Labor Politics and the Captive Electorate of 2012

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 by Common Dreamsby Brian Tierney

Back in 2010, Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5 million-member American Federation of Teachers (AFT), lashed out at President Obama who she said was part of the “blame the teacher crowd” of education reform.

“I never thought I’d see a Democratic president, whom we helped elect, and his education secretary applaud the mass firing of 89 teachers and staff,” she said – referring to the firing of all teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island earlier that year.

Last month, the AFT executive council unanimously voted to endorse Obama for reelection.

“While we have not agreed with every decision President Obama has made, he shares our deep commitment to rebuilding the middle class and ensuring everyone has an opportunity to achieve the American dream,” Weingarten said. Never mind those 89 teachers or the thousands more whose “opportunity to achieve the American dream” is under the gun of Obama’s school “reform” agenda.

Last year, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka criticized Obama for aligning with the right and cutting social programs.

“If they [Obama administration] don’t have a jobs program, I think we’d better use our money doing other things,” the leader of the nation’s largest union federation said, threatening to withhold labor’s support for Obama. Less than two months later, Trumka told reporters that the AFL-CIO would most likely endorse the reelection campaign, saying, “President Obama has been a friend for us.”

On Tuesday the AFL-CIO’s executive board unanimously voted to endorse Obama.

“Although the labor movement has sometimes differed with the president and often pushed his administration to do more – and do it faster – we have never doubted his commitment to a strong future for working families,” Trumka said in a statement announcing the endorsement.

None of this should surprise anyone who is familiar with labor’s captivity in the machinery of the Democratic Party. What appears to be schizophrenic in the real world is normal behavior in the world of organized labor and electoral politics.

But this election comes after a year of unprecedented attacks on workers.

Both Republicans and Democrats have been ratcheting up the war against unions, a fact that is making it increasingly difficult for union leaders to justify their support for Obama to their rank-and-file members.

“Notwithstanding all our disappointment with the Obama presidency, it’s clear that the clowns on the Republican side would be devastating to working people,” a Communication Workers of America (CWA) official told In These Times last month. “But we’re anticipating a tougher challenge motivating people because there is a lot of disappointment and letdown,” he admitted.

That’s probably because workers are hard-pressed to imagine what could be more “devastating to working people” than what they’ve seen in the last year alone. Workers have faced the erosion of collective bargaining rights, the first state in the Midwest passing “Right to Work” legislation, an FAA reauthorization bill signed by Obama that makes it more difficult for airline workers to organize, plans for massive layoffs of postal workers nationwide, and ramped-up attacks on public education.

And that’s by no means an exhaustive list of the recent blows suffered by the labor movement.

In addition to the AFT and AFL-CIO, major unions that have declared their endorsement for Obama’s reelection include SEIU, AFSCME, Laborers’ International Union (LIUNA), United Food and Commercial Workers, CWA, the Machinists, United Farm Workers, United Steel Workers, and the National Education Association. The list is sure to grow as the election season moves forward.

“We’ve been treading water as a labor movement,” says Chris Townsend, Political Action Director of United Electrical Workers (UE). At best, supporting Democrats is a strategy to buy time. And union leaders won’t admit to their members that they are stuck,” he adds, echoing a point he made in a recent interview on Al-Jazeera’s Inside Story.
Townsend is one of the few union officials in the labor movement who forcefully criticizes labor’s allegiance to the Democratic Party. He points out that the more unions continue the bankrupt strategy of supporting a party that is often ambivalent or hostile to the movement, the harder it will be for them to beat back the right-wing agenda to destroy unions altogether.

Chris Townsend:

“How many more times is labor going to go back to the members and tell them to vote for some Democrat that has left us hanging? It’s no wonder that many union members and workers are not buying the Obama-Biden rhetoric this time. Instead of tackling the corporations and the Republicans head-on, the White House stands by in silence while organized labor is subjected to a life and death struggle in Wisconsin and Ohio. If union members get stuck voting for Obama because Romney is so much worse, we should just tell the truth. We are trapped in a profoundly corrupt and rigged political system. By going back again and again and hanging the union seal of approval on candidates who are not supportive of our cause, we merely hasten our own demise.”

On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported that labor leaders are talking about “shifting” their tactics by spending less on politics and more on movement-building. The Times reports that the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents some 190,000 transit workers in the U.S. and Canada, “has shifted ‘the culture of [the] union from…political activity to broader coalition building,’”

Meanwhile, an election battle is brewing within AFSCME, a union that represents 1.6 million public sector workers and which spent more money during the 2010 elections than any other group. One of the candidates vying to replace the outgoing President Gerald McEntee says he wants to put an end to the “checkbook unionism” that has so closely tied the union to the Democratic Party.

But the political landscape since the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision has seen unlimited spending on politics in the form of “SuperPACs.” And it’s not just corporations that are taking advantage of the new terrain. At the end of January the ALF-CIO’s “Workers’ Voice” SuperPAC had raised up to $4 million.

Of course, union leaders will not be able to mobilize their membership the way they did in 2008. Four years ago, the AFL-CIO sent 250,000 volunteers knocking on doors for Obama and other Democratic candidates. Much of that base of members and allies is deeply disenchanted with the Obama administration. And for good reason.

Before he dropped labor’s biggest priority in 2009 by abandoning the Employee Free Choice Act, Obama was busy stacking his administration with Wall Street insiders. More recent corporate additions include the anti-union General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt who chairs the president’s “Jobs Council.”

Over the past few years teachers from California to Chicago to New York have essentially been held at gunpoint by austerity-driven governors and mayors whose cuts and test-based reforms are supported by Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan.

In the private sector, American Airlines is using Chapter 11 bankruptcy to tear up union contracts, “restructure” pensions and cut up to 13,000 jobs. And for his reelection, Obama has received nearly $29,000 from AT&T, a company that is looking to layoff hundreds of workers in the Southeast.
Last year, Democrats in Indiana fled the state and successfully stopped a bill that would have made Indiana the first “Right to Work” state in the union-heavy rust belt. But this year, the Democrats chose to stand down, giving the green light to employers to bleed members and money from the unions.

But it seems Democrats can rely on Obama’s celebrity and eloquence to win back the hearts of labor leaders. Introducing Obama at the recent United Auto Workers conference, UAW leader Bob King praised Obama as “the champion of all workers.”

In an apparent mission to turn the U.S. into a source of cheap labor, policymakers in both political parties have for decades demonstrated their commitment to permanently lower working-class living standards. And recently Obama has been less shy about his role in this effort, touting his own policies for helping to make the U.S. more competitive with low-wage countries. Indeed, the cover story in the latest issue of Mother Jones magazine, documenting journalist Mac McClelland’s time working in an online retail warehouse, leaves readers wondering how far the U.S. working class is from experiencing the same grueling conditions that have made Apple factories in China so famous.

Manufacturing isn’t the only target, though. The logic of Obama’s “Race to the Top” (RTTT) program – offering education funding to states in exchange for teacher evaluations based on student test scores and opening more charters – has permeated school districts across the country, with devastating effects for students, teachers and their unions. In many cities, as “underperforming” teachers are fired and “underperforming” schools face closures and “turnarounds,” low-income students of color are being impacted the most.

But even if RTTT is aimed at privatizing public education and undermining teacher unionism, AFT President Weingarten is more likely to be heard giving her qualified praise for the program. That’s not the only reason AFT’s exuberant endorsement of Obama is unsurprising. After all, in addition to running the second-largest education union in the country, Weingarten is an active member of the Democratic National Committee. The fact is that countless other paid Democratic Party functionaries cycle through the upper echelons of the labor movement. But they are a lot less powerful than the corporate forces in the party, which begs the question: who is working for whom?

