Frances Fox Piven: Where Are The Angry Crowds of the Forgotten Unemployed?
March 26, 2011 No CommentIn The Nation, Frances Fox Piven, one of Glenn Beck’s favorite targets, raises an important question : How do we mobilize the jobless to political action? As 2011 begins, nearly 15 million people are officially unemployed in the United States and another 11.5 million have either settled for part-time work or simply given up the search for a job. To regain the 5 percent unemployment level of December 2007, about 300,000 jobs would have to be created each month for several years. There are no signs that this is likely to happen soon. And joblessness now hits people harder because it follows in the wake of decades of stagnating worker earnings, high consumer indebtedness, eviscerated retirement funds and rollbacks of the social safety net. So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? After all, the injustice is apparent. Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEOs report renewed profits and windfall bonuses. Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs? It is not that there are no policy solutions. Left academics may be pondering the end of the American empire and even the end of neoliberal capitalism, and—who knows—in the long run they may be right. But surely there is time before the darkness settles to try to relieve the misery created by the Great Recession with massive investments in public-service programs, and also to use the authority and resources of government to spur big new initiatives in infrastructure and green energy that might, in fact, ward off the darkness. Nothing like this seems to be on the agenda. Instead the next Congress is going to be fixated on an Alice in Wonderland policy of deficit reduction by means of tax and spending cuts . As for the jobless, right-wing commentators and Congressional Republicans are reviving the old shibboleth that unemployment is caused by generous unemployment benefits that indulge poor work habits and irresponsibility. Meanwhile, in a gesture eerily reminiscent of the blatherings of a panicked Herbert Hoover, President Obama invites corporate executives to a meeting at Blair House to urge them to invest some of their growing cash reserves in economic growth and job creation, in the United States, one hopes, instead of China. Mass protests might change the president’s posture if they succeeded in pressing him hard from his base, something that hasn’t happened so far in this administration. But there are obstructions to mobilizing the unemployed that would have to be overcome. The problem of how to bring people together is sometimes made easier by government service centers, as when in the 1960s poor mothers gathered in crowded welfare centers or when the jobless congregated in unemployment centers. But administrators also understand that services create sites for collective action; if they sense trouble brewing, they exert themselves to avoid the long lines and crowded waiting areas that can facilitate organizing, or they simply shift the service nexus to the Internet. Organizers can try to compensate by offering help and advocacy off-site, and at least some small groups of the unemployed have been formed on this basis. Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. (Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves “mothers” instead of “recipients,” although they were unlucky in doing so at a time when motherhood was losing prestige.) Losing a job is bruising; even when many other people are out of work, most people are still working. So, a kind of psychological transformation has to take place; the out-of-work have to stop blaming themselves for their hard times and turn their anger on the bosses, the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible. Third, protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones capable of making some kind of response to angry demands. This is, I think, the most difficult of the strategy problems that have to be resolved if a movement of the unemployed is to arise. Protests among the unemployed will inevitably be local, just because that’s where people are and where they construct solidarities. But local and state governments are strapped for funds and are laying off workers. The initiatives that would be responsive to the needs of the unemployed will require federal action. Local protests have to accumulate and spread—and become more disruptive—to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees. A loose and spontaneous movement of this sort could emerge. It is made more likely because unemployment rates are especially high among younger workers. Protests by the unemployed led by young workers and by students, who face a future of joblessness, just might become large enough and disruptive enough to have an impact in Washington. There is no science that predicts eruption of protest movements. Who expected the angry street mobs in Athens or the protests by British students? Who indeed predicted the strike movement that began in the United States in 1934, or the civil rights demonstrations that spread across the South in the early 1960s? We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom—and then join it .
Continue reading …Frances Fox Piven: Where Are The Angry Crowds of the Forgotten Unemployed?
