Showing posts with label Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Saturday, August 27, 2011
On Eve of Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Arizona Sues to Overturn Voting Rights Act
(Oh Arizona...1860 called. They want their simple-minded lunacy back. If there are any rational people living in Arizona, could you please man up and take your state back from the backward and clueless who are trying to send you back a century or more in the past. It has to be so embarrassing for you. Get off your asses and take back your state. Otherwise, we'll be forced to nuke Arizona from orbit...to be safe.--jef)
Friday, August 26, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
It took years for Arizona to recover from right-wing Governor Evan Mecham’s disgraceful act to rescind the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in 1989.
Now, on the eve of the unveiling of the national memorial to the civil rights leader in Washington, DC, Attorney General Tom Horne has joined a lone county in Alabama to make Arizona the first state to file a suit against the Obama administration to strike down parts of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 — spurred by the horrific violence encountered by King and civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama — as unconstitutional.
“President Lyndon Johnson’s high spirits were marked as he circulated among the many guests whom he had invited to witness an event he confidently felt to be historic, the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act,” King wrote. “The bill that lay on the polished mahogany desk was born in violence in Selma, Alabama, where a stubborn sheriff … had stumbled against the future.”
Claiming that sections of the Voting Rights Act are “either archaic, not based in fact,” Horne has indeed stumbled against his own future and Arizona’s unfinished history of voting rights violations.
Horne, of course, is infamous in Arizona for his controversial witch hunt and eventual ban of bilingual education and the acclaimed Mexican American Studies Program in Tucson. The Attorney General has openly lied in the past about his history of bankruptcy and has the unique distinction of being banned forever from the Securities and Exchanges Commission after he “willfully aided and abetted” securities law violations.
His law suit this week marches in step with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and her Arizona Gone Wild legislature’s obsession to defy federal authority over gun laws, health care, immigration policy, and border security.
US Attorney General Eric Holder immediately responded to Horne’s suit: “The Department of Justice will vigorously defend the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in this case, as it has done successfully in the past.”
Despite the fact that President George W. Bush signed the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act in 2006, it clearly rankles Horne to be included as “covered jurisdictions” among Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia and a handful of others states for “preclearance,” which requires Department of Justice approval for any changes in election policy, practices or administrative functions.
Echoing the state’s right mantra of notorious State Senate President Russell Pearce, who is currently embroiled in a recall election, Horne declared in his suit: “The State of Arizona is a sovereign state within the United States of America.”
The Canadian-immigrant Horne, who likes to claim that he attended the historic March on Washington in 1963, could benefit from a conversation with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) on the deadly violence during the “Bloody Sunday marches” in Selma, Alabama in 1965, which led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.
Horne could also benefit from a lesson in Arizona voting rights history — and present reality.
In preparation for the reauthorization vote in 2006, an extensive report by Arizona State University researchers on Arizona’s voting rights record from 1982-2006 cited numerous violations and concluded: “Arizona’s record since 1982, when the temporary provisions were last reauthorized, shows that the state still has a long way to go.”
It gets worse.
Last fall, a report by Common Cause ranked Arizona at the bottom of swing states for the worst voting laws. According to Tova Wang, author of the report, the strained atmosphere behind Arizona’s notorious SB 1070 “papers please” immigration law was just the beginning of larger voter irregularities: “One of the biggest concerns in this election, especially in Arizona, is that the ugly immigration debate will be leveraged into the elections and the voting process. We are worried about the use of vote suppression tactics such as challenges at the polls and bogus charges of noncitizen voting being used as a way to impose obstacles to voting that could affect a wide range of voters, but primarily people of color. Just the climate that has been created could have an impact on its own.”
Here are some of the “notable obstacles” to voter participation in Arizona:
Now, on the eve of the unveiling of the national memorial to the civil rights leader in Washington, DC, Attorney General Tom Horne has joined a lone county in Alabama to make Arizona the first state to file a suit against the Obama administration to strike down parts of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 — spurred by the horrific violence encountered by King and civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama — as unconstitutional.
“President Lyndon Johnson’s high spirits were marked as he circulated among the many guests whom he had invited to witness an event he confidently felt to be historic, the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act,” King wrote. “The bill that lay on the polished mahogany desk was born in violence in Selma, Alabama, where a stubborn sheriff … had stumbled against the future.”
Claiming that sections of the Voting Rights Act are “either archaic, not based in fact,” Horne has indeed stumbled against his own future and Arizona’s unfinished history of voting rights violations.