No wonder, then, that labor has at times had trouble relating to the Occupy movement. Reasonable concerns about cooptation aside, the movement includes ultra-left elements who claim to represent the “89 percent” – that is, excluding what they call the “privileged” minority of workers who are union members.

Such anti-union rhetoric used to be the exclusive domain of conservatives aimed at antagonizing union and non-union workers. But with labor leaders so visibly entrenched in the Democratic Party, maybe it isn’t so astonishing that leftist activists who fail to differentiate between union leadership and the rank-and-file are prone to such ideas.

Clearly, more rank-and-file involvement is needed to both challenge union officials and undercut misconceptions on the left about the labor movement.

Ultimately, real union power is not displayed by workers canvassing for Democrats. It’s exercised by workers on the job, like the 70 UE factory workers who again occupied their workplace last month and won their demands to keep the plant open while they find a new buyer, or perhaps run the factory themselves. Or the nearly 500 Seattle port truck drivers who went on strike for two weeks in February in protest against abuse and deregulation that has prevented them from organizing with the Teamsters. Or the teachers in New York City and Chicago who, along with Occupy protesters, have led fiery demonstrations against budget cuts and school closures.

Sometimes there are tactical reasons for unions to engage in electoral politics, but trade unionism is not about electing Democrats. Workers join unions to enforce decent pay and working conditions on the job. Organizing in an active union also raises the consciousness of workers around working-class issues beyond an individual workplace, like national healthcare policy and globalization. And like other social justice movements, labor cannot attribute much of its success to voting within the corporate confines of the two-party system.

Real power for workers and the oppressed exists in the streets and in the workplace, in the form of militant grassroots struggle.
Every national election points to the urgency for radicals to free the muscle of the union movement from the grip of the Democratic Party – to tighten the grip of the working class around the machinery of profit.

Koch Brothers Convene Super-Secret Billionaires' Meeting for 2012 Elections

Some of America's wealthiest Republicans flew into Palm Springs last weekend to update their stealthy political strategy for 2012.
By Lee Fang, Republic Report
Posted on February 4, 2012


At a retreat last weekend, dozens of wealthy donors convened in a large golf resort in Indian Wells, Calif. for a four day conference to raise money and plot out election year strategy, the Republic Report has confirmed. We traveled to the conference, and spoke to a few of the attendees.


The summit, organized by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, was cloaked in secrecy. Helicopters, private security and police officers from neighboring cities patrolled the area constantly. In previous years, Supreme Court justices, some of the wealthiest businessmen in the country and Republican politicians like Congressman Paul Ryan have all gathered at these twice-annual events. The Esmerelda Renaissance, the conference venue this year, was guarded carefully with every entrance blocked and the entire 560-room resort rented out. I arrived at the hotel the night before the event, but was followed closely by security and asked to leave the next morning before the Koch meeting guests arrived.


Though the donors will funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election this year, they will not have to disclose a single cent. Using an elaborate array of foundations, nonprofits and other legal entities, the Koch network sponsored bus tours, attack ads, think tanks, and hired Tea Party organizers to shape the midterm elections two years ago. Now, they appear to be expanding their effort.


The most the public knows about these meetings has been culled from leaked audio tapes,reporting from journalists like Ken Vogel, and from an invitation I exclusively reported back in October 2010. The document I posted over a year ago explained that during the meetings, strategy is discussed, from legislative campaigns to judicial elections, and money is raised from an assortment of executives from the oil, banking, manufacturing, and real estate industries.


At the Palm Springs Airport last weekend, I ran into Phil Kerpen, the vice president of Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group founded by David Koch. Kerpen, who was in a rush to make it to the event, didn’t say much about the agenda. Kerpen’s group recently purchased $6 million in undisclosed attack ads against President Obama, the largest such buy of the entire campaign cycle so far.


Kerpen asked how I knew about the conference. “I thought they had stopped all leaks,” he muttered, as I walked with him through the baggage claim. Eventually he relented a bit and told me that he hopes to help achieve “aggressive cuts to government spending and to regulation to allow robust economic growth” in January 2013.


At the last Koch meeting, in Vail, Colo., Charles Koch raised several million dollars from his cohorts, while reffering to President Obama as “Saddam Hussein” and this year’s election as the “mother of all wars.” Kerpen disputed the reporting of Charles Koch’s comments, but did not elaborate on what the Koch Industries CEO really meant.


“Ask your leaker to post my speech, because it’s very good,” he added, before getting in a car with two associates.


The added secrecy was apparent even to local reporters, who were confused about why the multi-golf course Esmerelda Renaissance was locked down and why the hotel staff couldn’t talk to anyone about what was going on.


The jets provided many clues into who was attending the event. A private plane owned by wealthy mutual fund manager Foster Friess flew to the area the morning of the conference, and left the day it ended. Friess is a social conservative who has gained headlines recently for his massive backing of a super-PAC supporting Rick Santorum. He has also attended the Koch meeting in the past.


A plane belonging to billionaire investor Phil Anschutz, another regular Koch attendee and major conservative financier, arrived at a nearby airport during the event. We identified over half a dozen private planes owned by major Republican donors that also arrived in the Indian Wells area during the event, but none of their owners would respond to requests for comment. Some, like Kenny Troutt, a financier of a super-PAC that supported Rick Perry’s bid for the presidency, seem to suggest new participants to the Koch meetings.


A jet owned by Continental Resources, a large fracking company that dominates the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota, arrived at the event. The company, headed by Obama critic Harold Hamm, refused to answer any questions about the Koch meeting.


About a day after our call, a Web site that tracks private jet flights posted a note about Continental Resources: “This aircraft is not available for tracking per request from the owner/operator.”

US Elections: No Matter Who You Vote For, Money Always Wins

Monday, January 30, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
Dollars play a decisive role in US politics. And more so since the supreme court allowed unlimited campaign contributionsby Gary Younge

Republican presidential debates are not for the faint-hearted. Last week in Jacksonville, Florida, Rick Santorum warned of the "threat of radical Islam growing" in Central and South America. Newt Gingrich advocated sending up to seven flights a day to the moon, where private industry might set up a colony, and reaffirmed his claim that Palestinians were invented in the late 70s. Mitt Romney argued that if you make things tough enough for undocumented people, they will "self-deport".


Given the general state of the Republican party, such comments now attract precious little attention. Truth and facts are but two options among many. The party's base, overrun by birthers, climate change deniers and creationists, floats its warped theories and every now and then one makes it to the top and bobs out into the airwaves.

So the oft-touted notion that these debates have been responsible for shifting the trajectory of this primary race would be worrying if it were true. It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America's exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. "Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is," said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week. "Each candidate loves Israel. They all love Ronald Reagan. Each loves his wife, a born first lady, for a number of reasons."

The good news is, with the exception of Perry's demise, the debates have not been pivotal. The bad news is that the truly decisive element has been something even more insidious: money. Lots of it.

This is not new. But since a 2010 supreme court ruling allowing unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and unions, it has become particularly acute. Moreover, the contributors can remain anonymous. The organisations that are taking advantage of this new law are known as Super Pacs. Even at this early stage of the presidential cycle, their potential for framing the race is clear. In the whole of 2008 individuals, parties and other groups spent $168.8m independently on the presidential election. This year on Republican candidates alone, where voting started less than a month ago, the Super Pacs have reportedindependent expenditures of almost $40m. In 2008 election spending doubled compared with 2004. This year industry analysts believe the money spent just on television ads is set to leap by almost 80% compared with four years ago.

Money in American politics was already an elephant in the room. Now the supreme court has given it a laxative, taken away the shovel, and asked us to ignore both the sight and the stench.

The only real restriction is that there should be no co-ordination between the candidate and the Super Pac. In practice, this is little more than a fig leaf. A few weeks ago one of the ads, funded by the Super Pac supporting Gingrich, was slated for its many brazen inaccuracies. At a campaign stop in Orlando, Gingrich told supporters: "I am calling on this Super Pac – I cannot co-ordinate with them and I cannot communicate directly, but I can speak out as a citizen as I'm talking to you – I call on them to either edit out every single mistake or to pull the entire film."

Romney is no less compromised. His former chief campaign fundraiser and political director work for the main Super Pac supporting him, which was set up with the help of a $1m cheque from an ex-business partner. "This legalism of 'no co-ordination' is a filament-thin G-string,"wrote Timothy Egan in the New York Times recently. "Everyone co-ordinates."

Money alone can't guarantee success. Santorum spent around 74 cents a voter in Iowa and narrowly won; Perry spent around $358 per vote and came a distant fourth. Debate performances, policy positions, personal histories and retail politics play a role. But the fact that money is not the sole determinant doesn't mean it's not the key one. Two months ago Gingrich's surge in Iowa was halted after Romney's Super Pac ploughed millions of dollars into campaign ads attacking him. Romney's commanding lead in South Carolina was similarly thwarted when Gingrich's Super Pac injected several million dollars.

This is not a partisan point. Almost two-thirds of Americans believe the government should limit individual contributions – with a majority among Republicans, Democrats and independents. The influence of money at this level corrupts an entire political culture and in no small part explains the depth of cynicism, alienation and mistrust Americans now have for their politicians.

The trend towards oligarchy in the polity is already clear. There are 250 millionaires in Congress. Their median net worth is $891,506, nine times the typical US household. Around 11% are in the nation's top 1%, including 34 Republicans and 23 Democrats. And that's before you get to Romney, whose personal wealth is double that of the last eight presidents combined. All of this would be problematic at the best of times, but in a period of rising inequality it is obscene.

The issue here is not class envy, hating rich people because they are rich, but class interests – cementing the advantages of the privileged over the rest. The problem is not personal, it's systemic. In the current climate, it means a group of wealthy people in business will decide which wealthy people in Congress they would like to tell poor people what they can't have because times are hard. And unless the ruling is overturned there is precious little that can be done about it.

Last week in a Massachusetts Senate race, both the Republican incumbent and his likely Democratic challenger signed a pact agreeing not to use third-party money. The trouble is that the agreement is completely unenforceable. Already at least one pro-Republican group has refused to commit to it.

Downplaying money's central role at this point merely buys into the illusion of participatory democracy, where ideas, character and strategy are paramount, while others are actually buying the candidates and access to power. The result is a charade. Fig leaf, G-string – name the scanty underwear of your choice. The emperor is butt naked. Whoever you vote for, the money gets in.

The Wall Street Occupation

 (A peaceful protest doesn't keep cops from being assholes. They live for that shit! Looks like a police state to me.--jef)

++++

Monday, September 19, 2011 by The Indypendent
A Sleep-In Protest in the Shadow of Power
by Manny Jalonschi

Surrounded by the headquarters of some of the world’s most powerful financial players, over two thousand protesters converged on Wall Street this Saturday. By the end of the second day, those occupying Liberty Park, formerly known as Zuccotti Park on Broadway and Liberty St., had settled in, partially helped by pizza, hot chocolate and blankets paid for and delivered by their supporters in New York City and across the country.

The Wall Street occupation began on Sept. 17 after months of planning and encouragement by Adbusters, who originally called for the occupation in response to a corporate-controlled political system that is no longer serving the needs of the majority of its people. They were soon joined by the hacktivist organization Anonymous in calling for a general people’s assembly. While the meetings leading up to the protest focused on dozens of smaller goals, Saturday morning, in the dozen or so people’s assemblies that broke down in Zuccotti Park now renamed Liberty Square, the protesters identified their key goals as liberating America from the death-grip of finance and creating a sustainable, just future for every member of the country. Specifics ranged from a progressive tax system, ending the wars and creating universal healthcare to more localized solutions like supporting and participating in a variety of worker owned cooperatives. Even with a heavy police presence, which included over 200 officers in the immediate area by Monday afternoon, protesters remained unmoved in their demands for a fairer political system.

The protest began around noon in Bowling Green Park with approximately 3,000 people filing in from various ad hoc rallies across the Financial District — including a crowd that swarmed around the Wall Street Bull earlier in the day. The crowd then began marching towards 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza. While the group’s original goal had been to occupy the sidewalk in front of the building, the area was cordoned off and surrounded by more than 40 police cars and 80 police officers. Instead, the crowd, which had decreased to less than 2,000 by 3 p.m., marched to Zuccotti Park on the Corner of Liberty St. and Broadway.

Once they were assembled, dozens of organizers stood on park benches and tables urging the general assembly, now numbering around 2,000, to break down into smaller assemblies. Within about ten minutes, a dozen or so general assemblies had broken out — but not without the drowning sound of a brass band, hired by an unknown group to disrupt the protesters. The brass band ended its performance within a half-hour, by which time most of the general assemblies had already progressed with their agenda.

The general assemblies, who began their meetings in circles, sitting on the concrete, broke down discussions into three general areas — problems, solutions and strategies. Most discussions began with an open session for assembly participants to vocalize what they viewed as the biggest challenges the country faces in freeing itself from the power of finance. While much discussion focused on the corruption and collusion between Wall Street and Washington, many assembly members  also noted that general apathy was also a problem of education.

The second part of the general assemblies focused on developing general solutions for the problems just identified. Regulation, transparency and again education became the hot talking points for this session. By the third session, assemblies were working on exchanging strategies for local, national and international action.

And in fact, those occupying Wall Street were not alone. News flooded in throughout the weekend of sister-rallies across the United States, including Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The international presence was heavy at the rally itself. Not only had protesters driven in from across the country, but activists we spoke to also arrived from as far as Mexico and Tunisia.

“This is my first protest, my first movement,” explained Kyle from Buffalo, New York, donning the Guy Fawkes mask symbolic of the Anon hacktivist collective. “A system that’s only focuses on rewarding greed should be challenged,” he said on Saturday, echoing the feelings of many protesters at the occupation who confessed the enormity of the problem requires an equally enormous series of solutions.

The open mic on the North side of the park gave air to many of the ideas. Sidney, a 50-year-old office worker from Connecticut, grabbed the microphone on Saturday and demanded an end to what he described as a “permanent tax holiday for the banks.”

While Saturday saw the most activity in terms of rallies, assemblies and marches, Sunday became a day of support for the occupation. Thousands of New Yorkers stopped in to either see or support the growing city of sleeping bags, signs and popular assemblies. The highlight of the day was when over $2,000 in pizza was ordered in less than an hour by supporters from around the world for the protesters in Zuccotti Plaza. By the second evening, the call went out for blankets as temperatures dipped into the 50’s.

By Monday afternoon reports of police interference were growing, as officers began arresting people who were using chalk to write goals and slogans on the concrete they occupied. But even with a heavy police presence, which included over 200 officers in the immediate area by Monday afternoon, protesters remained unmoved in their demands for a fairer political system. @Anon_support, a leading Twitter organizer of the event, even began organizing after-work parties in the vicinity to draw out more supporters from the New York City area.

TV Networks Are Out to Sell, Not Tell

Monday, August 22, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
'Monetizing' Electoral Politics
by Danny Schechter

Already the projections are in—not for who is going to win the election in 2012---but for how much it is likely to cost.

Public Radio International concludes: “Campaign spending in the 2012 US election could reach $6 or 7 billion dollars as outside groups pay for electoral influence.”

Here we are in the middle of a deep recession that’s getting deeper by the day, with austerity the unofficial slogan du jour while Republican scheme up new ways to trim, cut and decimate government spending, and parties are spending billions on political horse races.

They decry government spending but they don’t talk much about their own spending, do they?

And neither do the Democrats who are also backing an orgy of spending cuts if only to show their opponents how “responsible” they are.

As both parties slash spending that benefits people, they are in a manic overdrive effort to raise more for themselves and their campaigns.

PRI’s Here and Now program reported, “In 2008, Barack Obama raised some $778 million for his presidential bid. The total cost of the national election, including Presidential and Congressional, was about $5.3 billion. Since then, court decisions like Citizens United have made spending by outside groups easier.

"In 2012," Dave Levinthal, director of the Center for Responsive Politics told PRI's Here and now, "you're easily looking at 6, maybe even 7 billion dollars nationwide."

The Center for Responsive Politics has already reported that Wall Street “bundlers” have generated more money for the Obama campaign than they did four years ago even as anger with the financial behemoths grows in the base of the Democratic Party,

Spending by outside groups was about 4 times higher in 2010 than it was in 2006. Much of that can be attributed to new, looser campaign laws.

Levinthal explains that "the laws changed in a way that effectively allowed these outside groups to raise and spend unlimited sums of money to say whatever they want, to do it whenever they wanted to, and they could do it in as strong a term as they wanted to."

These developments get scant media attention for one good reason: the media is a prime beneficiary of a political system dominated by big money.

Much of these billions are raised for political advertising. The networks get it. No wonder, they are out to sell more than tell.

Listen to the editor of Cable Fax, an industry publication that is planning a Webinar to help TV executives “monetize” (i.e., make more money from) the 2012 elections and its vast “political spend.”

Here’s editor Amy Maclean pitching her media readers in high places:

“The 2012 elections will be here before you know it, so now is the perfect time to start planning your strategy and make sure to maximize your share of the political ad spend. Join us Tuesday, August 30 for our CableFAX Webinar: Monetize Election 2012: Advanced Political Advertising. You'll get sound advice and practical tips to make the most of interactivity and multiplatform campaigns.

“While cable's total of campaign ad dollars continues to climb to record levels, (emphasis mine) the next question is how to make that two-way plan more attractive to campaigns through the use of Video On Demand (VOD,) RFIs, online and other interactive elements.

“Last year, California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman helped put RFI (Request for Information) political spots on the map, using the technology to allow viewers to request things such as bumper stickers and volunteer info. The innovation continues, with 2012 expected to really help the industry further distinguish itself with its advanced political advertising offerings.

“Additionally, the recent Citizens United Supreme Court case opened the way for corporations and unions to drop major coin to back candidates and issues.”

Cable Fax wants its readers to know how best to “navigate the race in November and drive additional advertising revenues,” i.e. (“drop coin” in their pockets.)

The irony is that while most TV networks insist they are bi-partisan and don’t flack for any candidates, their coverage is, in effect, flacking for themselves -- to bolster revenues by siphoning off as many political donations that they can slip and slide into their own coffers.

This corporate self-interest is rarely explained or even admitted but in a tough advertising market---with the economy in collapse mode---politics primes the media pump.

Campaigns are windfalls for broadcasters. The networks that oppose stimulus programs for workers with so many snarky stories, don’t oppose this stimulus for themselves.

Promoting elections has become an industry of its own and TV networks are at the center of it. They are not devoting much time to promoting voter registration or voter education. They don’t provided many free ads and in fact often refuse to run issue-oriented ads bought by activists.

This agenda is wrapped up in the mantle of enabling democracy but it is of course much more than that. Most of the coverage is about the personality parade and horse race, not the issues. It focuses on canddiates more than political organizing. There seems to be little concern with new measures like voter ID cards designed to suppress the vote, or electoral fraud designed to steal it.

The fact is that the political circus is good for business, not democracy. The Providence Phoenix reports, “Political coverage on television is diminishing, and revenue from political advertising is soaring. Critics say free airtime for candidates could help solve the problem:

Writes Ian Donnis, “The Alliance for Better Campaigns (ABC), a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan group that advocates for political campaigns that inform voters and increase their participation in the political process, is pushing a proposal that would force broadcasters to offer free air time to political candidates before elections -- in addition to increasing political coverage overall. Proponents say the idea is the next frontier in campaign-finance reform.

These proposals have been around for years, endorsed by former Presidents and the late Walter Cronkite, but they have gone nowhere. Why? Why should the networks give away air time when they are paid so handsomely for it?

“Nearly every democracy in the world has some kind of mandate for free television time during campaigns. Broadcasters can afford it: profit margins of 30 percent, 40 percent, and even 50 percent are common in broadcasting, according to Paul Taylor, the former Washington Post reporter who serves as president of the Alliance for Better Campaigns. And, since the Communications Act of 1934 was enacted, broadcasters' free and exclusive use of the airwaves has also been conditioned on their agreement to function as public trustees.”

Ha!

It’s hard not to conclude that their inaction, and unwillingness to reform their own practices, is caused by network’s own bottom-line greed--- always justified in the name of preserving the first amendment, of course.

The truth is our valiant TV networks are undermining democracy, not bolstering it. These campaigns create jobs for their own pollsters, pundits and partisans. This spectacle does not serve a public deeply disenchanted with sleaze in suits and political corruption,

Instead “monetized election coverage” is a fixture, a part of the problem. The New York Times reports in detail how Rick Perry’s high net worth donors benefited financially when state money went, tit for tat, into their businesses.

The watchdogs have become lapdogs when it comes to monitoring and disclosing their own agendas and profits.

Who will watch the watchers?

Americans Elect 2012

Both Parties Now in Dash for Anonymous Cash

(This is a fine example of how the Republicrats and Demacans are really the same party serving the same corporate agenda--the difference being that one wears red, the other wears blue, and they've sold the myth to most voters that they are in opposition to one another--with a terrible one-act play they perform daily--when in actuality, they are owned by the same corporations, sleep with the same people, drink at the same bars, keep their money in the same Wall Street accounts, eat at the same troughs, etc. No difference.--jef)

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 by Politico.com
by Kenneth P. Vogel

If anyone had doubts about the role that anonymous and untraceable money will play in the 2012 campaign ad wars, a flurry of recent reports and voluntary disclosures should put them to rest.

Right-wing independent groups are likely outpacing the left in collecting anonymous cash. The full extent of the anonymous giving is by definition impossible to know. But the recent disclosures as well as interviews with fundraising sources suggest that Republican-allied independent groups are outpacing Democratic ones in collecting undisclosed contributions to fund their political advertising, just as they did in 2010.

But, perhaps more significantly, they show that Democrats, who vociferously attacked that kind of fundraising last year, have set aside their qualms and are now active competitors in the anonymous donor arms race.

The three main anonymously funded Democratic outside groups – Priorities USA, American Bridge 21st Century Foundation and Patriot Majority – collected at least $3.7 million in untraceable contributions, and probably much more, in the first half of the year, according to voluntary disclosures and anecdotal information on ad buys.

While that’s not as much as the $5.8 million in fundraising reported in that same period by the sister organizations of those groups, which do disclose donors – Priorities USA Action, American Bridge 21st Century and Majority PAC — the feeling among some in Democratic fundraising circles is that the balance will likely tilt towards undisclosed donations as the groups seek to expand their donor bases.

And the fact that Democrats are soliciting undisclosed contributions at all at this early stage of the race illustrates the central role anonymous donors are expected to play in the run-up to the 2012 elections.

Democrats “don’t have a choice, because the other side is doing it – would you send David to fight Goliath without a slingshot?” said Erica Payne, a liberal strategist who helped create the Democracy Alliance, a network of major liberal donors.

Many such donors “feel more comfortable donating to groups that don’t disclose,” she said, because some are publicity averse and also because “as soon as their name appears in the paper as having contributed, their phone number goes on the speed dial of every congressmen, committee and party that wants to raise money.”

While it’s impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison, conservatives seem to maintain a wide edge when it comes to anonymously funded political advertising, with groups that don’t disclose contributions including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity and the 60 Plus Association – which combined to spend tens of millions on ads boosting Republicans in 2010 – gearing up for even bigger campaigns headed into 2012.

And the biggest spending Republican group this year – Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies – is about midway through a two-month advertising binge attacking President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats that is expected to cost more than $20 million, alone.

Crossroads GPS, as the group is known, is registered under a section of the tax code – 501(c)4 – that does not require the disclosure of donors’ names, but it was actually started as a spin-off of another group that does disclose its donors – American Crossroads. That group, a new type of political action committee known as a super PAC, has seen its fundraising lag behind its non-disclosing sister group. In the first six months of 2011, according to a report filed late last month with the Federal Election Commission, it raised only $3.9 million.

The two-pronged structure of the Crossroads outfit was the model for the new Democratic outside efforts, which were created in response to the explosion of spending by a network of outside groups, including Crossroads, that were conceived by veteran GOP operative Karl Rove.

The Democratic outfits also pair 501(c)4 groups – including Priorities USA, American Bridge 21st Century Foundation and Patriot Majority – with super PACs, including Priorities USA Action, American Bridge 21st Century and Majority PAC.

Patriot Majority recently went up with $225,000-worth of ads in three states pushing back on Crossroads GPS’s attacks on Democratic senators, while American Bridge 21st Century Foundation and Priorities USA told POLITICO they’d raised $1.51 million and at least $2 million, respectively.

But such 501(c)4 groups won’t be required to file reports listing even basic information about their 2011 finances until well into next year — and they probably will never be required to disclose even a single donor’s name, making it likely that we’ll never know who funded many of the political ads aired in the run-up to the 2012 elections.

Meanwhile, the super PACs affiliated with those groups – combined with another linked super PAC called House Majority PAC – collected huge checks in the first six months of the year from labor unions and wealthy liberals in entertainment and finance, according to reports filed late last month with the FEC. And their donors are known.

The Service Employees International Union contributed a total of $1.1 million spread among the groups. Dreamworks Animation chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg contributed $2 million to Priorities USA Action, Chicago media magnate Fred Eychaner gave $600,000 ($100,000 to House Majority PAC and $500,000 to Priorities USA Action), insurance magnate Peter Lewis gave $200,000 to American Bridge and billionaire financier George Soros gave $75,000 to House Majority PAC.

On the Republican side, American Crossroads received almost all of its cash in the first half of the year – $3.8 million – from just a handful of millionaires and corporations. Investor and former Univision chairman Jerry Perenchio gave $2 million through his trust. Dallas investor Robert Rowling, whose firm owns Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym, gave $1 million. Texas homebuilder Bob Perry gave $500,000.

“Some people want their names listed because they want credit – they want that policymaker or candidate [supported by a super PAC] to know that they’re giving and they want them to know quickly,” said a Democratic operative involved in fundraising for independent groups. “Other people want to stay [anonymous] because they are afraid of retribution or controversy.”

Super PACs and 501(c)4s are barred from coordinating their spending with the candidates they intend to help. But the groups – which can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions – are often seen as a way for deep-pocketed donors to have more impact than by merely writing checks to candidates and parties, which are capped by federal rules that also bar union and corporate contributions to candidates.

It was the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC that cleared the way for the advent of superPACs as well as the rise in popularity of 501(c)4s as vehicles for political advertising. The decision, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited money on campaign ads, was widely criticized by Democrats, as was the explosion of advertising spending by anonymously funded conservative groups, which Obama called “a threat to our democracy. The American people deserve to know who’s trying to sway their election.”

But after the election, Obama’s allies dialed back their opposition to big-money outside spending and it wasn’t long before close allies of the president and Democratic congressional leaders had formed their own network of groups.

“We’re following all the same rules that Rove’s Crossroads is,” said Bill Burton, who served as deputy White House press secretary while Obama was attacking anonymous political spending, but now runs the Priorities groups. “We may not like the rules, but we’re not going to let Karl Rove and the (conservative billionaire) Koch brothers play by one set of rules while we are overrun with their millions.”

But Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for the Crossroads groups, told POLITICO it’s “brazen hypocrisy” for the Democratic 501(c)4s to accept anonymous donations. “If they really believe it was a threat to democracy, I don’t think you’d get involved in one of these groups,” he told the St. Petersburg Times late last month.

Yet, back when Crossroads started out last year, it, too, shunned secret donations and extolled disclosure. Its chairman, Mike Duncan, described himself in May 2010 as “a proponent of lots of money in politics and full disclosure in politics,” and said Crossroads intended to “be ahead of the curve on” transparency.

Less than one month later, with American Crossroads struggling to raise money from donors leery of having their names disclosed, operatives spun off Crossroads GPS, and its fundraising team, led by Rove, began emphasizing to prospective donors the ability to give anonymous contributions.

Fundraising took off, and together, the groups ended up raising more than $70 million in 2010, with the majority of it – $43 million – going to Crossroads GPS.

Despite their increasing prominence in political advertising, Crossroads GPS and other 501(c)4 groups, which the IRS classifies as “social welfare organizations,” are still considered something of an uncertain legal proposition and also a somewhat more restrictive political vehicle, as a result of the tax code’s requirement that they spend more than half of their money on non-campaign-related activity.

Legalities aside, former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who for years was a leading crusader against big money in politics, suggested his party risked losing the moral high ground by joining the chase for undisclosed, unlimited cash.

Feingold – who last week launched a 501(c)4 group of his own but pledged to disclose all its contributions and to only accept only limited individual donations – told POLITICO “Democrats shouldn’t be in the game of influencing elections with anonymous, unlimited money. It’s dancing with the devil.”

Obama is NOT “Caving” to Corporate Interests

Sunday, July 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
He "Caved" a long time ago...He's a sellout
by Jeff Cohen

 

In  a campaign almost as frenzied as the effort to get Barack Obama into the White House, liberal groups are now mobilizing against the White House and reported deals that would cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. They accuse President Obama of being weak and willing to “cave” to corporate and conservative forces bent on cutting the social safety net while protecting the wealthy.

Those accusations are wrong.

The accusations imply that Obama is on our side. Or was on our side. And that the right wing is pushing him around.

But the evidence is clear that Obama is an often-willing servant of corporate interests -- not someone reluctantly doing their bidding, or serving their interests only because Republicans forced him to.

Since coming to Washington, Obama has allied himself with Wall Street Democrats who put corporate deregulation and greed ahead of the needs of most Americans:

• In 2006, a relatively new Senator Obama was the only senator to speak at the inaugural gathering of the Alexander Hamilton Project launched by Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary and deputy secretary. Obama praised them as “innovative, thoughtful policymakers.” (It was Rubin’s crusade to deregulate Wall Street in the late ‘90s that led directly to the economic meltdown of 2008 and our current crisis.)
   
• In early 2007, way before he was a presidential frontrunner, candidate Obama was raising more money from Wall Street interests than all other candidates, including New York presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.
   
• In June 2008, as soon as Hillary ended her campaign, Obama went on CNBC, shunned the “populist” label and announced: “Look: I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.” He packed his economic team with Wall Street friends -- choosing one of Bill Clinton’s Wall Street deregulators, Larry Summers, as his top economic advisor.
   
• A year into his presidency, in a bizarre but revealing interview with Business Week, Obama was asked about huge bonuses just received by two CEOs of Wall Street firms bailed out by taxpayers. He responded that he didn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus to J.P. Mogan’s CEO or the $9 million to Goldman Sachs’ CEO: “I know both those guys, they are very savvy businessmen,” said Obama. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”

After any review of Obama’s corporatist ties and positions, the kneejerk response is: “Yes, but Obama was a community organizer!”

He WAS a community organizer. . .decades before he became president. Back when Nelson Mandela was in prison and the U.S. government declared him the leader of a “terrorist organization” while our government funded and armed Bin Laden and his allies to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.  That’s a long time ago.

It’s worth remembering that decades before Reagan became president, the great communicator was a leftwing Democrat and advocate for the working class and big federal social programs.

The sad truth, as shown by Glenn Greenwald, is that Obama had arrived at the White House looking to make cuts in benefits to the elderly. Two weeks before his inauguration, Obama echoed conservative scares about Social Security and Medicare by talking of “red ink as far as the eye can see.” He opened his doors to Social Security/Medicare cutters -- first trying to get Republican Senator Judd Gregg (“a leading voice for reining in entitlement spending,” wrote Politico) into his cabinet, and later appointing entitlement-foe Alan Simpson to co-chair his “Deficit Commission.” Obama’s top economic advisor, Larry Summers, came to the White House publicly telling Time magazine of needed Social Security cuts.

 At this late date, informed activists and voters who care about economic justice realize that President Obama is NOT “on our side.”

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- widely seen as “America’s Senator” -- is so disgusted by recent White House actions that he called Friday for a challenge to Obama in Democratic primaries: “I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.”

Although Sanders has said clearly that he’s running for reelection to the senate in 2012 – not for president -- his comment led instantly to a Draft Sanders for President website.

Imagine if a credible candidate immediately threatened a primary challenge unless Obama rejects any deal cutting the safety net while maintaining tax breaks for the rich. Team Obama knows that a serious primary challenger would cost the Obama campaign millions of dollars. And it may well be a powerful movement-building opportunity for activists tired of feeling hopeless with Obama.

It’s time for progressives to talk seriously about a challenge to Obama’s corporatism. Polls show most Americans support economic justice issues, and that goes double for Democratic primary voters.

If not Bernie, who? If not now, when?

Explaining Obama (...ugh...)

The Politics of Re-Election
By STEVE BREYMAN

There has been considerable head scratching and hand wringing in the left-of-center commentariat of late over the seemingly inexplicable political behavior of the President. Even savvy observers like Jim Hightower appear at a loss to explain why Obama does the things he does, and avoids the things he doesn't do. The puzzlement is puzzling: what part of 'he does what he believes necessary to get re-elected' is hard to understand?

It may be that some pundits still suffer from "Obama as Savior" complex. Those who still see him as the anti-George Bush or anti-John McCain—not merely the lesser of evils—are flabbergasted by the President's playbook. Why doesn't Obama take the lead in negotiations with Republicans? Why does he roll over so easily? Why won't he fight for progressive values or policies? Why does he ignore his base? Why doesn't he end rather than start wars? How come he let Wall Street off the hook? Why does he leave Main Street to suffer?

These questions all have the same answer: to do otherwise might—he and his advisors think—place his political future in jeopardy.

We don't need psychological analyses to make sense of the President's political practice. Sure, his absent father, growing up biracial in Indonesia and Hawaii, the supportive grandparents, left their marks on the boy. Obama's undergraduate career at Occidental and Columbia undoubtedly had an impact on the young man. His Harvard Law years shaped the adult that he became. The Chicago experience inevitably colored his approach to electoral politics.

Instead, we can rely on the decades-old political science finding that re-election is, with rare exceptions, the top priority for national politicians in the United States. Surprised? Of course not. Why then the confusion regarding the President's politics and policies? They are carefully calculated to appeal to middle-of-the-roaders, the vaunted swing voters.

This isn't about ideological consistency, let alone purity. Barak Obama isn't even a reluctant progressive, an FDR, JFK, or LBJ liberal, let alone the radical many want him to be. The substance of any given Obama policy proposal is much less important than the political signals it sends, the flanks it covers, and the powerful constituencies it serves.

This does not mean that the President and his advisors have perfect political pitch. Far from it. Thus the distress felt by many on the left by the President's frequent retreats and compromises. They believe Obama could win with an in-your-face populist platform, backed by an enraged public. That this is not the President's view ought to be crystal clear by now.

Let's take a look at some of the particulars, foreign and domestic. It should be a familiar survey. Rather than leftist sour grapes—some few of us never had any illusions about BHO—these are simply observations from a left perspective.

Foreign Policy

Obama's vaunted senatorial opposition to the "war of choice" in Iraq? A position consonant with public opinion, and with the activist base of the Democratic Party which he needed to get elected. His amazing willingness to keep thousands of troops in Iraq beyond the deadline negotiated with al-Maliki—a considerable threat to the latter's political future—evinces the weakness of the peace movement and his unwillingness to face campaign charges that he "lost Iraq" should things get even uglier on the Tigris.

Support for the ramped-up "war of necessity" in Afghanistan? A brilliant case of flank covering. Obama took away the Republicans' electoral advantage on national security issues by promising to wage the war more fiercely than George Bush, escalating drone strikes in Pakistan, and intensifying covert interventions in Yemen and Somalia.

Conservatives complain that Obama never uses the word "victory" when making a speech about Afghanistan. They don't get it either. The two troop surges, the replacement of McKiernan by McChrystal and of McChrystal by Petraeus, the confusion between counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism, the night raids, the support for Karzai and the warlords, the short-sighted development projects, the slow draw-down—none of this is about "victory."

Obama is too smart to believe "victory" in Afghanistan possible. It's about being seen as actively waging the War on Terror (even if it's no longer called that), and about "reducing the threat to the Homeland" so as to prevent untoward incidents on his watch. And even if something bad happens between now and next November, this is the president that killed Osama bin Laden.

US participation in the Libyan civil war? Obama deftly threaded the needle. The only people pissed off at him are neoconservatives who'd have him fly yet more bombing sorties, some libertarians, peace activists, and Tea Partiers for whom this is one war too many, and that handful of us still concerned about the rule of law. Not a single American death, a few billions down the drain, a Libyan opposition in his debt, a cooperative effort with some NATO allies, a Republican opposition unwilling to really challenge him on this, a novel interpretation of the word "hostilities" in the War Powers Act. What's not to like from the re-election perspective? Keep your eyes on the prize.

Israel/Palestine? Netanyahu has been a thorn is Obama's side—it would've been politically useful to claim progress resolving the conflict—but worry not. The President need not even reign in the Palestinians most days; large bipartisan majorities in Congress do it for him. Beyond the issue of illegal settlements, Obama's loyalty to the Israeli Right appears boundless. His State Department virtually invited Netanyahu to commit piracy against Gaza Flotilla 2, opposes United Nations approval of Palestinian independence, and otherwise protects the Israeli government from the application of international law. What's all this really about? Zionist campaign contributions. And it appears the President is already on pace to break the records he set in 2008.

Push the corporate domination schemes also known as "free trade agreements?" Check. Unprecedented persecution of whistleblowers ("worse than Nixon" thinks John Dean)? Check. Appoint safe, establishment types as cabinet secretaries. Check. Another general to helm the CIA? Check. A new Defense chief who thinks the US is in Iraq because of 9/11? It wasn't easy, but Obama found one of those too.

Guantanamo still open? The Republicans wouldn't let him close it. A secret CIA prison in Somalia? Nothing we can't deny. Holding a suspected terrorist at sea for months in contravention of domestic and international law? Yes, we can. More money for the nuclear weapons complex? A small price to pay for New START. Another giant defense budget? No problem, we'll get around to cutting it in the second term.

Domestic Policy

Got civil liberties? Who cares except the ACLU and Glenn Greenwald? Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare on the chopping block? If slashing benefits for granny and your disabled cousin will confer political advantage, then so be it. But it might not, so we'll float trial balloons until the political direction of the wind becomes clear. Medical marijuana? Not if the DEA can shut down legal state dispensaries. The warehousing of millions in jails and prisons? Beats having to find jobs for them. Immigration reform? Can't do it without the Republicans. Sustainable agriculture? Don't be a "professional leftist;" only GMOs, plus a lot of oil, crop subsidies, and petrochemicals can feed the world.

Nuclear energy? Fukushima can't happen here, our nukes are safe, the NRC can be trusted, and the administration never has to say no to a sector of the energy industry. Clean coal? It's not an oxymoron, it's the key to votes in West Virginia. Fracking? Natural gas is the "bridge" to a green energy future. Offshore oil drilling? BP's Gulf geyser was a tough couple of months, to be sure. But we innovated a new regulatory agency, learned some tough lessons, and can now move forward. Risk it all again in the Arctic? Energy policy is for serious people, not polar bear huggers.

Historic health care reform? The single greatest accomplishment of the Obama administration. Medicare for all is simply not the American way, and pharmaceutical and insurance companies were OK with it. Avoidance of any anti-poverty or urban renewal initiatives that might smell of "black politics"? Check. Lousy mortgage adjustment program? At least the big banks were saved.

Serial offshorer Jeffrey Immelt as jobs czar? If he can't do it, who can? Bush tax cuts? We extended those. A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Republicans really hate? OK, we won't appoint a genuine watchdog to run it. Lingering high unemployment? The stimulus saved a couple million jobs. Quantitative easing laid the groundwork for a bunch more. Government jobs programs are so 1930s.

The Politics of Re-election

Obama might lack Bill Clinton's folksiness and common touch; he does not lack his political instincts. Triangulation works to anchor the Obama administration in the New Center (much further to the right than a generation ago). Surround yourself with conventional, cautious political advisors lacking any vision except for re-election and this is what you end up with. You can ignore your base with impunity—where will they go? "Centrism" enables Obama to vacuum up campaign cash at record pace.

There is no progressive there there. Those inspiring speeches of 2008 (and before)? The memoirs? The promises? All designed to get him into office. Any liberal values or genuine interest the President may have in peace and social justice must take a stretched limousine backseat to re-election.

Again, politicians will generally do what they think it takes to hold on to their positions; Obama is no different. If this claim can still shatter illusions in 2011, well, it's about time. The complete absence of a "left agenda" is calculation, not ignorance. This President believes you don't hit the political sweet spot by playing to your base. And he knows from experience that you don't succeed in Chicago or national politics by biting the hands that feed you.

What would it take for Obama to change? How to influence this president? A massive sustained mobilization of angry citizens demanding radical change? Maybe. And in the mean time? Campaign cash. Lots of it. Nader was right: only the super-rich can save us.

The Losing Game of American Politics

What's the Difference?
By JAMES ROTHENBERG

Every four years we elect a president and the dramatic run-up to this spectacle has already begun. We can expect to be treated to near-daily tidbits of information from here on in. This is owing to the fact that, for the Democratic and Republican Parties, election day is everyday and an exploitable public is, as always, assuming the prone position.

These parties have two main tasks. The first is convincing the public that voting in the presidential election is the highest form of citizenship, and is therefore illustrative of patriotic spirit. The second task, hidden from the public, is to ensure their continued role as co-exploiter, and is therefore illustrative of the daily struggle for political power.

Whichever way the winds blow for these parties, the winner will claim to represent the will of the people, something we should be extremely leery of as a political concept.

How would we test the idea that the election of this or that party actually represented the will of the people? Taking a simple example, Gore argued that Bush's proposed tax cuts would disproportionably benefit the wealthiest 1% of Americans, and the election was not 99-1, but a statistical tie. Obama argues that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest must go, but they're not going anywhere. Given the dire straits our economy is presently in, and given the outlandish wealth and income disparities that exist in it, why would this issue even be close if the will of the American people had anything to do with it?

The political parties serve their own interests, just as regular people do. And just as regular people are selfish (self-ish), so are the parties. They represent the will of the people to the extent that it can be useful to them. Where it is harmful, that is, when the will of the people comes into conflict with the will of the elites that the parties serve, the public loses and is subjected to a propaganda campaign to soothe its unrealized will.

Should it be needed, a remedy from elite sectors would be felt with immediacy and intensity.

There is no public remedy, save for the inevitable reassurance that it will come in the next election. Public remedy is of paramount importance in the history of our country. Our founding document, The Declaration of Independence, is a stunning example of a peoples' unequivocal and radical remedy to a government unwilling to accede to the demands of its people. Now it is assumed, by virtue of little else besides the quadrennial march to the ballot box, that our government always embodies the will of its people.

Both parties want the country all aquiver about next year's election. This is what they have, and so long as people show up and vote to validate the system, the system will be in good hands. Theirs!

I think the theme for 2012 should be, What's the Difference?, because for the things that truly matter to the common man or woman, there is none between Bush and Obama, or between Obama and Palin/Bachmann. Even though no president moves beyond the party,liberals agonize over the calamity of a Palin or Bachmann presidency. Perhaps they like the idea of giving our "smarter" president a little more rope to hang themselves with.

For those wondering what degree of overstatement is intended with the "no difference" remark, here's a little rundown:

Bush orders attacks on countries, Obama bombs relentlessly. Bush authorizes torture, Obama winks at it. Bush condones assassination, so does Obama. Bush takes the path to our becoming a national security state, Obama accelerates it. Bush targets whistleblowers, Obama raises it to a first principle. Bush is secretive, Obama more so. Bush prefers to look forward, ignoring history. Obama prefers to look forward, ignoring justice.

Things are going to happen that are beyond the control of the common man or woman. Least of all will they be able to affect them at the ballot box. That's a losing game. Great change will come in a way it has always come, through popular mass movements of people making demands. At a critical stage the government will recognize that it cannot afford not to be aligned with the movement.

The International Criminal Court has a case against Muammar Gaddafi for crimes against his people while putting down an uprising. It may be painful for an American to think about this, but consider what the reaction of a Bush or an Obama or any American president would be to a massive group of people, even non-violently, calling for a throwing off of the government. Do you picture the government sitting on its hands, or lying in wait? And would we embrace the same standard that we apply to Gaddafi?

No advocacy here. The comparison is presented solely to illuminate the lengths that any concentration of political power will go to when challenged, as when the Kingdom of Great Britain responded to events of July 4, 1776.

Blowing It: Democrats, Unable to Be a Party of the People, are Sinking Themselves

(The Republicans have nothing to offer the people at all except for more bad economic theories that equate to a longer downturn and depression, but they will still win the 2012 elections in a landslide because the Democrats are the most spineless and ineffectual bunch of losers ever assembled. They deserve to be thrashed, but it's to our detriment when the Republicans control govt and stick it to the poor and middle class like they never been stuck before. When history looks back at the period of time from 1900-2020 or so, the Great Depression in the 1930s will be known to them as the Second Greatest Depression because the one that started in 2008 as a recession will really fall down on top of us because there is no one in government capable of legislating us out of this mess. 

We can't trust the market to correct itself because it is controlled by corrupt executives who have bought the politicians we vote into office, who only do the bidding of their corporate masters. The whole system is fucked and has to be rebuilt from the ground up. It will suck, and it will be painful, but it will be necessary, or else corruption becomes ingrained--if it isn't already--and once that takes place, only a total collapse of society can overcome it--a scorched earth, if you will. The disease only dies when the body dies. 

Before we reach that point, we (as in "we the people") have to flex the little power we have left by voting for independent or 3rd party candidates. No Democrats, no Republicans. And we protest peacefully. The only revolution that will work is a peaceful and bloodless one. The first time a drop of blood is spilled in the coming revolution, it's over because the corporate govt. has the really hardcore weapons and an army of foreign mercenaries ready to take on the people and those soldiers of the armed forces who refuse to fight against their fellow citizens and/or who support the revolution. 

We would lose an armed and bloody revolution and things would get even worse. It has to be peaceful, it has to be widespread. It only has to be more than 6% of the population to be effective, too. That's all it took to win the Revolutionary War--6% of the Colonial population stood against the British and won.--jef)

+++

Sunday, July 17, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by Dave Lindorff

The smoking ruin that is the the Obama White House, and the rotting corpse that is the Democratic Party, have, incredibly, together been boxed into a corner by, of all things, the certifiably insane Republican Party.

Military vs. Education spending around the globe
(US in company of Iran, China, Russia, UAE and India)

This amazing situation has resulted not through any brilliant strategy on the part of the Republicans, but by the self-inflicted wounds of the Democrats.

Faced with a collapsing economy that is at serious risk of performing a reprise of the Great Depression, Congressional Democrats and President Obama were in a perfect position to grab the flag and run home with it by declaring war on unemployment and on the party that has unequivocally declared itself openly to be the standard bearer of the wealthy and powerful.

All the president and Congressional Democrats had to do was announce that Social Security, Medicare, education and programs to protect the poor were all off limits in any discussion of the federal budget, and to declare an immediate 25% cut in military spending, as called for earlier by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.

How hard would that have been to do? The polls show it’s what the public wants. Any elected official who did this, particularly someone elected and re-elected as a Democrat, would have been hailed by voters for such a bold action.

According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in late May and released June 11, 60% of Americans correctly attribute the nation’s enormous deficit primarily to military spending, which eats up 52% of every tax dollar (Social Security and Medicare are entirely funded by separate payroll taxes, and not only have not contributed a single dollar to the federal deficit, but have been routinely borrowed from by the government to finance the deficit in the government’s operating budget caused by military spending). Only 24% blame the deficit on domestic spending other than military (and probably every one of those is a Republican or right-wing independent who likely believes that the earth was created 6000 years ago, and is flat, and who will never vote Democratic no matter what).

That same poll showed that the vast majority of Americans (73%) object to proposals to cut the budget by reducing federal funding for social programs, or federal funding to the states for education, or by reducing Social Security benefits (59%), for example by raising the retirement age.

What the Pew poll finds Americans do support is raising the cap on income subject to the Social Security Tax (FICA), from its current meager level of $106,000, to cover all income (66% in favor). They also favor raising taxes on those households that earn more than $250,000 a year (65% in favor), and they favor getting rid of tax deductions for corporations, which have allowed many wildly profitable companies like Exxon, GE and News Corp to pay no corporate taxes despite earning billions of dollars in profits (62% in favor). They also overwhelmingly favor reducing America’s military operations overseas, where the US currently maintains over 800 bases in countries all over the world, including wealthy allies such as Europe and Japan (62% in favor).

After being deluged with poorly written, simplistic and often ideologically-driven news stories all year hyping the supposed budget “crisis,” the percentage of Americans who say they are worried about the budget deficit has crept up from 24% to 28%, but far more Americans say they are worried about the jobs crisis (38%, up from 34% in March).

If you were a political advisor in the White House, or in the Democratic Congressional Committee or the Democratic National Committee, one would think that seeing those numbers, the strategy going forward would be obvious: declare the country to be facing New Depression, call the Republican Party out as a bunch of know-nothings, end the wars, bring the troops home, slash military spending, call for higher taxes on the rich, and, in Congress, introduce a public jobs program every day of every week, forcing the Republicans to vote them down, one after another through the next election day.

But the Democratic Party, as I said, is a rotting corpse, and it certainly is not an organization that sees itself as fighting for the common man and woman.

As for the White House political team, and the president himself, they seem to have long since lost their grip on reality.

The president has been hanging around with Wall Street bankers, taking their money and their self-serving ideas, for so long now he actually thinks like them. Congressional Democrats, like their Republican colleagues, are so covetous of corporate campaign cash and lobbyist perks that, with a few exceptions, they can’t imagine crossing any corporate interests.

This is not a case of Democrats being stupid. You’d have to be far worse than stupid not to see the correct political strategy to adopt at this point.

What has happened is that the Democratic Party is no more. It is, at this point, all about current incumbents gaining the favor of the corporate elite, lulling the public into a non-voting torpor or stupor, and of course, arguing that people worried about the nation’s future should vote for them yet again because “the Republicans are worse.”

In a press conference on Friday, President Obama made some incredible statements, all demonstrably untrue. He said “We are all part of the same country,” and yet he surely knows that when it comes to the leaders of America’s biggest corporations, including GE, whose chairman Jeffrey Immelt he appointed to head his Jobs Council, this is demonstrably false.

While many of these leaders may be Americans by birth, the companies they run and represent earn the majority of their revenues and profits from operations abroad, and are thus, technically speaking, foreign enterprises, with foreign interests that trump any US interests. Obama said, “We are all in this together,” speaking of the supposed debt “crisis,” but of course, he has announced himself ready to cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid programs, upon which poor and working class families depend, while leaving the rich largely unscathed. He has said it is the “will of the people” to cut the budget, but to the extent that that is even true, which is highly debatable, the will of the people is actually to cut military spending, not to cut Social Security or Medicare or even budgets for education or Medicaid.

The good news is that an increasing number of Americans appear to be finally realizing that this president is a fraud--a shill for bankers, the corporate interests and the neo-con military establishment who has just been posing as a man of the people.

The bad news is that there is little likelihood of any Third Party arising before 2012 that could seriously contest the national election, meaning that we are probably headed for either more of the same or a for Republican-led government.

The hope has to be that the blatant sell-out of the public interest and the national interest by both parties and by the president is becoming so self-evident that the American public will actually wake up from its media-induced somnolence and will abandon them both.

The institutional obstacles to such an unprecedented rebellion are of course enormous, but then, these are unprecedented times.