March 26, 2011 No CommentIn The Nation, Frances Fox Piven, one of Glenn Beck’s favorite targets, raises an important question : How do we mobilize the jobless to political action? As 2011 begins, nearly 15 million people are officially unemployed in the United States and another 11.5 million have either settled for part-time work or simply given up the search for a job. To regain the 5 percent unemployment level of December 2007, about 300,000 jobs would have to be created each month for several years. There are no signs that this is likely to happen soon. And joblessness now hits people harder because it follows in the wake of decades of stagnating worker earnings, high consumer indebtedness, eviscerated retirement funds and rollbacks of the social safety net. So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? After all, the injustice is apparent. Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEOs report renewed profits and windfall bonuses. Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs? It is not that there are no policy solutions. Left academics may be pondering the end of the American empire and even the end of neoliberal capitalism, and—who knows—in the long run they may be right. But surely there is time before the darkness settles to try to relieve the misery created by the Great Recession with massive investments in public-service programs, and also to use the authority and resources of government to spur big new initiatives in infrastructure and green energy that might, in fact, ward off the darkness. Nothing like this seems to be on the agenda. Instead the next Congress is going to be fixated on an Alice in Wonderland policy of deficit reduction by means of tax and spending cuts . As for the jobless, right-wing commentators and Congressional Republicans are reviving the old shibboleth that unemployment is caused by generous unemployment benefits that indulge poor work habits and irresponsibility. Meanwhile, in a gesture eerily reminiscent of the blatherings of a panicked Herbert Hoover, President Obama invites corporate executives to a meeting at Blair House to urge them to invest some of their growing cash reserves in economic growth and job creation, in the United States, one hopes, instead of China. Mass protests might change the president’s posture if they succeeded in pressing him hard from his base, something that hasn’t happened so far in this administration. But there are obstructions to mobilizing the unemployed that would have to be overcome. The problem of how to bring people together is sometimes made easier by government service centers, as when in the 1960s poor mothers gathered in crowded welfare centers or when the jobless congregated in unemployment centers. But administrators also understand that services create sites for collective action; if they sense trouble brewing, they exert themselves to avoid the long lines and crowded waiting areas that can facilitate organizing, or they simply shift the service nexus to the Internet. Organizers can try to compensate by offering help and advocacy off-site, and at least some small groups of the unemployed have been formed on this basis. Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. (Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves “mothers” instead of “recipients,” although they were unlucky in doing so at a time when motherhood was losing prestige.) Losing a job is bruising; even when many other people are out of work, most people are still working. So, a kind of psychological transformation has to take place; the out-of-work have to stop blaming themselves for their hard times and turn their anger on the bosses, the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible. Third, protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones capable of making some kind of response to angry demands. This is, I think, the most difficult of the strategy problems that have to be resolved if a movement of the unemployed is to arise. Protests among the unemployed will inevitably be local, just because that’s where people are and where they construct solidarities. But local and state governments are strapped for funds and are laying off workers. The initiatives that would be responsive to the needs of the unemployed will require federal action. Local protests have to accumulate and spread—and become more disruptive—to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees. A loose and spontaneous movement of this sort could emerge. It is made more likely because unemployment rates are especially high among younger workers. Protests by the unemployed led by young workers and by students, who face a future of joblessness, just might become large enough and disruptive enough to have an impact in Washington. There is no science that predicts eruption of protest movements. Who expected the angry street mobs in Athens or the protests by British students? Who indeed predicted the strike movement that began in the United States in 1934, or the civil rights demonstrations that spread across the South in the early 1960s? We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom—and then join it .
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Click the image to see American Family Voices’ new ad . Contrary to the impression that some politicians and pundits give with their frequent goofy rhetoric and games, politics and policymaking is a very serious business, sometimes quite literally a life and death matter. The most obvious case of that is sending troops off to war, but there are many other life and death policy decisions our politicians have to make as well. The debates that happen on Capitol Hill matter a great deal. If you cut Social Security benefits and force seniors to pay more for Medicare, many seniors will have more trouble finding the money for groceries and utilities, and could freeze or starve to death. If you deny people health care coverage, more people will die from the lack of necessary care — 40,000 people per year by one estimate. If you cut off people’s unemployment benefits and do nothing to create jobs for the long-term unemployed, more people will commit suicide, and more people will starve to death. And if you allow more deadly poisons into the air, a lot of people — including children — will die. This is not speculation; these are very well documented facts, confirmed by numerous scientific studies and statistical analyses. Take the Clean Air Act. EPA research shows that the Clean Air Act prevents 160,000 deaths of our fellow Americans every single year. Even more specifically, their data shows that 230 of the deaths prevented in 2010 were infants, the smallest and most vulnerable people of all. Because mercury, arsenic, dioxin, ammonia, sulfur dioxide, formaldehyde, and all kinds of other poisonous chemicals don’t get into our air supply, 160,000 of us are still walking around that wouldn’t be otherwise — and every one of us is a lot healthier. The Clean Air Act is government at its best: a policy that has been one of the most successful legislative achievements in the last 100 years. But for some reason (oh, wait, I know the reason: all those tens of millions of dollars polluters give to them), Republicans don’t want to fund the Clean Air Act. They don’t care how successful it has been. They don’t care that it works exactly the way it was intended in cleaning up our air and saving all those lives. And apparently they don’t care about all those people — even those innocent babies — who are going to die as a result. Now I don’t know about you, but I really like babies. I think they are God’s greatest creation. Holding them, talking to them, making funny faces to try to get them to smile at me — it’s one of my very favorite things to do in life. So I’d really prefer if more of them made it to adulthood. This attack on the Clean Air Act is politics at its worst, driven by special interest money and a blind hatred of government — even (especially?) government that is doing exactly what it should be doing. That is why the organization I head up, American Family Voices, is launching an ad this weekend to drive the message home: we don’t want the deaths that will result from this policy decision the Republicans want to pursue. Yes, it hits hard. But these folks deserve it. I know there are a lot of other things going on right now, a lot of battles to fight. But I hope you’ll take a moment to tell the Republicans in the House how wrong they are to try and shut down Clean Air Act enforcement. Help us save some lives , including the lives of kids who can’t speak out on their own behalf. Mike Lux is the President of American Family Voices.
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enlarge Credit: Life Magazine Vice-President Geraldine Ferraro – had such a nice ring to it. Click here to view this media Hearing the sad news today of the passing of Geraldine Ferraro , I was reminded of that July in 1984 when Presidential candidate Walter Mondale smashed the glass ceiling and selected the first woman as his vice-Presidential running mate. It was talked about well before and mulled over and the choice was met with a wave of “well, it’s about time”. Or as she put it: Geraldine Ferraro: “Thank you vice-President Mondale. Vice-President – it has such a nice ring to it.” So in memory of her passing and of a pivotal moment in American history, here is Geraldine Ferraro’s acceptance speech from July 15, 1984. Rest in Peace.
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The hardline government has been left reeling by fresh clashes on the streets and criticism from UN and US Syria’s hardline regime was grappling to contain new flare-ups after an uprising that has sharply eroded its repressive rule for the past week and led to the deaths of at least 55 protesters. There were fresh clashes in the port city of Latakia, where two people were reported to have been shot dead, as well as in the southern towns of Tafa and Deraa. They came as burials took place across the country amid international condemnation at the uncompromising force shown by the Ba’athist government that has ruled Syria for more than 40 years. Despite the show of strength, President Bashar al-Assad has been unable to free himself from the most sustained threat to his 11-year rule, which has seen protesters attack posters of him and statues of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled for 30 years. Such acts have been almost without precedent throughout four decades of totalitarian rule. Assad had tried to stay ahead of the revolts sweeping the Arab world as they rumbled towards Syria, considered less likely to be affected than its neighbours. He had offered a string of concessions, such as heating fuel subsidies, access to previously banned social media and a three-month cut in military service. However, his regime now appears to be facing a momentum that not even the Arab world’s most feared police state could prepare for. There were reports of between 70 and 260 political prisoners being released, in what was being seen as the latest concession. The concessions offered so far have shown no sign of containing the restive streets, which are feeding off the success of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt as well as still simmering uprisings in Libya and Bahrain. “These are unprecedented events in Syria,” said Rime Allaf, a Syrian analyst at the Chatham House thinktank in London, “especially as they came in the wake of governmental promises of reform on Thursday night.” International criticism has been strident. The United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, urged Assad to show “maximum restraint”, while the US said it was deeply concerned by “the Syrian government’s attempts to repress and intimidate demonstrators”. While anger continues to grow, many Syrians remain unwilling to declare their loyalties, according to analysts in Damascus. “There is not yet the critical mass needed,” said one activist, who asked not to be named. Counter-demonstrations have been manned by loyalist groups and Syria’s tightly controlled state media is not covering the protest activity in detail. Official media have continued to blame unrest and shootings on armed gangs. Some observers said Assad is trapped. “The regime is stuck. The less they offer, the more protests there will be; the more they offer, the faster the regime changes its dictatorial nature, and this would be the start of the end,” said Bilal Saab, a Middle East analyst at the University of Maryland. Meanwhile, clashes continued on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, with Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, on the brink of negotiating a deal for his departure, according to the country’s foreign minister, Abubakr al-Qirbi. Saleh, in power for 32 years, has been confronted by two months of youth-led street protests demanding his resignation as well as a string of defections by top military and tribal leaders. Demonstrations continuedon Saturday, but without the violence of nine days ago, which saw 53 protesters shot dead by government snipers perched on rooftops in a neighbourhood of the capital, Sana’a. “I hope [the resignation] will be today,” said Abubakr al-Qirbi, who is serving as caretaker foreign minister, adding that the timeframe for a peaceful transfer of power by Saleh was “up for negotiation”. The sticking point seems to concern the fate of his family – his sons and nephews occupy powerful positions in the military – as well as the exact timing of his departure. On Tuesday an offer by Saleh to leave by the end of 2011 was snubbed by the opposition who demand his immediate resignation. Sana’a remains a tense and divided capital. Rival pro- and anti-government demonstrators swept through the city on Friday as Saleh told supporters he would conditionally step aside and hand the nation to “safe hands” to avert further bloodshed after weeks of protests. The sticking point of any discussions “is the subject of his departure”, said Sakhr Wajih, an independent member of the parliament and former member of the committee for national dialogue. “It still seems, though, that the president is unwilling to seriously deal with the demands of the protesters themselves and persists in trying to draw the official opposition into a cynical deal.” In Bahrain, where a three-month state of emergency is in force, another demonstrator reportedly died on Friday night after suffocating from the effects of tear gas. He was among a gathering in a Shia village that had been dispersed by government troops. The death takes to 21 the number of people killed in a two-month uprising that has deeply unsettled the Gulf states and led to a serious standoff between two of the region’s greatest foes, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Katherine Marsh is the pseudonym of a journalist based in Damascus. Syria Arab and Middle East unrest Protest Middle East Martin Chulov Tom Finn guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The hardline government has been left reeling by fresh clashes on the streets and criticism from UN and US Syria’s hardline regime was grappling to contain new flare-ups after an uprising that has sharply eroded its repressive rule for the past week and led to the deaths of at least 55 protesters. There were fresh clashes in the port city of Latakia, where two people were reported to have been shot dead, as well as in the southern towns of Tafa and Deraa. They came as burials took place across the country amid international condemnation at the uncompromising force shown by the Ba’athist government that has ruled Syria for more than 40 years. Despite the show of strength, President Bashar al-Assad has been unable to free himself from the most sustained threat to his 11-year rule, which has seen protesters attack posters of him and statues of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled for 30 years. Such acts have been almost without precedent throughout four decades of totalitarian rule. Assad had tried to stay ahead of the revolts sweeping the Arab world as they rumbled towards Syria, considered less likely to be affected than its neighbours. He had offered a string of concessions, such as heating fuel subsidies, access to previously banned social media and a three-month cut in military service. However, his regime now appears to be facing a momentum that not even the Arab world’s most feared police state could prepare for. There were reports of between 70 and 260 political prisoners being released, in what was being seen as the latest concession. The concessions offered so far have shown no sign of containing the restive streets, which are feeding off the success of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt as well as still simmering uprisings in Libya and Bahrain. “These are unprecedented events in Syria,” said Rime Allaf, a Syrian analyst at the Chatham House thinktank in London, “especially as they came in the wake of governmental promises of reform on Thursday night.” International criticism has been strident. The United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, urged Assad to show “maximum restraint”, while the US said it was deeply concerned by “the Syrian government’s attempts to repress and intimidate demonstrators”. While anger continues to grow, many Syrians remain unwilling to declare their loyalties, according to analysts in Damascus. “There is not yet the critical mass needed,” said one activist, who asked not to be named. Counter-demonstrations have been manned by loyalist groups and Syria’s tightly controlled state media is not covering the protest activity in detail. Official media have continued to blame unrest and shootings on armed gangs. Some observers said Assad is trapped. “The regime is stuck. The less they offer, the more protests there will be; the more they offer, the faster the regime changes its dictatorial nature, and this would be the start of the end,” said Bilal Saab, a Middle East analyst at the University of Maryland. Meanwhile, clashes continued on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, with Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, on the brink of negotiating a deal for his departure, according to the country’s foreign minister, Abubakr al-Qirbi. Saleh, in power for 32 years, has been confronted by two months of youth-led street protests demanding his resignation as well as a string of defections by top military and tribal leaders. Demonstrations continuedon Saturday, but without the violence of nine days ago, which saw 53 protesters shot dead by government snipers perched on rooftops in a neighbourhood of the capital, Sana’a. “I hope [the resignation] will be today,” said Abubakr al-Qirbi, who is serving as caretaker foreign minister, adding that the timeframe for a peaceful transfer of power by Saleh was “up for negotiation”. The sticking point seems to concern the fate of his family – his sons and nephews occupy powerful positions in the military – as well as the exact timing of his departure. On Tuesday an offer by Saleh to leave by the end of 2011 was snubbed by the opposition who demand his immediate resignation. Sana’a remains a tense and divided capital. Rival pro- and anti-government demonstrators swept through the city on Friday as Saleh told supporters he would conditionally step aside and hand the nation to “safe hands” to avert further bloodshed after weeks of protests. The sticking point of any discussions “is the subject of his departure”, said Sakhr Wajih, an independent member of the parliament and former member of the committee for national dialogue. “It still seems, though, that the president is unwilling to seriously deal with the demands of the protesters themselves and persists in trying to draw the official opposition into a cynical deal.” In Bahrain, where a three-month state of emergency is in force, another demonstrator reportedly died on Friday night after suffocating from the effects of tear gas. He was among a gathering in a Shia village that had been dispersed by government troops. The death takes to 21 the number of people killed in a two-month uprising that has deeply unsettled the Gulf states and led to a serious standoff between two of the region’s greatest foes, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Katherine Marsh is the pseudonym of a journalist based in Damascus. Syria Arab and Middle East unrest Protest Middle East Martin Chulov Tom Finn guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Last week we observed — especially after the arrest of a neo-Nazi in Spokane for a planned bombing of a parade the next day — that Bill O’Reilly owed Mark Potok a big apology for smearing him after he offered the opinion that, as domestic-terrorism threats go , the extremist right remains a much more potent problem than homegrown Islamic radicals. (OReilly repeated the smear even after the Spokane arrest.) Of course, we knew that wasn’t gonna happen. But last night on The O’Reilly Factor , we got to see the next best thing: Potok pinning O’Reilly’s ears to the wall for the smear. O’REILLY: Now a few weeks ago, Mr. Potok, you said on CNN the biggest terrorist threat is coming from the radical right community. Do you still stand by that? MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: That is false as I think you know. I said the biggest domestic threat to America was from domestic radical right not domestic jihadists, in other words, not home-grown American Muslims. That was twisted on your show by you. (CROSSTALK) O’REILLY: All right. So you — it wasn’t twisted by me — no, no, it wasn’t twisted because your statement is dubious. It wasn’t well — with all due respect because we like you as a guest — your statement was not well put. Let me read your exact statement ok. It’s not our biggest — this is talking about Muslim jihadists. “It’s not our biggest domestic threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country.” Now I’ll dispute that. I think that Muslims jihadists are a much bigger threat than the radical right and the numbers back me up: Fort Hood and Fort Dick. POTOK: Bill, can I just have one — O’REILLY: Yes. Go ahead. POTOK: One thing I want to say, immediately afterwards you said, Muslim terrorists or jihadists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world. Well, that is true. I don’t disagree with that at all. I certainly think that as an external matter, Al-Qaeda is far greater threat. I don’t think there’s much question about that. But that’s not what I said. O’REILLY: All right. I’m glad you are saying that. In fact, it might be helpful to remember exactly what it was that Potok actually said on CNN : MALVEAUX: If you can from your study of tracking radical groups, potentially hate groups, what do you think of this hearing? Is al Qaeda radicalizing Muslims? Is that our biggest homegrown terrorism threat right now? POTOK: Well, I think it’s not our biggest domestic terror threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country. Although I would certainly not minimize the threat of jihadist terrorism in this country. Obviously, we have seen a fair amount of it. Clearly, Potok was drawing a distinction between jihadist terrorism of the international kind and the (so far) quite limited threat of homegrown Islamic radicalism. But O’Reilly refuses to recognize the distinction: O’REILLY: But you put — no, you yourself in a position, of criticizing Peter King’s hearings on what domestic terror threat is from the jihadists. In the context of where you were it seemed to me diminishing that in favor of saying the right wing radicals are a bigger threat. I don’t believe the right wing radicals are a bigger threat. And I don’t believe Americans see it either. I could be wrong. One thing you do have going for you in Spokane where a nut named Karen Hartman with ties to white supremacists has now been indicted for putting a bomb on the road during a Martin Luther King Day parade — thank God it didn’t go off. You do have those isolated incidents and there are white supremacist groups who are a bunch of idiots and FBI are all over them. Ah yes, the famous “isolated incidents”. So far, just in the past two-and-a-half years, we’re up to 24 of them and counting : But O’Reillyesque ignorance is widespread — and so is O’Reillyesque arrogance, as we saw this week when a group of Minutemen in Iowa managed to bring a halt to a terrorism-training exercise because the scenario involved white supremacists attacking immigrants. Indeed, as Potok mentions, the resulting threats forced authorities to call off the exercise. O’Reilly somehow thinks this makes the people who dreamed up the scenario look bad, and not the hate callers whose ignorance shut the drill down. Perhaps that’s because it’s an ignorance they share with O’Reilly, who only a couple of weeks before hosted a segment in which he and his guests dismissed the cold-blooded murder of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father at the hands of a group of killer Minutemen — white supremacists who were targeting Latinos for murder. That, too, was — you guessed it — just another “isolated incident”. OREILLY: Now, in Iowa, this thing was cancelled because, basically they wanted to run a drill that right wing terrorists were coming down from the corn fields and shooting children. I think most Americans go, that is stupid, it’s a waste of money why are you bothering. POTOK: Well, are you going to tell our viewers why it was cancelled. O’REILLY: Yes, because they had threats. POTOK: It was cancelled because they had enormous number of threats. O’REILLY: Not enormous, they had threats. POTOK: I just talked to a reporter out there. The threat that really made them shut the exercise down was a call to the school that said if you go through this, something like you envision will happen or may happen. So who is to say? Sounds like the people you’re — (CROSSTALK) O’REILLY: Yes, it’s terrible. It’s awful. And I ceded to you that there are white supremacist groups that the FBI should be watching and they do anything like this, they should arrest them. But at this juncture — (CROSSTALK) O’REILLY: Mr. Potok, you are not going to convince the American public that these far right kooks are more dangerous than the jihad? You’re not going to do that. And I’ll give you the last word. POTOK: Well, Bill, that is not what I said once again. So I think it would be good if you paid attention to what was actually said rather than going on television and calling me a lot of names. I’m a member — (CROSSTALK) O’REILLY: I didn’t call you any names Mr. Potok. I used your own words — POTOK: I saw the transcripts. What name — I don’t appreciate that kind of mischaracterization. O’REILLY: What name did I call you? POTOK: You said we were part of the radical left, the nuts on the left, who were coming up with this kind of lunatic — O’REILLY: I don’t think I called you that. POTOK: — which you have utterly misinterpreted. Just for the record, here’s exactly what O’Reilly said while disparaging Potok and Ezra Klein: It all goes back to America being the world’s biggest villain. The far left believes that the United States has provoked Muslim extremists by backing Israel and doing business with the oil sheiks. To radicals on the left, the jihadists are simply misguided and would stop their terrible killings if only we understood them and changed our foreign and domestic policies. That’s what the far left truly believes, and that’s why you’re hearing all of this absurd nonsense. Potok didn’t get the apology he deserved. But he did get his pound of flesh.
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Click here to view this media Last week we observed — especially after the arrest of a neo-Nazi in Spokane for a planned bombing of a parade the next day — that Bill O’Reilly owed Mark Potok a big apology for smearing him after he offered the opinion that, as domestic-terrorism threats go , the extremist right remains a much more potent problem than homegrown Islamic radicals. (OReilly repeated the smear even after the Spokane arrest.) Of course, we knew that wasn’t gonna happen. But last night on The O’Reilly Factor , we got to see the next best thing: Potok pinning O’Reilly’s ears to the wall for the smear. O’REILLY: Now a few weeks ago, Mr. Potok, you said on CNN the biggest terrorist threat is coming from the radical right community. Do you still stand by that? MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: That is false as I think you know. I said the biggest domestic threat to America was from domestic radical right not domestic jihadists, in other words, not home-grown American Muslims. That was twisted on your show by you. (CROSSTALK) O’REILLY: All right. So you — it wasn’t twisted by me — no, no, it wasn’t twisted because your statement is dubious. It wasn’t well — with all due respect because we like you as a guest — your statement was not well put. Let me read your exact statement ok. It’s not our biggest — this is talking about Muslim jihadists. “It’s not our biggest domestic threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country.” Now I’ll dispute that. I think that Muslims jihadists are a much bigger threat than the radical right and the numbers back me up: Fort Hood and Fort Dick. POTOK: Bill, can I just have one — O’REILLY: Yes. Go ahead. POTOK: One thing I want to say, immediately afterwards you said, Muslim terrorists or jihadists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world. Well, that is true. I don’t disagree with that at all. I certainly think that as an external matter, Al-Qaeda is far greater threat. I don’t think there’s much question about that. But that’s not what I said. O’REILLY: All right. I’m glad you are saying that. In fact, it might be helpful to remember exactly what it was that Potok actually said on CNN : MALVEAUX: If you can from your study of tracking radical groups, potentially hate groups, what do you think of this hearing? Is al Qaeda radicalizing Muslims? Is that our biggest homegrown terrorism threat right now? POTOK: Well, I think it’s not our biggest domestic terror threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country. Although I would certainly not minimize the threat of jihadist terrorism in this country. Obviously, we have seen a fair amount of it. Clearly, Potok was drawing a distinction between jihadist terrorism of the international kind and the (so far) quite limited threat of homegrown Islamic radicalism. But O’Reilly refuses to recognize the distinction: O’REILLY: But you put — no, you yourself in a position, of criticizing Peter King’s hearings on what domestic terror threat is from the jihadists. In the context of where you were it seemed to me diminishing that in favor of saying the right wing radicals are a bigger threat. I don’t believe the right wing radicals are a bigger threat. And I don’t believe Americans see it either. I could be wrong. One thing you do have going for you in Spokane where a nut named Karen Hartman with ties to white supremacists has now been indicted for putting a bomb on the road during a Martin Luther King Day parade — thank God it didn’t go off. You do have those isolated incidents and there are white supremacist groups who are a bunch of idiots and FBI are all over them. Ah yes, the famous “isolated incidents”. So far, just in the past two-and-a-half years, we’re up to 24 of them and counting : But O’Reillyesque ignorance is widespread — and so is O’Reillyesque arrogance, as we saw this week when a group of Minutemen in Iowa managed to bring a halt to a terrorism-training exercise because the scenario involved white supremacists attacking immigrants. Indeed, as Potok mentions, the resulting threats forced authorities to call off the exercise. O’Reilly somehow thinks this makes the people who dreamed up the scenario look bad, and not the hate callers whose ignorance shut the drill down. Perhaps that’s because it’s an ignorance they share with O’Reilly, who only a couple of weeks before hosted a segment in which he and his guests dismissed the cold-blooded murder of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father at the hands of a group of killer Minutemen — white supremacists who were targeting Latinos for murder. That, too, was — you guessed it — just another “isolated incident”. OREILLY: Now, in Iowa, this thing was cancelled because, basically they wanted to run a drill that right wing terrorists were coming down from the corn fields and shooting children. I think most Americans go, that is stupid, it’s a waste of money why are you bothering. POTOK: Well, are you going to tell our viewers why it was cancelled. O’REILLY: Yes, because they had threats. POTOK: It was cancelled because they had enormous number of threats. O’REILLY: Not enormous, they had threats. POTOK: I just talked to a reporter out there. The threat that really made them shut the exercise down was a call to the school that said if you go through this, something like you envision will happen or may happen. So who is to say? Sounds like the people you’re — (CROSSTALK) O’REILLY: Yes, it’s terrible. It’s awful. And I ceded to you that there are white supremacist groups that the FBI should be watching and they do anything like this, they should arrest them. But at this juncture — (CROSSTALK) O’REILLY: Mr. Potok, you are not going to convince the American public that these far right kooks are more dangerous than the jihad? You’re not going to do that. And I’ll give you the last word. POTOK: Well, Bill, that is not what I said once again. So I think it would be good if you paid attention to what was actually said rather than going on television and calling me a lot of names. I’m a member — (CROSSTALK) O’REILLY: I didn’t call you any names Mr. Potok. I used your own words — POTOK: I saw the transcripts. What name — I don’t appreciate that kind of mischaracterization. O’REILLY: What name did I call you? POTOK: You said we were part of the radical left, the nuts on the left, who were coming up with this kind of lunatic — O’REILLY: I don’t think I called you that. POTOK: — which you have utterly misinterpreted. Just for the record, here’s exactly what O’Reilly said while disparaging Potok and Ezra Klein: It all goes back to America being the world’s biggest villain. The far left believes that the United States has provoked Muslim extremists by backing Israel and doing business with the oil sheiks. To radicals on the left, the jihadists are simply misguided and would stop their terrible killings if only we understood them and changed our foreign and domestic policies. That’s what the far left truly believes, and that’s why you’re hearing all of this absurd nonsense. Potok didn’t get the apology he deserved. But he did get his pound of flesh.