Horne, of course, is infamous in Arizona for his controversial witch hunt and eventual ban of bilingual education and the acclaimed Mexican American Studies Program in Tucson. The Attorney General has openly lied in the past about his history of bankruptcy and has the unique distinction of being banned forever from the Securities and Exchanges Commission after he “willfully aided and abetted” securities law violations.
His law suit this week marches in step with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and her Arizona Gone Wild legislature’s obsession to defy federal authority over gun laws, health care, immigration policy, and border security.
US Attorney General Eric Holder immediately responded to Horne’s suit: “The Department of Justice will vigorously defend the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in this case, as it has done successfully in the past.”
Despite the fact that President George W. Bush signed the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act in 2006, it clearly rankles Horne to be included as “covered jurisdictions” among Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia and a handful of others states for “preclearance,” which requires Department of Justice approval for any changes in election policy, practices or administrative functions.
Echoing the state’s right mantra of notorious State Senate President Russell Pearce, who is currently embroiled in a recall election, Horne declared in his suit: “The State of Arizona is a sovereign state within the United States of America.”
The Canadian-immigrant Horne, who likes to claim that he attended the historic March on Washington in 1963, could benefit from a conversation with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) on the deadly violence during the “Bloody Sunday marches” in Selma, Alabama in 1965, which led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.
Horne could also benefit from a lesson in Arizona voting rights history — and present reality.
In preparation for the reauthorization vote in 2006, an extensive report by Arizona State University researchers on Arizona’s voting rights record from 1982-2006 cited numerous violations and concluded: “Arizona’s record since 1982, when the temporary provisions were last reauthorized, shows that the state still has a long way to go.”
It gets worse.
Last fall, a report by Common Cause ranked Arizona at the bottom of swing states for the worst voting laws. According to Tova Wang, author of the report, the strained atmosphere behind Arizona’s notorious SB 1070 “papers please” immigration law was just the beginning of larger voter irregularities: “One of the biggest concerns in this election, especially in Arizona, is that the ugly immigration debate will be leveraged into the elections and the voting process. We are worried about the use of vote suppression tactics such as challenges at the polls and bogus charges of noncitizen voting being used as a way to impose obstacles to voting that could affect a wide range of voters, but primarily people of color. Just the climate that has been created could have an impact on its own.”
Here are some of the “notable obstacles” to voter participation in Arizona:
Citizens must register to vote a full 29 days prior to the election, which could block some Arizonans from participating.
Restoration of voting rights is only available to individuals with a single felony conviction. Persons with two or more felonies are permanently disenfranchised. Not only is it problematic that many people who have served their time are disenfranchised, but the distinction between single and multiple offenders confuses even election officials, leading to the potential disenfranchisement of people who should have their rights restored.
Arizona is the only state that requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. Many citizens are not able to produce such documentary proof.
All voters must present either one form of photo ID or two forms of non-photo ID. If the voter does not have what the poll worker deems the requisite identification, he is forced to cast a provisional ballot. Some voters will not have the necessary ID.
Voters who cast conditional provisional ballots must provide proper identification to the county recorder within three to five business days in order for the ballot to be counted. Provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct will not be counted.
Arizona’s laws regarding challengers at the polling site are lax: voters may be challenged by any qualified elector of the same county and standards for initiating challenge procedures are low.
The absence of specific laws targeting deceptive practices such as dissemination of misinformation about the electoral process leaves voters vulnerable to confusion and disenfranchisement.
Arizona has historically had inadequate outreach to certain language minority communities covered by the Voting Rights Act, and gaps in coverage for qualified and trained bilingual poll workers.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Obama Blows a Judas Kiss to the Poor
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
The unconscionable result of the manufactured crisis over the debt ceiling shows that the political Right knows how to play hardball, and that President Obama and his hapless party know how to get rolled. There are other options; and we, the people, need to press them home.
The Obama-brokered deal on debt and spending was certainly what the Germans call eine schwere Geburt (a difficult birth); this one should have been aborted.
The Obama surrender reminds me of a sermon that Dr. Martin Luther King gave during the turbulent 1950s, in which he peered into the future and issued a prescient warning:
In promoting and then signing yesterday the so-called “deficit reduction” legislation, President Barack Obama has placed himself squarely in the ranks of those spiritual-death-dealing, “soft-minded” men about whom Dr. King warned so ominously.
Many dyed-in-the-wool Obama supporters may now summon the courage to let the scales fall from their eyes. Obama’s one-sided “compromise” so clearly promotes the interests of the wealthy over those of the poor that, in Biblical terms, it can readily be seen — literally — as a God-damned deal.
I want to share some thoughts primarily with those among us — believers and non-believers alike — who shudder at the prospect of our children and our children’s children inheriting a country far different from the one promised by the American Dream, a nation approaching “’spiritual death.”
But wait; hold it one more second, those of you just about to press the “delete” key. If you are not yet concerned over the growing disparity between the rich and poor in this country, take just one more minute to ponder another warning from Dr. King in the same sermon:
Those of you still with me, please swallow hard. For it is a bitter pill, a great disappointment, that the President has turned his back on those for whom the Hebrew and Christian scriptures express God’s deepest concern — those the Bible calls the “anawim.” Similar concern runs like a thread though the Koran.
Anawim is not just a generic reference to those on the margins of society. Rather, the word denotes the despised, hated poor so often resented by the well off — the poor who, lacking boots, cannot relate to admonitions to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” The category of anawim includes the widows, orphans, and strangers who, the authors of the Bible make abundantly clear, enjoy priority as recipients of God’s concern and compassion.
My atheist friends regularly remind me of the need to widen my perspective, and they are, of course, correct. The scriptural mandate to care for the widows, the orphans, the strangers neither requires nor presupposes a faith perspective, but spring from basic human instincts at their best.
Moreover, in modern American history, it also been shown that having a vibrant middle class is good for business, while a society of a few rich and many poor is prone to destructive boom-and-bust cycles. A huge majority of economists concede that the “deal” Obama signed into law yesterday will do little, if anything, to improve the lives of those of our fellow citizens deprived of work, shelter, medical care, and other necessities.
In sum, Obama — again put in a corner by the Right, which showed itself ready to force the United States into default if it did not get its way — reneged on a promise not to let the burden for coping with the economic/fiscal mess fall primarily on the backs of the poor.
The immediate deficit-cutting plan excludes any additional tax revenues from the rich, a line in the sand drawn by Republicans who were determined to protect even an extravagant tax loophole for corporate jet owners and special tax breaks for oil companies recording record profits.
And Republican leaders have made clear that they will be equally adamant against any new tax revenue from the recommendations of a special congressional committee, meaning that the United States will soon face another budget crisis in which the Republicans will demand even deeper spending cuts.
The Demonic and ScriptureScripture contains many stories in which demons play a central role. Those texts were always a stretch for me — that is, until I found myself looking closely into, and writing about, our country’s use of kidnapping, torture, and black-site prisons — not to mention targeted assassinations. No longer could I make light of the demonic.
Lessons from the various indignities visited on many of my friends in inner-city Washington have served as confirmation. Ex-offenders and others in the “justice” system are particularly prominent members of the anawim of our nation’s capital.
If we are to follow Dr. King’s mandate to avoid participation in unjust systems, policies, and practices inevitably exacerbated by the legislation the President signed yesterday, we need to decide how to react. Hopefully, we will choose to move forward in a wide, justice-and-peace oriented community.
Listening to Jeremiah WrightFrom what is known of Obama’s pastor in Chicago, and the United Church of Christ’s reputation for faithfulness to Hebrew as well as Christian scripture, it is a safe bet that the social gospel was preached again and again to Obama and his co-parishioners in the pews.
There is no way he could have escaped the insight that the ancient Hebrew concept of social justice was something that many in the U.S. power elite today would decry as an un-American activity. That concept, fully embraced by Jesus of Nazareth challenges modern America and our economic inequality at almost every turn. It is a particular challenge to those of us with heaps of unearned privilege to do what we can to create a more level playing field.
Take, for example, the Biblical concept of the Jubilee Year, which mandated redistribution of wealth every 50 years. (See what I mean about “un-American?”)
I believe we can assume that, if Obama were paying attention, he would have assimilated the starkly countercultural Hebrew insight of the Jubilee year — an inspired concept that rejects the idea of accumulated wealth and the outsized power that goes with it.
Bible writers were dead serious in calling for the redistribution of wealth. The Jewish genius was that, over time, any human community would inevitably see immoderate wealth and immoderate poverty co-existing (sound familiar?). In other words, it was a given — for a bunch of very human reasons — that there would be mal-distribution of wealth.
The concept of Jubilee was to squash it all back down, essentially requiring everyone to return to the same starting point every 50 years as a matter of law. Debts would be canceled, foreclosed farms returned to previous owners. Granted, it was a primitive idea for a simple economy, but the Jubilee spirit was the spirit of the God of the Hebrews, who insisted time and time again through the Biblical writers and prophets “there shall be no poor among you.” And for that to be achieved, there had to be periodic sharing of wealth.
