vote in 1992 – the year that Democrat Bill Clinton was elected president with just 43%, a historic low. Another option? She might run for the Arizona Senate seat soon to become open thanks to the impending retirement of Republican Jon Kyl. Palin this year bought property and moved her residence part-time to Scottsdale, a suburb north of Phoenix, ostensibly to be close to the Palin daughter attending school there. But Palin’s constantly using her progeny as props and pretexts of various kinds, so the idea that she’s actually laying the groundwork for a Senate bid , where she would be able to count on strong support from her former running mate McCain, can’t be ruled out. The fact that Palin’s plan B option would likely be another person’s lifetime dream job would indicate the unbridled magnitude of Palin’s vision for herself on the national stage. Can you imagine any other politician who could appear before a Christian audience, and after citing recent opinion polls, jokingly note that polls [or "poles"], in her view, “should be left to strippers and skiers”? And it would take some front for Palin to make a bid for a Senate seat in Arizona that has been coveted by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the Democratic congresswoman who was shot in Tucson shortly after the Palin campaign had placed a sniper’s cross-hairs over Giffords’s name on a map posted on its website. But does anyone doubt she lacks the will? Palin is like a pop celebrity who makes up her own rules, and then changes them on a whim. There appears nothing anyone anywhere can do to stop her. One thing we can be sure of: Palin’s not about to fade away. Sarah Palin Republicans Tea Party movement US politics US elections 2012 Karl Rove Rick Perry Michele Bachmann United States Mitt Romney Stewart J Lawrence guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …