A New New Deal

On September 27th, Katrina Vander Heuval, publisher of The Nation, and Eric Schlosser criticized the bailout in progressive terms in the Wall Street Journal. Click here to read their insightful and bold article as it was republished in The Nation.

In recapping what FDR did when he came to office in the dark days after the Crash of 1929--no, Joe, he wasn't in office then and there was no television either--Vander Heuval and Schlosser list all of the federal projects that boosted the economy, got people back to work, and ushered in the American age.

During the New Deal, the Roosevelt administration spent about $250 billion (in today's dollars) on public-works projects, building about 8,000 parks, 40,000 public buildings, 72,000 schools and 80,000 bridges. The entire cost of all the New Deal programs (in today's dollars) was about $500 billion. The secretary of the Treasury now wants to spend perhaps twice that amount, simply to prevent a financial collapse.

We already know from Katrina to Iraq that we can't trust this administration to engage in any more spending, since everything it does is essentially profiteering for a few cronies with their infamous no-bid contracts and privitization.

But we must look beyond just saving the banks, and about that we need to talk.

Blame is Not Accountability

Just before I boarded a transcontinental flight this afternoon, leaving me without access to the real world, I learned that the House of Representatives failed by a sturdy margin to pass the compromise $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry.

Throughout the airport terminal, men and women of all ages huddled around CNN monitors, watching as the stock market took a precipitous drop—at one point 700 points—exactly the reaction Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary, had told us to anticipate.

How many jobs were lost today? How many families were displaced? How many loans were called? How many retirement funds disappeared? How many college tuition payments went poof? How many dreams were destroyed?

Immediately Republican House Leader Boehner blamed House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. According to the last reports I read before going off-line, gosh it’s at times like this that I wished I had booked the earlier Jet Blue flight, a majority of Democrats had voted for the bailout. The Republicans had not been able to rally their troops. Understandably this is a very unpopular bill for most Americans. I have grave doubts about its efficacy, but more importantly, I want to know what got us here before we commit the next generation to paying for this crew’s mistakes.

And neither Paulson nor George W. has been a particularly effective spokesperson, unable to explain why taxpayers should foot the bill for Wall Street’s greed and mismanagement. Every time Bush has made a speech in support of this bailout, his approval ratings have gone down further. He is the disgraced president who ironically was saved the embarrassment of attending this summer’s Republican National Convention by a hurricane.

Boehner blamed Pelosi. This isn’t accountability. Before the House vote, Pelosi was accused of giving a speech that sounded too partisan. Her forceful denunciation of the actions that brought us to the brink purportedly forced reticent Republicans into withholding their votes. They didn’t want to sound too much like they wanted a new administration. Here’s Pelosi’s speech so you can see for yourself.

I suspect that the vote was about Republicans being afraid of losing their seats in the House. All of the House is up for reelection, remember, and none of these Republicans wanted to have to explain their votes to angry constituents next week. However, now that the bailout has been defeated, just for the moment, and the market reacted as predicted, these same cowards have political cover so that they can vote for it later in the week.

Accountability would be investigating the way the derivatives market was exploited and manipulated.

Accountability would be investigating which mortgage companies targeted communities of color and convinced hard working men and women that they could afford unaffordable mortgages. Accountability would be investigating the bond houses that rated bundles of those bad mortgages as secure. Accountability would be investigating the banking houses that were pushing these investments on their clients while quietly selling their own institutional holdings. Accountability would be looking into how hedge funds profited and why hedge fund managers don't pay income tax, but only capital gains taxes at 15%.

CNN, in a feeble attempt to conceptualize $700 billion, suggested that it would buy every man, woman, and child in America 20,000 McDonald’s apple pies.

However, this afternoon while lunching with Christine, she told me about one commentator who favored $85,000,000,000 to America in a "We Deserve It Dividend." We don't know who this person is, but here is the Dividend Plan:

To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bona fide U.S. Citizens 18+. Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up. So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00. My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a "We Deserve It Dividend". Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let's assume a tax rate of 28%. Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes. That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam. But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.

This is a far more illustrative example than buying apple pie from McDonald's!!!!

Accountability

The rule of law, the bedrock of American democracy, requires accountability. Yet in this fog of incompetence known as the Bush Administration, there has been none. Bush administration officials refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas, refuse to testify, and just last week, finally, Cheney was ordered by a district court judge to preserve all of his documents, including the embarrassing ones about his energy cabal and his strategies with Congress. That case, of course, will be headed for the Supreme Court.

No accountability for the attacks on September 11, 2001, despite the 911 Commission and the Senate Report on pre-911 intelligence failures.

No accountability for the lies that led the United States to invade Iraq: even with the Senate Intelligence Committee Report, Part I and Part II.

No accountability for the failure to act when thousands of Americans were stranded during and through the long wake of Hurricane Katrina, a long wake that continues to this very day.

No accountability for approaching the telecommunications industry without warrants and without authority to set up elaborate spying networks of Americans and citizens of the world.

No accountability for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel rationalizing the use of torture and making up phony legal analysis to rid this administration of the pesky rules of international war, the ones we wrote, called the Geneva Conventions, et al.

No accountability for the Justice Department's use of religious and political litmus tests, which decimated the professionalism of the Justice Department, including the Honors Program and the Voting Rights Section.

No accountability for the massive failure of the financial markets, every day losing millions of ordinary people's savings and retirement funds, pushing families into foreclosure and homelessness, and creating a world-wide financial crisis.

Today, finally, a little accountability. Mukasey has just announced that he is appointing a special prosecutor to look into the firings of the nine US attorneys, firings that were prompted solely because these professional men and women refused to take the Bush loyalty test.

The way America used to spread democracy was through our system of laws not through pre emptive attacks. Look around the world and see how many post-colonial constitutions are based on ours. Yet the impact of American aspirational law is dwindling. Fewer foreign courts rely on US Supreme Court analysis to justify their decisions.

These days, foreign courts in developed democracies often cite the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in cases concerning equality, liberty and prohibitions against cruel treatment, said Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of the Yale Law School. In those areas, Dean Koh said, “they tend not to look to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

In the time it took for me to draft this post, the New York Stock market's Dow Jones Industrial Average just sunk over 100 points. Now another 10 while editing. Still going down after I updated the posting to reflect the appointment of a special prosecutor!

Bamboozled Again--Another Example of Fact Checking Too Late

When Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Treasury Secretary, appeared before Congressional leaders and scared the daylights out of them with claims that the entire American economic system was about to collapse, I was skeptical. Once again, the sky was falling, i.e., the terrorists were coming in fifteen minutes, we needed to pass the Patriot Act immediately, we needed to eavesdrop, we had to invade Iraq, we need to torture, all because of the incompetence of this administration.

Each of these hysterical calls made fact checking inconvenient and a dangerous delay. Only afterwards has he truth come out.

This time with Democrats barely in the majority in both Houses, the Bush White House whipped the Democratic leadership to push through its unpopular bailout plan, convincing Republicans colleagues that it has to be. That there is no alternative. Interesting since Bush has no credibility with his own party, suddenly he has some with Democrats? OK, we will put in some accountability, a little transparency, maybe even a little bone for the American homeowners.

On September 27, 2008, The New York Times published an investigative story by Gretchen Morganson about the connections that remain between Henry Paulson, former CEO and Goldman Sachs. There is considerable self-dealing involved in Paulson's bailout plan and we should be infuriated. This crisis might be about the collapse of the American financial system, but for certain, this solution is about saving the asses of the same people who made a lot of money while this administration was busy deregulating and being incompetent. Why should we trust Henry Paulson when he is saving Goldman Sachs so that he can protect his own?

Two weeks ago, the nation’s most powerful regulators and bankers huddled in the Lower Manhattan fortress that is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, desperately trying to stave off disaster.

As the group, led by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., pondered the collapse of one of America’s oldest investment banks, Lehman Brothers, a more dangerous threat emerged: American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, was teetering. A.I.G. needed billions of dollars to right itself and had suddenly begged for help.

The only Wall Street chief executive participating in the meeting was Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson’s former firm. Mr. Blankfein had particular reason for concern.

Although it was not widely known, Goldman, a Wall Street stalwart that had seemed immune to its rivals’ woes, was A.I.G.’s largest trading partner, according to six people close to the insurer who requested anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. A collapse of the insurer threatened to leave a hole of as much as $20 billion in Goldman’s side, several of these people said.

Days later, federal officials, who had let Lehman die and initially balked at tossing a lifeline to A.I.G., ended up bailing out the insurer for $85 billion.

Their message was simple: Lehman was expendable. But if A.I.G. unspooled, so could some of the mightiest enterprises in the world.

A Goldman spokesman said in an interview that the firm was never imperiled by A.I.G.’s troubles and that Mr. Blankfein participated in the Fed discussions to safeguard the entire financial system, not his firm’s own interests.

Yet an exploration of A.I.G.’s demise and its relationships with firms like Goldman offers important insights into the mystifying, virally connected — and astonishingly fragile — financial world that began to implode in recent weeks.

Although America’s housing collapse is often cited as having caused the crisis, the system was vulnerable because of intricate financial contracts known as credit derivatives, which insure debt holders against default. They are fashioned privately and beyond the ken of regulators — sometimes even beyond the understanding of executives peddling them.

Take time to read the article, and then raise hell.

Anger Management

Among the guests at our debate party was a psychologist who specializes in leadership training. Her comments about both candidates' anger management skills are instructive.

Obama, as you recall, looked directly at McCain throughout the debate and acknowledged that McCain was correct in his analysis several times, probably more than his handlers wanted to count. Six, seven, maybe eight concessions. We imagined McCain’s people cutting and splicing a new Internet ad while the debates were still airing. According to Leslie, this was Obama’s way of managing his anger. In addition, he was trying to do before our eyes what McCain was claiming he wanted: bridging the gap between Republicans and Democrats.

McCain, however, could not look at Obama. He didn’t look at the camera either, so although he might have been looking at Jim Lehrer or at the Mississippi audience, it looked weird from our perspective.

“Anger management issues,” declared Leslie.

According to our expert, McCain couldn’t look at Obama because if he did he would have exploded.

Yesterday, John Marshall posted a possible reason why McCain was so angry, based on a Saturday story by Jonathan Weisman in the Washington Post, about that bi-partisan meeting at the White House on the bailout called by George W.:

Pelosi said Obama would speak for the Democrats. Though later he would pepper Paulson with questions, according to a Republican in the room, his initial point was brief: "We've got to get something done."

Bush turned to McCain, who joked, "The longer I am around here, the more I respect seniority."

McCain then turned to Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to speak first. Boehner was blunt. The plan Paulson laid out would not win the support of the vast majority of House Republicans. It had been improved on the edges, with an oversight board and caps on the compensation of participating executives. But it had to be changed at the core.

He did not mention the insurance alternative, but Democrats did. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, pressed Boehner hard, asking him if he really intended to scrap the deal and start again. No, Boehner replied, he just wanted his members to have a voice.

Obama then jumped in to turn the question on his rival: "What do you think of the [insurance] plan, John?" he asked repeatedly.

McCain did not answer. One Republican in the room said it was clear that the Democrats came into the meeting with a "game plan" aimed at forcing McCain to choose between the administration and House Republicans. "They had taken McCain's request for a meeting and trumped it," said this source.

McCain’s attitude towards Obama could easily be categorized as racist, or at least arrogant, in refusing to look at the younger man. He had better be careful, since this election requires that both parties pay attention to the increasing numbers of Latino and Asian voters. According to Professor Federico Subervi, who spoke this weekend at a fascinating conference at St John’s Law School about Race, Gender and the Media in the 2008 Election, there are now 10.4 million registered Latino voters, representing a 10% growth during this year’s primary season. Latinos are now 9% of the electorate, and their likely turnout on November 4th is the same as non-Latinos.

Asian Americans number over 14.4 million nationwide. 38.5% of all Asian Americans were born in the U.S., and 33.7% were foreign-born, naturalized citizens. In AALDEF’s November 2006 exit poll on the 2006 Congressional elections: Chinese American (38%), South Asian American (27%), Korean American (14%), Southeast Asian American (8%), and Filipino American (7%). Asian Americans are pretty evenly split between Republican and Democratic affiliations, and are important voters in several swing states.

Naturalized citizens have higher turnout than native born. They take their citizenship obligations very seriously.

Watch out McCain, your attitude could easily be misinterpreted.

Paul Newman--Actor, Activist, Philanthropist--And My First Love

Paul Newman will always be Ari Ben Canaan, the handsome independence fighter in Exodus who kisses the blonde American shiksa, Kitty, but whose heart always remained first with Israel. The film came out in 1960, and it was the first film that I had to see over and over again. Back then films opened in the big movie houses in Manhattan. My grandfather had a store on 34th Street and he bought the tickets for my father, mother, sister, and me to see the film. Then we went to Davy Jones’ Locker, a restaurant that served lobsters in a room that looked like it was under the sea. I probably wore gloves and my sister and I probably wore matching outfits: felt skirts with, yes, poodles, and a matching blouse made out of polished cotton.

When Exodus finally opened out in the suburbs where we lived I stood on line to see it again, and again.

The year my mother was dying, my nine year old daughter Lena and I both got the flu and were grounded with fevers together. Being a lover of movies, I had been introducing Lena to films since before she could talk. We went through the American Film Institute lists of best comedies and dramas. In the flush of our fevers that February 1998 when my heart was breaking, I went to Blockbuster and rented Exodus.

We watched it one time. Then we watched it again. That afternoon we both adored Paul Newman, his blue eyes, his determination, and his ruthless love for Israel.

Last winter when Lena went to Israel, she called me breathless from the valley where Paul Newman first kissed Eva Marie Saint.

This afternoon she called me from Prague to tell me that the love of our lives, Paul Newman, had died.

Paul Newman was our bad boy in the Young Philadelphians, Hustler, and Hud. He was our fallen hero in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He was our rebel in Cool Hand Luke. We wanted him in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and we laughed with him in The Sting.

Twice I was in rooms with him and twice I was too shy to speak.

He was the first actor I loved, and he was the first actor my daughter loved, too.

Even in his later years, he exuded an American kind of sexuality in Nobody’s Fool.

And he had good politics. He helped save The Nation magazine. Victor Navasky went to Harvard Business School, which came up with a plan to sell limited partnerships to raise money for the oldest weekly magazine in the country. Victor enlisted Paul Newman to help solicit folks to buy these limited partnerships, the worst investment, a guaranteed loss. Our stock certificate hangs in my office. He started Newman’s Own and gave away millions to charity while employing folks and manufacturing good food.

We will always love his blue eyes and that sexy smile.

Obama Looks Like the Leader We Need

Everyone just left after watching the debate, a little MSNBC, CNN, and Fox for color commentary. We thought Obama was very presidential and he wasn't afraid to look at McCain. McCain came off a bit weird in that he couldn't look at either Obama or into the camera. However, Obama probably shouldn't have admitted so many times that he agreed with McCain. We figure the Republicans are already splicing the tape to make a new commercial that uses Obama's words to make it seem like everything McCain says and does is right.

Christine commented on how hard it must be for Obama to straddle parallel universes: the world of his beliefs and what the public needs to hear him say in order for them to have the confidence to vote for him.

That's profound.

When It's About Women, It's About the Economy

Barack Obama has presented himself as a post-racial candidate, one who doesn’t discuss race unless pressed, but whose meteoric rise signals an end to a obligatory need to examine all things racial. African Americans worry that white America might delude ourselves into believing that we are finally becoming a color-blind society.

In addition to this delusion, there are other downsides to a post-racial strategy.

First, it has allowed the Republican Party to configure Sarah Palin as the post-feminist VP candidate. She can have it all: five children, including a special needs infant; a beauty queen; a rifle toting free market advocate; and a political career. However, by characterizing her as post-feminist, the Republicans have silenced any discussion about the agonizing balance that most women face between work and family. By keeping mum, we have delayed bringing this important discussion out of the private family realm and into making issues like child care, parental leave, and reproductive health a public policy.

Second, it conflates all discussion of women’s rights into a single issue: abortion. That is the only women’s issue that Palin and the Republicans will discuss. It's there for one reason: to appease the right wing. However, women’s rights cannot intelligently be collapsed into a single concept, and by allowing the Republicans to frame Palin as they have, they have succeeded in distracting women voters away from the complex web of women’s issues. And it is women voters who will elect either Obama or McCain. In 2004, women outnumber men by 9 million votes.

What are women’s issues? Yes, it's access to health care, child care, reproductive care. It's now the economy. According to research done by Carolyn M. Byerly, Associate Professor at Howard University, 80% of women polled are worried about the economy and how it affects their lives and the lives of their children. That number jumps to 88% for women of color. Yet no one is framing how the economic downturn is affecting women and children?

Watch this snippet of Couric's interview with Palin and tell me that you want this woman in charge of our economy.

Jews for Obama, or Not

According to Bernard Avishai in the October 2008 issue of Harper's, in an essay "Obama's Jews," when Obama took the Democratic nomination, he was ahead among Jewish voters 2 to 1. That isn't enough to win the presidency, especially Florida.

Jews are only 2% of the population, but 4% of the voters. Demographically Jews take the right to vote seriously. As a kid growing up, our family gathered around the television in the living room to watch the first presidential debates between JFK-Nixon. My father asked questions of my sister and me afterwards. Watching the debates every four years remains a family tradition, although who knows whether they will go forward tonight.

The problem is that back in 1968, Jews voted almost 5 to 1 for Hubert Humphrey. They were a block of votes that could be counted on to turn out and vote Democratic.

Jews still consider themselves progressive: polls show that 50% of Jews call themselves liberal or progressive, and only 21% consider themselves conservative.

Looking at Obama's message, it should resonate with Jews. It's an immigrant narrative, 70% of Jews rejected the idea of the Iraq war, and 70% of American Jews favor resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict by putting pressure on both sides. The right wing of the Jewish population is where Obama will not find support, and where those viral emails claiming he's a Muslim in disguise probably did some real damage. It's believed that those emails started in Jerusalem, and started for a reason.

That's the serious side of the Jews for Obama issue.

Sarah Silverman, the outrageous comedienne, has a video called "The Great Schlep." In it she makes the case to "schlep" to Florida to convince Nana, Zadda, Grandma, or Grandpa to vote for Obama. It's a hoot.

We need a hoot this morning.

McCain Treachery to Avoid the Debates

It's 7:45 pm eastern time on Thursday night. Tomorrow I am going to a conference on the impact of race and gender on the 2008 presidential elections at St. Johns University Law School.

As of now, McCain is still claiming that he won't show up at the first presidential debate scheduled for tomorrow evening.

This is what I imagine: at the White House today, at the meeting convened by President Bush with the leaders of the House and Senate, McCain took Senator Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., aside, to make sure that he, as the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, would not agree to the $700 billion bailout.

This is the same Senator Shelby who voted against an extension of the Voting Rights Act and, like McCain, opposed making the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King into a federal holiday.

Although it appeared by afternoon, eastern time, that the bailout was at least set in outline form, McCain could still claim that he wouldn't go to the Friday night debate, because Shelby's resistance meant there was still too much work to be finished in D.C. on the stabilization of the financial markets.

NOTHING IS TOO CYNICAL: McCain is postponing the debate to avoid being questioned about economics and to keep Sarah Palin out of the reach of reporters or the scrutiny of the American voters.

As I said previously, the one thing folks agree about is: we should go forward with the presidential debates.

It isn't like McCain is a seated president running for reelection, where the campaign might be a distraction from his essential work at the White House. It's about being afraid to stand up before the nation and stand by his equivocations. In the morning, the economy is fine, by the afternoon, well, maybe it isn't.

Demand the debates: call, fax, or email the Republican National Committee: 202.863.8500 | f/202.863.8820 | e/info@gop.com

Demand that the debates and the election go forward. And remember, think before you vote.

Finally Everyone Seems to Agree

No matter race, age, party affiliation, or gender, a majority of Americans agree that the debates should go forward on Friday as scheduled.

Click here to read the first polling on McCain's suggestion that the debates be postponed, i.e., that they find a way to avoid a debate featuring Sarah Palin.

Obama's polling has risen significantly. Check out fivethirtyeight.com for the latest figures.

Common Cause Issues Voter Report--Swing States in Jeopardy

Common Cause and the Century Foundation issued a report analyzing the state of voting in ten essential swing states. Download the pdf of the report.

The states are: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia,

The report focuses on voter registration, voter identification, caging and challenges, deceptive practices, provisional ballots, voting machine allocation, poll worker recruitment and training, voter education, and student voter practices.

Pass it around so that friends in swing states know what to expect and are alert to any sketchy practices. It's hard work to live in a democracy.

More Trouble for First Time Voters--in Colorado

The House majority leader, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and several of his Democratic colleagues said at a news conference that they were concerned about ensuring access to the polls for the estimated 44 million eligible voters who are between the ages of 18 and 29. Click here to read the Chronicle of Higher Education article.

The news conference came a day before a Congressional hearing on student voting rights and hours after a Republican county clerk in Colorado was criticized for falsely stating that students could not register to vote in Colorado if their parents had claimed them as dependents in another state. The clerk now says he was wrong, but the state’s Democratic Party chairwoman said the incorrect information had been posted on the Web site of Colorado College for the past six months.

Colorado this November has an anti-affirmative action ballot initiative, five employment measures that range from a right-to-work measure and a mandatory health insurance requirement, defining a fertilized egg as a person, a sales tax increase--in all fourteen ballot initiatives. As if that isn't confusing enough for anyone, including a first time voter.

How Reality Television Is Destroying the Right To Vote

In the September 29th issue of The New Yorker, John Cassidy writes a Comment: Bailing Out in which he reminds us that in March 2008, Barack Obama gave "a thoughtful speech, tracing the sub-prime crisis to lax oversight, and calling for a major overhaul of regulatory policy." No splash! No one paid much attention.

Instead by post-convention September, John McCain and Sarah Palin's chant "Drill, Baby, Drill" became the media's focus. According to the old guy, if we could find enough domestic oil, there would be no energy crisis or economic slow down.

The point I want to make is that the media bought McCain and Palin's framing of the issue, which turned out dead wrong, and ignored Obama's, which turns out was right, or more precisely "correct."

Many people saw this financial crisis barreling down. For example, read James Fallows' 2005 Countdown to a Meltdown in The Atlantic. Back in 2006, Kevin Phillips wrote American Theocracy, in which he focused on three aspects of the Republican Party's rise and perilous rule. First, he traced the history of energy and empire, from wind, to wood, to steam, to coal, and finally to oil. America had long depleted our own oil reserves. Saudi Arabia is close, if not passed its middle mark. Too much of the Bush administration's policy was driven by a focus on oil, anything to get oil, and anything to get rich from oil. Remember all of those secret Energy meetings that Cheney held in his vice president's office before 911? Just whisper Carlyle Group, the global private equity investment house, and whose faces appear: Bush I and Jim Baker. Both of them are very wealthy now as a result of Bush II.

The Republican Party's drastic turn to the right began as an effort to energize and woo religious voters. Eventually, as we have witnessed with McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin, the Party is now desperate to appease those voters in order to stay in power.

Lastly, Phillips focused on the insane use of debt financing that deregulation was permitting, and the "financialization" of America. We weren't manufacturing anything except for bizarre bundles of debt for sale across global markets.

Click here for a link to the table of contents of American Theocracy.

When Phillips speaks, we should listen: he was the Republican strategist who "invented the Sun Belt" and named "the New Right." His new book Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, which I haven't read yet, pretty much explains what would happen and did happen. Bad Money was published this spring.

Which brings me back to the right to vote.

This country is in serious economic trouble. We need serious minds to come together to understand and solve this multi-dimensional crisis with as little damage to ordinary people as possible. We need schools for our children, we need health care, we need safe food and water, we need transportation, energy, and a sustainable economy so that our people can work.

We don't need pandering.

Which brings me to the crippling impact of reality television shows. Every time someone votes for his or her favorite on American Idol, Project Runway, Top Chef, whatever, the essential nature of the political right to vote is likely to be diminished. Voting in an election shouldn't be about whether we like someone or how we feel. Voting for government is about thinking. And we should vote for the best and the brightest, because the problems facing our country and our planet require thoughtful, analyzed, and strategic decisionmaking. Not gut reactions.

We are living through a time when everything has been improvised, because the people in office are incompetent. It's not only our economy that is at risk, but our constitutional way of life and government. Everytime a solution is improvised, whether it's post 911 eavesdropping or post Lehman Brothers bankruptcy bailout that gives exclusive authority to a non-elected Treasury Secretary, we lose our grip on the rule of law. Once it's lost, it's hard to grasp onto again.

Think before you vote.

America and Apple Pie

Jon Stewart interviewed Bill Clinton last night on The Daily Show after showing CNN's inane attempt to conceptualize $700 billion dollars, the price tag for the Wall Street bailout that Henry Paulson is pushing before Congress.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's brilliant $700 billion plan could buy every single American 2,000 McDonald's apple pies.

Click here to see the segment.

Of course, the food metaphor worked with former President Clinton!

But it shouldn't work with the American people.

I was at a meeting yesterday with two retired women. Remember, women make only 76 cents to every men's dollar, and these women, both pioneers in the women's movement, made even less throughout their careers. One woman is a widow. With the price of gas, the rising cost of her contribution to health insurance, and the cost of medicine, she is worried that she might have to cut her volunteer work, because she can't afford to drive everyplace anymore.

The other woman is married and still needs to augment her pension with parttime work.

This is how the Wall Street meltdown is affecting real people. But not just retirees. Every house that goes into foreclosure diminishes the value of the other homes in a neighborhood. Every house that goes into foreclosure displaces another family, makes another child insecure.

My husband passed a three block long line in midtown Manhattan yesterday: young people trying to get into a job fair.

We must make sure that any Congressional bailout plan includes accountability. Let's find out just how much fraud was involved in marketing and selling these mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, and how much fraud was involved in bundling them as securities. Then let's prosecute the bastards for their greed and illegality. Let's make sure that everything the government does to shore up the financial markets has transparency. We need to see restrictions on salary and on the use of government power, too.

Since when should we trust Henry Paulson to solve this mess when his leadership at Goldman Sachs, and then his "nothing is wrong with American financial markets" attitude got us into this current crisis?

Deja vous to 911: do nothing and then grab power in the aftermath. Let's not forget we have a constitution and a method for enacting law and enforcing it.

Sarah Palin Revealed

One of the benefits of being a hag mother, a woman who had her daughter at forty, is that while my daughter is away at college, I still get her Rolling Stone subscription weekly.

Matt Taibbi has a barkingly cyncial and very funny piece in the October 2, 2008 issue of Rolling Stone called "Mad Dog Palin." That article you will have to read in the actual magazine; it isn't on line yet.

However, Spins, Lies & Facts: The Truth About Palin, by Tim Dickinson is available on-line: click here to access it.

Let's look at a few myths and lies:

The Myth: "She's from a small town with small-town values."

The Truth: Wasilla and the surrounding valley recently named the meth capital of Alaska, with 42 meth labs busted in a single year.

The Myth: "She's been to Kuwait. She's been over there. She has been with her troops."

The Truth: Never had a passport before 2007, when she made a brief photo-op trip to visit troops in Germany and Kuwait. Has never been to Iraq, and has not met a single foreign head of state. Well at least until today, when she met with Henry Kissinger (thankfully no longer in power), President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on her whirlwind tour of the United Nations, where she tried to look presidential.

My favorite quote from Matt Taibbi : Palin's symphony of sneering remarks at the convention was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Shock Doctrine Redux

Now that Naomi Klein's book Shock Doctrine is in paperback, we all have to read it. Read her September 22 post on Huffingtonpost.com. Because guess who is going to administer the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street?

It won't be a new federal bureaucracy. It will be the same financial services and mortgage companies that got us into this mess in the first place.

So the money is going to bail out Wall Street double-time. First, the money will buy up the bad debt that was often fraudulently sold to many homeowners, knowing that the monthly payments were absurdly high. You and I will own those mortgages although you might be losing your own home

Second, the money will pay for the financial services companies to assess, bundle, and sell the same mortgages they underwrote and bundled and sold. So, we have a federal welfare-to-work program.

This seems to be the legacy of the Bush administration: turn every disaster into private profiteering, whether it's Katrina, Iraq, Ike, or the subprime mortgage meltdown that Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary, didn't see coming. Or did he? While Paulson was still CEO of Goldman Sachs, the investment house was as busy as most bundling subprime debt as safe investments for sale to its customers. However, Goldman hedged its holdings in subprime mortgages. In the third quarter of 2007, after Paulson left, Goldman had a 70% increase in income while other houses were already writing down bad debt. Goldman made money if the price of these bundled bad mortgages lost money. And so the investment house did.

It's hard work living in a democracy, because we have to remain informed, even if it gives us a headache.

Tuesday Morning Joke

An old rancher got his hand caught in a gate while working cattle. The doctor while suturing him struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle."

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with."

Voting Rights--We Must Protect Them Ourselves

In the 1960 presidential election, the one between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, throughout the South, sharecroppers were evicted from the land they farmed in retaliation for registering to vote. Merchants refused to sell goods to these brave men and women. By 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was passed and signed into law, we believed in the enforcement authority of the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department to secure the right to vote anywhere in the country.

By the 2000 presidential election, the one between George W. and Al Gore, when we witnessed thousands of people throughout the state of Florida losing their right to vote, we realized that this ability we had, and took for granted often by not exercising it, was more fragile than we believed.

In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which didn't do much to secure the right to vote. Instead it created windfall profits for the Republican owners of untested electronic voting machines that failed to leave paper trails, and added more obstacles to registration and voting.

In 2004, remember, Ohio was the battleground state, and Republican Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, coincidentally also the chair of the Reelect Bush Committee, openly operated with an inherent conflict. He was supposed to make sure the election ran smoothly. His definition of "smoothly" included disenfranchising thousands of qualified voters. At one point before the election, he tried to disallow voter registration forms that were downloaded off the Web because they were on the wrong stock of paper.

This year we need to be vigilant. Now with the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department dismantled, once the pride of the Department, we can't rely on the federal government to protect the right to vote. The US Commission on Civil Rights has been taken over by right wing ideologues. The Supreme Court validated voter ID requirements in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board and these essentially knock out the young, the poor, and the very old. In the primary, with Indiana's onerous ID laws in effect, Indiana nuns couldn't vote because they didn't have driver's licenses.

In this election, will eager new voters be able to vote? Florida and Georgia, too, have new ID requirements in effect.

All first time voters must bring ID with them to the polls. Check individual state requirements way ahead to make sure you comply.

We have vote caging, a now notorious voter suppression technique perfected in Florida in 2000. In Ohio, the 2004 battleground state, a 2006 state law requires that a piece of registered mail with election information be sent to every registered voter in the state. The young and the poor are most likely to move residences often, thereby making them more susceptible to no longer being at registered addresses. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner issued a directive that 60-day notices sent by boards of election to voters that are returned as undeliverable cannot be used as the sole reason for canceling an Ohio resident’s voter registration. This is a victory since some 660,000 pieces of mail were sent out. Republicans are screaming bloody murder.

In Michigan, some Republican Party operatives were overheard saying that they were going to obtain foreclosure notices as a way of challenging residency. Lose your house, lose your vote.

There is more voter hanky panky going on in Wisconsin, another battleground state where the State Attorney General just so happens to be the co-chair of the McCain Committee. Read Josh Marshall for more details.

Check out the PBS news show NOW from July 2007, where David Iglesias, one of the fired US attorneys general, adds credibility to the charges that voter caging is a strategy of the Republican Party and the current administration.

Check out The Truth about Fraud website of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

We have to be vigilant. How?

1. We need to have poll watchers, armed with mobile phones that have video capacity, at every vulnerable polling place.

2. We must take testimony at all polls. In Pittsburgh, at a public hearing, voters testified that they had been turned away from participating in the primary because they were wearing Obama tee shirts. We have the means now to broadcast any and all attempts to prevent people from voting.

3. One North Carolina county organization called African Americans and reminded them to register to vote. The problem was that the deadline had already passed, and many of the calls were made to registered voters. Confusion and intimidation resulted. Report all robo-calls to the local ACLU, Obama Headquarters, District Attorney.

4. Read Black Box Voting to learn about the tactics being used to disenfranchise, and the counter strategies to guarantee the vote.

We are part of a community. We can't do this alone. We have to work in concert so that this election, especially, is fair, clean, and that everyone's vote is counted.

Monday Morning Musing

Last night I caught a bit of the Emmys, but since I didn't know the shows, I got bored and went to sleep.

This is my musing for this morning: if Americans spent more time learning about and talking about politics, world events, and the economy, and less time discussing what happened on "American Idol" or the "Simpsons" the night before, would we be better off as a nation?

Would people stop voting for someone they wanted to hang out with and start voting for visionaries who wanted to bring together a diverse group of people to help solve the important issues facing our country and the world: energy, the environment, food and water insecurity, the vast and growing differences in wealth, and the global economy?

Has television made us stupid?

I recall workplace conversations that involved minute details about whether this contestant or that deserved to be thrown off the island, voted off the show.

Can we please infuse our political debate with this much attention to detail and passion before it is too late?

Mortgage Meltdown

Watching Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Face the Nation, and then switching to Meet the Press to listen to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I was struck by a literary allusion to “The Foundation Trilogy” by Isaac Asimov.

I did read the then three volumes, one a day for the three days, following my completion of the grueling New York Bar Exam in July 1975. I was trying to quit smoking cigarettes and didn’t leave my apartment for three days. I did succeed in passing the Bar and completing the trilogy, however, within three weeks, I was smoking again.

If my memory serves me properly, the cycle of “foundation” civilizations went into inevitable decline when everything became so complicated that no one knew how to manage or fix anything.

That sounds like the economy of the United States.

Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, the last of two remaining large, independent investment banking houses, was cagey in his responses to Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation. He appeared inarticulate, because frankly, he doesn’t know just how many of these bad mortgages the American taxpayers are about to buy, how much they are worth now, and what they might be worth later. No one does.

That’s the problem with deregulation. There is no oversight internally within the financial institutions. Why bother when the banks were making so much money. And there is no regulation from government, because the Republicans who controlled the White House and the Congress until 2006 have a dedicated belief in self-regulation until it is too late.

My problem with the bail-out is simple and two fold: first, it gives far too much unfettered discretion to this Treasury Secretary and the next, and second, it has no regulatory musts attached to it.

Mayor Mike was a bit more forthright in responding to Tom Brokaw’s questions on Meet the Press. He has taken a bipartisan stance, still talking to both candidates. His insights were deeper, because Mayor Mike made his money by understanding the markets, not just lending money. Mayor Mike spoke about a NYC mortgage program for first time home buyers that has loaned money to thousands of residents with only five foreclosures. He used this as an example of properly educating prospective home buyers and then responsibly lending them money.

Certainly, not everyone can benefit from the Bush enabled “ownership” society. Two big problems arise for people with too little income trying to buy homes, especially in high rent districts in and around cities. First, unless one itemizes, there are no tax benefits to paying interest instead of rent. And second, and perhaps more importantly, home ownership makes people less flexible and less able to just pick up and follow jobs. The glut of houses in the rust belt where 250,000 people have lost jobs in the automobile industry alone is evidence of this phenomenon: these workers can’t move to where the jobs are without selling the house first, because people's entire savings are often caught up in the house.

It isn’t just deregulation and greed, it’s incompetence once again. Remember John McCain was the senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee for how many years? And he admitted that he doesn't know much about the economy. Well, what was he doing for all of those years? Just listening to lobbyists, I suspect.

Here is the link to the transcript of Meet the Press, where Paulson also appeared later in the broadcast.

Ascension Readers

This blog has become my way of venting and putting together parts of my life, what I read, what I listen to, and what is important to me and the folks in my circles. Today I added a feature: Ascension Readers. Just click and you can let me know that you are following the blog either anonymously or by your blog sign in name. Many thanks.

Burn After Reading

Our entourage liked the Coen Brothers' new film "Burn After Reading," mostly because the actors worked so hard to make us laugh. And we did. Even my husband laughed out loud. We were all exhausted from a week of too much work and far too much anxiety. It isn't the best Coen Brothers' film. Personally, I am a devoted fan to "The Big Lebowski," which I just watched again for the upteenth time in celebration of its tenth anniversary. But "Burn After Reading" succeeded in characterizing an attitude of government that pretty much says it all.

The plot of "Burn After Reading" is silly, complex, and full of compulsive sex and working out. Briefly, Linda, played by an impeccable Frances McDormand, wants four plastic surgery operations to keep herself viable for finding a husband. She works in a gym called Hardbodies. She hoodwinks her co-worker Chad, emphatically played by Brad Pitt, into helping her raise the funds by blackmailing a deposed CIA analyst Osborne Cox. A cd with Cox's financial information is found in the gym and misinterpreted as national security secrets. That CIA analyst is the character created by John Malkovich, and every time I see him in anything, new or old, I long for him to return to acting. His character is filled with rage, Malkovich has absolutely no vanity, so his portrayal of rage is the heart of the humor of the film. At one point, dressed in a bathrobe and boxer shorts, he grabs a hatchet and shouts into a cell phone that he is coming over to his former marital home with the "new keys."

His estranged wife is Tilda Swinton who brings new dimensions to the chilly wife genre. She is having an affair with George Clooney, a career Federal Marshall, whose bad caps make his smile almost swampy swarmy. He compulsively sleeps with women he finds on the Net and compulsively ends each tryst by going for a run. A day without working out actually brings him to tears. We never see him working, only screwing around during the day, another comment about government. What do they do?

Only Brad Pitt seems truly happy, perhaps because he goes through life with his iPod connected directly to his brain. And he is delightfully dumb.

But the cleverness of the film isn't the plot, which anyone can follow, although at a crucial moment, there is a terrible editing cut. The cleverness is the dialogue within the CIA as the slapstick turn of events get reported back to Agency higher ups. This is why the film works. The attitude of the CIA captures our belief that nothing in government, especially this government, is working. At one point, the Agency manager tells his division chief, Palmer, to come back "when everything makes sense."

That captured it for me: come back to me when everything makes sense.

High Anxiety

Who isn't in a state of high anxiety? This is not healthy. This is not healthy for anyone. I was walking from one meeting to another in midtown Manhattan on Thursday and passed by a large number of desperate people: there were the homeless, sick people shaking from hunger, and ranters as well as working people, like myself, who had lost confidence in everything.

This administration began with anxiety as we watched the drama of the 2000 Florida vote unfold. Now we know the vote was stolen by disqualifying a large pool of qualified voters, confusing ballots, and a phony sense of outrage that the entitled scion of Bush I might be denied the throne.

Then came 911 and anxiety took on new dimensions. Then anthrax, and those stories remain a study in how government failed to do the one thing that the Bush administration hasn't tried to privatize: national security.

Through some twisted logic the Bush administration kept everyone on high alert, code orange, code red, just to get reelected. Why?

I often believe that George Bush would have made a good commissioner of baseball. Then he could have just screwed up the American pastime instead of America.

Now our homes, if we have them, are devalued, our retirement funds are depleted and I haven't even retired yet, our children's futures are being burdened with an impossible debt.

And there are some folks out there who are still going to vote Republican?

Too much stress makes us stupid. It's a fact. Too much stress on a president, corporate CEO, is the major cause for leadership failures. Read this article and see.

I look at George W. and he looks terrible. Certainly he has been making terrible decisions. And they are hiding Cheney who doesn't quite believe in the constitution anymore, not since 911. Just the campaign has worn down McCain, who looks dreadful, especially standing next to his face-lifted wife, Cindy, and that shrill Sarah.

Who would want this job anyway?

Tonight I'm going to the movies!!!

Bailouts Through American History

Bailing out failing sectors of the American economy isn't unique, and there is a handy chart now available at propublica.org. The chart has converted the financial exposure into 2008 dollar terms, so that it is comparing apples with apples.

The first bailout was of the Penn Central Railroad, which eventually brought us Amtrak, and in cost terms totaled $3.2 billion. That was during the Nixon administration. OK, socialization of the railroads occurred during a Republican administration.

Actually looking down the list, all of the bailouts, have occurred during Republican administrations! Lockheed, Franklin National Trust, Chrysler, New York City, the Savings & Loan debacle, the airlines after 911, and now this financial mess.

Should that be telling us something about how Republicans govern or more accurately, fail to govern, with their free market deregulation and the resulting greed factor when left to self-regulation?

Last night on Bill Maher, Andrew Sullivan , the conservative writer who hates Bush claimed that this current financial crisis was brought on by the stupidity of American people who bought homes they couldn't afford with mortgages that they couldn't afford. He laid everything on individual irresponsibility. Naomi Klein, the author of "The Shock Doctrine" countered that the crisis is the result of the "ownership society" tauted by the Bush administration that resulted in massive profits for the same companies that are now verging on bankruptcy. The bailout might mean the loss of social programs, perhaps even the privitization of Social Security, if the wrong people get elected in November.

Without counting in the cost of any upcoming legislation that might shore up the banking industry, so far in the last few months, the Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, and AIG bailouts have cost $315 billion.

In 2005, Congress, at the behest of the credit card industry, passed a new bankruptcy law, that makes it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy, and to insist on credit counseling before one might file. See this comprehensive and accessible article on the new law.

Under the new restrictions, consumers have to pass a means pre-filing test to determine whether they can discharge all of their debt, including credit card debt, or be forced into an onerous pay-back schedule. In addition, a consumer's net worth has a higher valuation formula, there is more paperwork and consequently, higher attorney's fees to file.

So, let's get this right: deregulation allowed mortgage companies to engage in knowing fraud when they sold consumers mortgages based on unverified income and facially unaffordable rates, often in neighborhoods that had previously been red-lined. The mortgage brokers were paid commissions based on percentages over risk assessment. Money, money, money. These mortgages were bundled and resold as highly rated secure investments, rather than dangerously unsecured ones, to financial institutions around the world. Money, money, money. Once the housing bubble burst, the government is bailing out the same financial institutions that profited from their greed and complicit fraud. But now the consumers, the ones who can't afford to live in their homes anymore, have a rough trail to hike in order to file for bankruptcy.

This is why Congress has to make sure that any upcoming legislation includes consumer relief. Otherwise, ordinary people will have no recourse and no hope of ever getting out of debt. Unfortunately, too many people borrowed money from their credit cards to pay monthly mortgage bills, and those trailing balances, as we know, are charged usurious interest rates. I've heard of trailing balances getting hit with 30% interest charges!

This is probably why there has been an increase in support once again for Obama.

A Subversive Contribution in Honor of Sarah Palin

Here's a great way to get off the complaining track about Sarah Palin and do something smart and good. The idea was developed by someone on the email trail. Everyone contribute to Planned Parenthood, in honor of the abstinence only, infanticide-attempting mother and soon to be grandmother. The idea is to make a contribution and have the acknowledgment sent to McCain Headquarters.

So, here is the link to Planned Parenthood's donation website. And then ask that the note telling Sarah that you have honored her so be sent to:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street, 1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

It's subversive, it's a great cause, and it makes me laugh after an incredibly difficult, anxious week.

The Bubble is Burst

All of the hysteria about Sarah Palin appears to have been diffused by some fact checking. I somehow feel that the reason why McCain's numbers went down this week is not the result of good journalism, but the fact that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart returned to the air. Let's face it: the "blink" comparison between Sarah Palin's interview with Charles Gibson and all of the George W. videos of him saying "blink" pretty much sent the message that the same handlers are handling two inexperienced and incompetent candidates. The difference, of course, is that George got elected, and we have the opportunity to prevent Palin from doing damage outside of Anchorage.

A great place to watch the figures on the upcoming election is a site called fivethirtyeight.com. Nate Silver is the founder, and he appeared on WNYC's On the Media on September 5, 2008. The transcript is fascinating. He uses a different algorithim to predict election results, and he has been better at it than many other pollsters. Take a look at his website and notice that once again Obama is ahead. The popular vote is scarily close. Now Nate is pushing numbers to see if a tie is feasible.

If there is a tie, the election gets thrown into the House of Representatives after a 41 day cooling off period where people try to convince the electors of the Electoral College to switch their votes. Imagine what that would be like! Then each state, no matter its size, gets one vote. The state representatives vote for the one vote. A majority of states votes in the next president. No one has to pay any attention to the popular vote at that point.

It's only happened once: 1824. It could be just the straw that breaks any remaining trust in the system after 2000 and 2004. Read this NPR article from 2004 for details.

Constitutional Government, Where Did It Go?

Everything about this administration is improvised, reactive, secretive, and unauthorized. Since when does the Treasury Secretary have the legitimate power to loan a private insurance company $85 billion taxpayer dollars without collaborating with Congress? Now, let me see if I remember: all appropriations are supposed to initiate in the House of Representatives. Check your handy copy of the constitution, or click here, if you don't believe me.

No one knows what they are doing, you realize that, don't you? People are making decisions that will affect our lives for generations to come without going through any legitimate process. This is not the way to run a complex government. This is certainly not the way to control a free market economy. Oh, right, when the free market economy goes haywire from greed and racism, then we can have government regulation to protect investors, but not the people who are being forced out of the houses they couldn't afford to buy.

President, oops, I mean Vice President Cheney, according to all reports, improvised everything that happened post 911, without regard to the Constitution, the Congress, the Geneva Conventions, and protocols of government. He dodged the professionals and grabbed all of the power for the Executive Branch, through the artful legal maneuvers of his shadowy attorney, David Addington, except when he was claiming, because his only Constitutional role is to break a tie in the Senate, that he isn't really a part of the Executive Branch, but must be in the Legislative side.

And now reports from Alaska reveal that Sarah Palin and her husband Todd, also ignore law, truth, and the Alaskan Constitution in how she (they) has (have) governed.

Perhaps the next president of the United States should know the Constitution. Oh, right, Barack Obama taught Constitutional Law at University of Chicago Law School for over ten years. He might know a thing about the limitations on the power of the executive branch.

Incompetence as a Strategy to Dismantle Government

It isn't just incompetence, although certainly the Bush administration is incompetent. This administration uses incompetence as a strategy for discrediting government. Dismantle government by appointing not the "best and the brightest" but the crony or the evangelical instead. Discredit government so that we can get rid of it.

Remember Michael Brown as the head of FEMA?

Remember Monica Goodling at the Department of Justice and her hiring based on religious beliefs and a degree from that bastion of excellence Regent University School of Law?

Last night I was speaking with a financial adviser who looked like she aged ten years in just the last few days. "I hope Paulson and the Federal Reserve know what they are doing," she confessed. She didn't exude confidence.

Looking at Sarah Palin, she appears to use the same strategy of governing: loyalty tests and cronism. It appears that she has appointed anyone to state office in Alaska who is still a friend from high school. Didn't Andrew Jackson try to end these practices when he created the civil service?

Yet since Bush took office many career professionals have evacuated the Department of Justice, State Department, Department of Education, Environmental Protection Agency, to name a few. The Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department used to be the place for the smartest young attorneys to post. Their responsibility was enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, probably the single most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted. However, after two presidential elections where caging and voter ID requirements have succeeded in disenfranchising thousands of potential Democratic voters--mostly African American, poor, new voters, and older ones-- clearly the Voting Rights Section has gone the way of the rest of the Bush administration: cronism and incompetence.

It's all strategic, and that is the shame.

The US Commission on Civil Rights, one would believe from the name, would be dedicated to monitoring and confronting the historic discrimination against African Americans. Instead, the Bush administration manipulated the appointment process and stacked the Commission with right wing ideologues who oppose all methods of correcting racial inequity. The current Commission is obsessed with ending all forms of race conscious admissions to colleges and professional schools even though the US Supreme Court permits such considerations. Now the Commission has hired Hans von Spakovsky as a consultant to oversee the upcoming presidential elections although von Spakovsky was not confirmed as a member of the Federal Election Commission because of his radical beliefs.

It's all strategic, and that is the shame.

The Race in the Race for the Presidency

My friend Leslie told me this story about her last visit to the hairdresser: a white woman in her late seventies stated without apology or hesitation that she would never vote for a black man. Period. End of story.

With Obama and McCain in a dead heat, see CNN polling from today, and now even New York women favoring the Republican ticket because of Palin, I have only one explanation: racism.

According to the New York Times, in 2004, nine million more women voted than men. 67.3 million women voted. This election like the last will turn on the women's vote. So the choice of Sarah Palin as Republican VP candidate appears to have reignited the anger and disappointment that many women feel about Hillary's defeat. And to have claimed a new definition of strong woman. At least that is the way this is being portrayed in the media.

But it is predominantly white women voters who are allegedly charmed by Palin.

The question I'm asking is this: has McCain shrewdly given these white women voters an out, a way to avoid feeling racist, by offering them a choice of voting for a woman as VP?

How else can we explain the excitement over an inexperienced, infanticide-attempting, fundamentalist, no-nothing other than she isn't an intellectual black man?

I believe Sarah Palin's candidacy is a cover for America's unexamined and shameful racism. What about you?

Denial and Distraction

Last week I went to a seminar where one of the big analysts from Wachovia Securities assured the group that Lehman Brothers would never go the way of Bear Stearns. We all woke up Monday morning with the news that Lehman was filing for bankruptcy, the largest in American history, and that Bank of America was purchasing the venerable investment house Merrill Lynch at bargain prices. The stock market fell 500 points and most of us over the age of fifty added another two-five years before we would be able to retire.

John McCain that morning said the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." By the afternoon as the blood flowed from the New York Stock Exchange, he changed his story to sound like a born-again populist: "the economy is in crisis."

This is the same man who admitted during the primaries that he didn't know much about domestic economics.

This is the same man who cynically chose a woman as his vice presidential candidate whose gun-toting rhetoric inspires late-night bathroom fantasies for American men, but does not inspire any confidence that she knows anything about governing, foreign policy, or even how the constitution operates. Do you trust these people with your future?

The American media, remember, is controlled by conglomerates and corporations. We cannot rely on newspapers, television, even "the nightly news" as a reputable source of real news. It's just fabricated news. Instead we have to find our sources and then spread them. Hence the blogs, hence the informal networks that Malcolm Gladwell described in "The Tipping Point." We have to spread our own campaigns, and we have to create talking points so that each of us who wants this country to move back towards its democratic potential can speak one-to-one with everyone, not just among our circle of friends, to speak with calm.

Are we ready to heal?