It would, I suppose, be too much to expect that President Obama would have broached something along these lines to House Speaker John Boehner. But would it be too much too much a stretch to expect some mutual concern — from Republicans and Democrats alike — over the growing disparity between rich and poor in this country?
Boehner is fond of advertising that he is a Catholic. Me too. I would be surprised if he had not learned in his 12 years of Catholic schooling that the first thing Jesus of Nazareth said in his inaugural speech was that he had come to “bring good news to the poor.” Yesterday, there was only bad news for the poor — very bad news in the debt-limit “compromise.”
From Jeremiah Wright to Lord ActonWords about power come to mind — specifically those of 19th Century Catholic historian and Member of Parliament Lord Acton, who warned “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” As familiar as it is, I suspect the adage is a tight fit for our young, still inexperienced President. If this is the case, we have no choice but to unmask him. That is our job as citizens in a democracy and people who care about justice.
In Obama’s public appearances there have been a few times when he showed some sensitivity to the problem of extreme accumulation of wealth and power at the top, and the need to rein it in. He quickly learned that one speaks out on this at one’s own peril.
Remember campaigner Obama’s brief chat with Joe (the Plumber) Wurzlebacher in Toledo on October 12, 2008, when Obama unwittingly hit a live wire — figuratively speaking?
The Democratic nominee had been campaigning hard and must have been tired, for he seemed to forget, momentarily, the difference between Biblical and American justice. He said:
The Republicans and right-wing news media pounced on the comment, accusing Obama of running for “redistributionist in chief.” Fox news played up the following snide statement from a spokesman for John McCain:
A chastened Obama quickly learned his lesson. Since the Joe-the-Plumber incident, Obama has avoided any clear suggestion that he might see some benefit in a more equitable sharing of wealth. Indeed, he has become knee-jerkedly cautious.
On February 7, 2011, the President volunteered to undergo a TV grilling by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly on TV just prior to the Super Bowl and was prepared for O’Reilly’s “when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife”-type question on sharing wealth:
O’Reilly, who stared at the President with demonstrative incredulity, is himself an interesting case study. A graduate of Catholic grammar and high schools on Long Island, he earned in 1971 a B.A. in history from Marist College founded by the Catholic order of Marist Brothers in Poughkeepsie, New York, and then taught briefly in a Catholic high school.
There is no indication that anywhere along the line anyone told him of the Jubilee Year concept, or that Jesus of Nazareth said he came to bring “good news for the poor” — or that it was, in fact, a fundamental requirement for those who be Jesus’s followers also to be good news to the poor. Instead, O’Reilly has been good news for Fox, and Fox for O’Reilly. Wikipedia records his annual salary at $20,000,000.
Pardon the digression, but O’Reilly reminds me of an anecdote we tell in the Bronx about the “lace-curtain Irish,” many of whom fled the U.S. mainland for more posh surroundings on Long Island. You do not have to “know the territory” to get my drift, for the syndrome is not peculiar to the Irish. Surely, you don’t have to be Irish to forget your roots. Bronxites Colin Powell and Eric Holder, sadly, are proof enough of that.
The anecdote? “Give an Irishman a clean pair of underwear and he’ll vote Republican every time.”
Given how Obama has now capitulated in “resolving” the manufactured crisis over raising the debt ceiling and other fiscal measures, he seems determined to make good on his declaration to O’Reilly.
Backs of the PoorThe President’s most recent comment on power and wealth appears, in the light of his capitulation in recent days, another damning piece of unintended irony. On April 20, at a Town Hall meeting at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, the President inadvertently gave a hint regarding how easy it would be to do what he actually ended up doing — even while criticizing Republicans for neglecting the poor.
Here’s what Obama said, to loud applause from the well-heeled folks at Facebook:
"Nothing is easier than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor, people who are powerless and don't have lobbyists or don't have clout.
Then, ostensibly to avoid an unprecedented default on the payment of U.S. debts, Obama ultimately opted for this “easier” course of action, exempting the wealthy and corporations from pitching in to solve the debt problem and bowing to Republican demands that everything come out of cuts on spending.
The outcome of the debt-ceiling battle has left many disillusioned Democrats and progressives convinced that it is foolhardy to expect Obama to behave any differently, even though he continues to promise a vigorous debate the issues he has neglected under pressure from the Right. The rhetoric, of course, is great; but he seldom delivers.
What to Do? It’s the (War) Economy, Stupid!
It is true. We are the one we’ve been waiting for. See you in October.
The Obama-brokered deal on debt and spending was certainly what the Germans call eine schwere Geburt (a difficult birth); this one should have been aborted.