Continue reading …After NOW’s Weak Response to ‘Dumb [Vagina]‘ Maher Calls Palin and Bachmann Bimbos
March 26, 2011 No Comment![After NOW’s Weak Response to ‘Dumb [Vagina]‘ Maher Calls Palin and Bachmann Bimbos](https://newsbreakingonline.com/wp-content/themes/transcript/timthumb.php?src=%3Cimg+src%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fnewsbreakingonline.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F03%2Fa4309cb14dchmann.jpg.jpg%22+%2F%3E&q=90&w=190&h=100&zc=1 "After NOW’s Weak Response to ‘Dumb [Vagina]‘ Maher Calls Palin and Bachmann Bimbos")
As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, the National Organization for Women's weak response to Bill Maher referring to Sarah Palin as a highly derogatory term for a woman's vagina in no way discouraged the “Real Time” host or the television network he represents from making these sexist attacks. Proving this point, Maher called Palin and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) bimbos on Friday's show (video follows with transcript and commentary): BILL MAHER: Well, you know, a birther could be running for president. Michele Bachmann this week threw her hat into the ring kind of. We think she’s going to be running for president. For those who find Sarah Palin too intellectual. [Laughter and applause] MAHER: Michele Bachmann for President. As a comedian, all I have to say is where can I donate to this cause? [Laughter and applause] MAHER: I love this, if Bachmann and Palin get in, that’s two bimbos, and then there's Mitt Romney, a millionaire, and Newt Gingrich, a professor. We just need a skipper and a buddy – we’ve got “Gilligan’s Island.” [Laughter and applause] So, last week Maher called Palin a “dumb twat,” and NOW responded with a statement that didn't mention him, the name of his show, or HBO. As I noted at the time, this certainly wasn't an effective admonishment for it had absolutely no impact on the comedian or the television network he represents. Obviously, that ended up being the case, for Maher clearly wasn't given any instruction this week to tone down his sexist attacks. The women at NOW should be so proud of themselves, especially as Bachmann holds not one but two degrees from different law schools. I guess this isn't “intellectual” enough for Maher.
Continue reading …If Eric Holder ends up indicting and convicting the Blues , I’ll take back every snide comment I ever made about the Department of Justice: The U.S. Justice Department is widening a probe into whether Blue Cross Blue Shield health-insurance plans are artificially raising premiums in several states by striking agreements with hospitals that stifle competition from rival insurers. Federal investigators and some state attorneys general have sent civil subpoenas to “Blue” health plans in Missouri, Ohio, Kansas, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and the District of Columbia, according to people familiar with the matter. The investigation is examining whether dominant health plans around the country are forcing hospitals to sign anticompetitive contracts that unlawfully inhibit them from doing business with their rivals. The Justice Department’s investigation comes as the Obama administration seeks to rein-in rising health-care expenses that threaten to drive up the government’s costs for expanding care under President Barack Obama’s health-care plan. Congressional Republicans and others have said the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, won’t lead to lower insurance premiums. Showing that the administration can counter rising premiums by encouraging greater competition could help win support for the law from a skeptical public. The contractual provisions under scrutiny are known as “most-favored nation” clauses. They usually stipulate that hospitals must charge the insurers’ competitors equal or higher prices for medical services. Such clauses aren’t in themselves illegal—they can simply be guarantees to get the best pricing available. But they can violate antitrust laws if used improperly by a dominant company to hobble competitors. Blue plans tend to be state- or regionally-based and therefore have the market clout to strike such deals with hospitals. While national plans such as UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Aetna Inc. tend to be larger, they are more spread out and typically lack the concentration of a Blue plan in a given local market. A Justice Department spokeswoman said: “The antitrust division is investigating the possibility of anticompetitive practices involving MFN clauses in various parts of the country.” These insurance contracts are written with all kinds of unfair and non-competitive restrictions. Did you know that when doctors sign an agreement with an insurance company to accept their users, they also agree that they won’t offer lower prices to patients who don’t have insurance? So even if your doctor wants to cut you a break, he can’t.
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