The Obama surrender reminds me of a sermon that Dr. Martin Luther King gave during the turbulent 1950s, in which he peered into the future and issued a prescient warning:
“A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.”
In promoting and then signing yesterday the so-called “deficit reduction” legislation, President Barack Obama has placed himself squarely in the ranks of those spiritual-death-dealing, “soft-minded” men about whom Dr. King warned so ominously.
Many dyed-in-the-wool Obama supporters may now summon the courage to let the scales fall from their eyes. Obama’s one-sided “compromise” so clearly promotes the interests of the wealthy over those of the poor that, in Biblical terms, it can readily be seen — literally — as a God-damned deal.
I want to share some thoughts primarily with those among us — believers and non-believers alike — who shudder at the prospect of our children and our children’s children inheriting a country far different from the one promised by the American Dream, a nation approaching “’spiritual death.”
But wait; hold it one more second, those of you just about to press the “delete” key. If you are not yet concerned over the growing disparity between the rich and poor in this country, take just one more minute to ponder another warning from Dr. King in the same sermon:
“Passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.”
Those of you still with me, please swallow hard. For it is a bitter pill, a great disappointment, that the President has turned his back on those for whom the Hebrew and Christian scriptures express God’s deepest concern — those the Bible calls the “anawim.” Similar concern runs like a thread though the Koran.
Anawim is not just a generic reference to those on the margins of society. Rather, the word denotes the despised, hated poor so often resented by the well off — the poor who, lacking boots, cannot relate to admonitions to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” The category of anawim includes the widows, orphans, and strangers who, the authors of the Bible make abundantly clear, enjoy priority as recipients of God’s concern and compassion.
My atheist friends regularly remind me of the need to widen my perspective, and they are, of course, correct. The scriptural mandate to care for the widows, the orphans, the strangers neither requires nor presupposes a faith perspective, but spring from basic human instincts at their best.
Moreover, in modern American history, it also been shown that having a vibrant middle class is good for business, while a society of a few rich and many poor is prone to destructive boom-and-bust cycles. A huge majority of economists concede that the “deal” Obama signed into law yesterday will do little, if anything, to improve the lives of those of our fellow citizens deprived of work, shelter, medical care, and other necessities.
In sum, Obama — again put in a corner by the Right, which showed itself ready to force the United States into default if it did not get its way — reneged on a promise not to let the burden for coping with the economic/fiscal mess fall primarily on the backs of the poor.
The immediate deficit-cutting plan excludes any additional tax revenues from the rich, a line in the sand drawn by Republicans who were determined to protect even an extravagant tax loophole for corporate jet owners and special tax breaks for oil companies recording record profits.
And Republican leaders have made clear that they will be equally adamant against any new tax revenue from the recommendations of a special congressional committee, meaning that the United States will soon face another budget crisis in which the Republicans will demand even deeper spending cuts.
The Demonic and ScriptureScripture contains many stories in which demons play a central role. Those texts were always a stretch for me — that is, until I found myself looking closely into, and writing about, our country’s use of kidnapping, torture, and black-site prisons — not to mention targeted assassinations. No longer could I make light of the demonic.
Lessons from the various indignities visited on many of my friends in inner-city Washington have served as confirmation. Ex-offenders and others in the “justice” system are particularly prominent members of the anawim of our nation’s capital.
If we are to follow Dr. King’s mandate to avoid participation in unjust systems, policies, and practices inevitably exacerbated by the legislation the President signed yesterday, we need to decide how to react. Hopefully, we will choose to move forward in a wide, justice-and-peace oriented community.
Listening to Jeremiah WrightFrom what is known of Obama’s pastor in Chicago, and the United Church of Christ’s reputation for faithfulness to Hebrew as well as Christian scripture, it is a safe bet that the social gospel was preached again and again to Obama and his co-parishioners in the pews.
There is no way he could have escaped the insight that the ancient Hebrew concept of social justice was something that many in the U.S. power elite today would decry as an un-American activity. That concept, fully embraced by Jesus of Nazareth challenges modern America and our economic inequality at almost every turn. It is a particular challenge to those of us with heaps of unearned privilege to do what we can to create a more level playing field.
Take, for example, the Biblical concept of the Jubilee Year, which mandated redistribution of wealth every 50 years. (See what I mean about “un-American?”)
I believe we can assume that, if Obama were paying attention, he would have assimilated the starkly countercultural Hebrew insight of the Jubilee year — an inspired concept that rejects the idea of accumulated wealth and the outsized power that goes with it.
Bible writers were dead serious in calling for the redistribution of wealth. The Jewish genius was that, over time, any human community would inevitably see immoderate wealth and immoderate poverty co-existing (sound familiar?). In other words, it was a given — for a bunch of very human reasons — that there would be mal-distribution of wealth.
The concept of Jubilee was to squash it all back down, essentially requiring everyone to return to the same starting point every 50 years as a matter of law. Debts would be canceled, foreclosed farms returned to previous owners. Granted, it was a primitive idea for a simple economy, but the Jubilee spirit was the spirit of the God of the Hebrews, who insisted time and time again through the Biblical writers and prophets “there shall be no poor among you.” And for that to be achieved, there had to be periodic sharing of wealth.
It would, I suppose, be too much to expect that President Obama would have broached something along these lines to House Speaker John Boehner. But would it be too much too much a stretch to expect some mutual concern — from Republicans and Democrats alike — over the growing disparity between rich and poor in this country?
Boehner is fond of advertising that he is a Catholic. Me too. I would be surprised if he had not learned in his 12 years of Catholic schooling that the first thing Jesus of Nazareth said in his inaugural speech was that he had come to “bring good news to the poor.” Yesterday, there was only bad news for the poor — very bad news in the debt-limit “compromise.”
From Jeremiah Wright to Lord ActonWords about power come to mind — specifically those of 19th Century Catholic historian and Member of Parliament Lord Acton, who warned “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” As familiar as it is, I suspect the adage is a tight fit for our young, still inexperienced President. If this is the case, we have no choice but to unmask him. That is our job as citizens in a democracy and people who care about justice.
In Obama’s public appearances there have been a few times when he showed some sensitivity to the problem of extreme accumulation of wealth and power at the top, and the need to rein it in. He quickly learned that one speaks out on this at one’s own peril.
Remember campaigner Obama’s brief chat with Joe (the Plumber) Wurzlebacher in Toledo on October 12, 2008, when Obama unwittingly hit a live wire — figuratively speaking?
The Democratic nominee had been campaigning hard and must have been tired, for he seemed to forget, momentarily, the difference between Biblical and American justice. He said:
“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
The Republicans and right-wing news media pounced on the comment, accusing Obama of running for “redistributionist in chief.” Fox news played up the following snide statement from a spokesman for John McCain:
“If Barack Obama’s goal as President is to ‘spread the wealth around,’ perhaps his unconditional meetings with Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, and Kim Jong-Il aren’t so crazy — if nothing else, they can advise an Obama administration on economic policy."
A chastened Obama quickly learned his lesson. Since the Joe-the-Plumber incident, Obama has avoided any clear suggestion that he might see some benefit in a more equitable sharing of wealth. Indeed, he has become knee-jerkedly cautious.
On February 7, 2011, the President volunteered to undergo a TV grilling by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly on TV just prior to the Super Bowl and was prepared for O’Reilly’s “when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife”-type question on sharing wealth:
“Do you deny that you’re a man who wants to redistribute wealth?” asked O’Reilly.
“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Obama responded.
O’Reilly, who stared at the President with demonstrative incredulity, is himself an interesting case study. A graduate of Catholic grammar and high schools on Long Island, he earned in 1971 a B.A. in history from Marist College founded by the Catholic order of Marist Brothers in Poughkeepsie, New York, and then taught briefly in a Catholic high school.
There is no indication that anywhere along the line anyone told him of the Jubilee Year concept, or that Jesus of Nazareth said he came to bring “good news for the poor” — or that it was, in fact, a fundamental requirement for those who be Jesus’s followers also to be good news to the poor. Instead, O’Reilly has been good news for Fox, and Fox for O’Reilly. Wikipedia records his annual salary at $20,000,000.
Pardon the digression, but O’Reilly reminds me of an anecdote we tell in the Bronx about the “lace-curtain Irish,” many of whom fled the U.S. mainland for more posh surroundings on Long Island. You do not have to “know the territory” to get my drift, for the syndrome is not peculiar to the Irish. Surely, you don’t have to be Irish to forget your roots. Bronxites Colin Powell and Eric Holder, sadly, are proof enough of that.
The anecdote? “Give an Irishman a clean pair of underwear and he’ll vote Republican every time.”
Given how Obama has now capitulated in “resolving” the manufactured crisis over raising the debt ceiling and other fiscal measures, he seems determined to make good on his declaration to O’Reilly.
Backs of the PoorThe President’s most recent comment on power and wealth appears, in the light of his capitulation in recent days, another damning piece of unintended irony. On April 20, at a Town Hall meeting at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA, the President inadvertently gave a hint regarding how easy it would be to do what he actually ended up doing — even while criticizing Republicans for neglecting the poor.
Here’s what Obama said, to loud applause from the well-heeled folks at Facebook:
"Nothing is easier than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor, people who are powerless and don't have lobbyists or don't have clout.
Then, ostensibly to avoid an unprecedented default on the payment of U.S. debts, Obama ultimately opted for this “easier” course of action, exempting the wealthy and corporations from pitching in to solve the debt problem and bowing to Republican demands that everything come out of cuts on spending.
The outcome of the debt-ceiling battle has left many disillusioned Democrats and progressives convinced that it is foolhardy to expect Obama to behave any differently, even though he continues to promise a vigorous debate the issues he has neglected under pressure from the Right. The rhetoric, of course, is great; but he seldom delivers.
What to Do? It’s the (War) Economy, Stupid!
1- Face up to the fact that Obama is one of those “soft-minded” men Dr. King warned about, and that if we citizens do not rise to the occasion, we can expect “death on the installment plan” for our democracy and firmer implantation of plutocracy.
2 – Knock on the doors of rectories, synagogues and mosques, just to see if there’s anyone home and if anyone cares about what is happening to those on the margins of our society. Ask religious leaders if they are aware of what happened in Germany during the Thirties, when Catholic and Lutheran church leaders could not find their voice, and ended up functioning, as Hitler intended, as a force of stability for his regime. See if we can wake anyone up in the religious institutions who might have ties to the Establishment.
3 – Do all we can to let our citizen sisters and brothers know that 58 cents of each dollar of federal “discretionary spending” now go to the Pentagon. And make sure that they have heard that the U.S.S.R. — America’s “main enemy,” imploded 20 years ago and that, despite the absence of a threat from a major power, U.S. military spending equals that of all the other countries of the world put together.
4 – Make sure Americans know, not only what President Dwight Eisenhower said in his Farewell Address about the military-industrial complex, but also what Gen. Douglas MacArthur said ten years earlier. Neither of these generals was exactly a “dove.” Here’s MacArthur:
“It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.” (May 15, 1951)
5 – Since the Obama administration and Congress cannot be counted to pursue traditional American justice (not to mention Biblical/Jubilee-type justice), and since American religious institutions (with few exceptions) are riding shotgun for the system, we might do well to heed the admonitions and challenges that come to us from popular theologian Annie Dillard; Cesar Chavez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers; and Mario Savio of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the 60s:
Dillard: “There is only us; there never has been any other.”
Chavez: “There are already enough of us. But without action, nothing is going to happen.”
Savio: “ There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part; and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”
6 – Join Washington, D.C.’s “Tahrir Square” gathering beginning on October 6, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan. Join with other people of conscience in public repudiation of the dysfunctional system bringing us “spiritual death on an installment plan.” Join in the kind of enduring, nonviolent resistance of the kind we have admired not long ago in Cairo, Egypt, and in Madison, Wisconsin. (See: http://october2011.org/statement.)
It is true. We are the one we’ve been waiting for. See you in October.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
50 Years Since Ike's Warning
The Corporate-Military-Industrial Complex
By HARRY TARG
vidlink
We have become so drugged by politicians that we often fail to reflect on the power of their words. Seeing books on library shelves with titles like "Speeches of Great Americans" culls up in our minds Readers Digest, the History Channel, Sunday morning sermons, and all the hyperbole that passes for political discourse in the 21st century. Every once in a while though, a politician says something that is rich with theoretical insight and inspiration and begs for action.
When President Eisenhower gave his final address to the nation on January 17, 1961, 50 years ago, he warned of "the acquisition of unwarranted influence" of a military/industrial complex. He originally included the word "academic" but later eliminated it, for reasons of length. He was alerting Americans to the breadth and scope of military power over the world and American society.
The President's words constituted a shocking challenge to the soon-to-be Kennedy era defense intellectuals who criticized the outgoing president's reluctance to spend more than the $40 billion he invested on the military. Even Eisenhower's direct orders to subordinates to overthrow Iran's Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and Guatemala's President Jacob Arbenz in 1954 and his declaration of the Middle East as a free-world sanctuary was not interventionist enough for the 1960s theorists and practitioners of "modernization," "development," and "democracy."
Although Eisenhower warned us about the corporate military/industrial complex he could not foresee the dramatic impacts of America's drive toward empire on foreign policy and public life.
He only dimly saw the changes that would occur in the techniques of empire. The expansion of the use of CIA money and American intelligence and military forces engineered the creation of brutal military coups. Military advisors revamped armies and repressive police forces in countries threatened by revolutionary change. In the 1980s in the face of an increasingly skeptical public, the United States used "low intensity conflict," that is, covert operatives, to train anti-government reactionaries to fight against regimes out of favor in places such as Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. And then to mollify domestic critics, the U.S. initiated the privatization and outsourcing of the military as an adjunct to the more than 700 U.S. military bases in more than 40 countries that exist today. Most recently, high tech weapons, including unmanned but armed aerial vehicles, are used to kill people without endangering U.S. soldiers. Technological advances and the globalization of U.S. violence continue.
Eisenhower was unalterably opposed to the militarization of the U.S. economy. While he was willing to allot $40 billion in 1950s currency, he resisted the demands from Beltway liberals and defense contractors to double military spending. By the 1960s, half of the federal budget began to go to the military and one in ten workers derived wages from defense contracts. And that continues, but with less public criticism.
Finally, Eisenhower spoke to the militarization of American culture. The university became a research arm of the complex. Students were taught about the virtues of military "readiness," the threat of "communism," the problem of how "human nature" leads to perpetual war, and, more recently, the endless danger of "terrorism." Virtually every large corporation, producing such products as toothpaste, toys, breakfast cereal, medications, automobiles, electronics, or energy, is steeped in military contracts. The public airwaves, the Internet, movies, and sports are laced with war, violence, killing, and competition. As Eisenhower put it: "Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved: so is the very structure of our society."
What another great American, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said in reference to the military/industrial complex and the Vietnam War seven years after President Eisenhower's dramatic statement still holds today:
By HARRY TARG
vidlink
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience….
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military/industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes….
Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961, farewell address).
We have become so drugged by politicians that we often fail to reflect on the power of their words. Seeing books on library shelves with titles like "Speeches of Great Americans" culls up in our minds Readers Digest, the History Channel, Sunday morning sermons, and all the hyperbole that passes for political discourse in the 21st century. Every once in a while though, a politician says something that is rich with theoretical insight and inspiration and begs for action.
When President Eisenhower gave his final address to the nation on January 17, 1961, 50 years ago, he warned of "the acquisition of unwarranted influence" of a military/industrial complex. He originally included the word "academic" but later eliminated it, for reasons of length. He was alerting Americans to the breadth and scope of military power over the world and American society.
The President's words constituted a shocking challenge to the soon-to-be Kennedy era defense intellectuals who criticized the outgoing president's reluctance to spend more than the $40 billion he invested on the military. Even Eisenhower's direct orders to subordinates to overthrow Iran's Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and Guatemala's President Jacob Arbenz in 1954 and his declaration of the Middle East as a free-world sanctuary was not interventionist enough for the 1960s theorists and practitioners of "modernization," "development," and "democracy."
Although Eisenhower warned us about the corporate military/industrial complex he could not foresee the dramatic impacts of America's drive toward empire on foreign policy and public life.
He only dimly saw the changes that would occur in the techniques of empire. The expansion of the use of CIA money and American intelligence and military forces engineered the creation of brutal military coups. Military advisors revamped armies and repressive police forces in countries threatened by revolutionary change. In the 1980s in the face of an increasingly skeptical public, the United States used "low intensity conflict," that is, covert operatives, to train anti-government reactionaries to fight against regimes out of favor in places such as Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. And then to mollify domestic critics, the U.S. initiated the privatization and outsourcing of the military as an adjunct to the more than 700 U.S. military bases in more than 40 countries that exist today. Most recently, high tech weapons, including unmanned but armed aerial vehicles, are used to kill people without endangering U.S. soldiers. Technological advances and the globalization of U.S. violence continue.
Eisenhower was unalterably opposed to the militarization of the U.S. economy. While he was willing to allot $40 billion in 1950s currency, he resisted the demands from Beltway liberals and defense contractors to double military spending. By the 1960s, half of the federal budget began to go to the military and one in ten workers derived wages from defense contracts. And that continues, but with less public criticism.
Finally, Eisenhower spoke to the militarization of American culture. The university became a research arm of the complex. Students were taught about the virtues of military "readiness," the threat of "communism," the problem of how "human nature" leads to perpetual war, and, more recently, the endless danger of "terrorism." Virtually every large corporation, producing such products as toothpaste, toys, breakfast cereal, medications, automobiles, electronics, or energy, is steeped in military contracts. The public airwaves, the Internet, movies, and sports are laced with war, violence, killing, and competition. As Eisenhower put it: "Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved: so is the very structure of our society."
What another great American, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said in reference to the military/industrial complex and the Vietnam War seven years after President Eisenhower's dramatic statement still holds today:
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)