Keeping track of the antics of the enemies of a free and open society.

Things CAN Change!

November 29, 2007

One reason so many people in California and around the country "tune out" and don't participate in our own government is they believe that creating change is beyond their control. It often seems that things are locked in by powerful, wealthy interests with regular people locked out of the process. This feeling of loss of control has been established by many disappointments over the years.

There are experiments in "learned helplessness" in which rats are unable to control when they are given shocks. Eventually they just lie down and give up.

For example, rats that have been exposed to shocks that they cannot control often become strikingly passive when later placed in new traumatic situations. They appear numb to the new trauma as if they have "given up." Alternatively, they also become especially fearful of environments where they experience similar traumas and will try to avoid such situations.

Does this sound like you, or people you know? Or maybe way too much of the state and country?

Take heart, for things CAN change! In Australia's last election the people threw out the bad-on-the-environment conservative government and brought in a government that promises to immediately sign the Kyoto anti-global-warming agreement to reduce carbon emissions.

And look who the new government is placing in charge of its environmental policies! Former Midnight Oil rocker Garrett named Australia's environment minister,

Peter Garrett - the towering, baldheaded former singer of the disbanded Australian rock group Midnight Oil - continued his long, strange tour from pop star to politician Thursday when he was named Australia's environment minister.

With his wild dancing and strident voice, Garrett was one of Australia's most recognizable singers until his band broke up in 2002, after belting out politically charged hits for more than 25 years.

Garrett founded Midnight Oil when he was a law student in 1973, but the semi-punk rock group did not achieve global fame until its 1987 track "Beds are Burning" - a protest song about Aboriginal land rights in Australia.

And so, to celebrate, here is something we can all "tune in" to:

Midnight Oil, Beds are Burning:

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Posted by Dave Johnson - Comments (0)

Blackwater's "Drunken" Mercenaries Open Fire "Crazily," But Still Get New $90 Million Pentagon Contract

October 02, 2007

Blackwater USA, the billion-dollar mercenary corporation operating in Iraq, is finally and belatedly starting to come under the harsh spotlight of accountability. Hopefully, this new spotlight on Blackwater will help Californians stop dreaming and start demanding that Blackwater not build a mammoth new private military base in San Diego County.

A shocking new House Oversight Committee report (PDF) contains terrifying new details on the lethal incompetence of Blackwater's "employees" (which act as replacements for US soldiers). Among other stunning findings in the new report, Blackwater, the mercenary corporation that wants to open a mammoth new private army base near San Diego, was found to have paid $15,000 to family members of a man in Iraq shot and killed by a "drunken Blackwater contractor."

Revelations about this despicable hush money, paid to the murdered man's family in order to keep the incident quiet, comes after yet another damning report (this one prepared by the Iraqi government) showing that Blackwater mercenaries opened fire "crazily and randomly" at innocent civilians in a terrible Baghdad massacre last month.

Read on to learn more about Blackwater's history -- and what you can do to stop Blackwater's plans to invade California.

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Posted by Erik Love - Comments (0)

What ever happened to the right to dissent?

September 20, 2007

The American people are getting to be more and more like the frog in the pot of water. You know the analogy---if you put a frog in water and slowly up the heat, the frog doesn't know when he's getting cooked until the water is just about boiling and his fate is sealed because he can't jump out. Ive been feeling that this is what is happening to the American people recently and we're not yet aware that the first amendment, like the frog, is being destroyed by a slow, but sure attack on dissent.

Today I awoke to a plea from the folks at MoveOn.org asking that I call my U.S. Senators and urge them to reject an attempt by Senate Republicans to condemn Move On for its ad last week regarding the testimony of General Patreus. If you recall, they referred to him as "General Betrayus" for what they claimed was a dishonest and slanted analysis on the progress of the so-called "surge" strategy that Bush and his cronies imposed upon Congress, the American people, and most importantly our soldiers and the Iraqi people.

This shameless ploy reminds me of one of the most fundamental strategies recommended when you're being attacked and can't respond effectively because the facts are simply against you. Don't try to respond, just attack the messenger. By deflecting attention from the substance of what is being said, the focus moves from the issue to the character of who is sending the message. It is a strategy that the Bush administration has employed since its beginning. Every time the Emperor is observed walking without clothes, and that pesky child yells that the Emperor is naked, the Bush media machine (Fox News and others) steps in and attacks the child as being blind, or crazy, or both, or in the case of the Bush years, of being disloyal and unpatriotic.

It is not new that dissent is characterized as disloyalty. During times of war (that is REAL war, like World War 2) there was an effort to keep Americans focused on the battle, and dissent, as limited as it may be, was kept in check while our soldiers fought off the Nazi's and Imperial Japan. Think more dramatically about after that war, when Joseph McCarthy established his drunken and reckless reign of terror on the American people, using Communism as the "War" we were fighting and using anyone who ever read a book by Karl Marx as a scapegoat.

Fast forward to today, where the "War on Terror" has replaced the War on Communism as the war de jour. While the threat of terrorism is real, the threat of losing our democratic way of life appears to be even more real and immediate in our country today. It was one of our great sages who observed that democracy will never be defeated from without, it will only be defeated from within.

Are we at that stage where the cancer of extremism within our country, the lack of an open, free and independent press has extinguished an honest and open debate on the issues, where our President believes he is king and not subject to the checks and balances of the co-equal branch of government we call Congress? Is democracy being threatened from within?

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Posted by Hannah-Beth Jackson - Comments (0)

Conservative Failure Day

May 03, 2007

Campaign for America's Future chief Bob Borosage sets up the big challenge for the Republican candidates as they're headed in to their debate tonight: figuring out how to talk about their failed governing philosophy:

Each of Bush's signature failures -- the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, Enron and the corporate scandals, failed tax and trade policies, the attempt to privatize Social Security, the posturing around Terri Schiavo and stem cells -- can be traced back not simply to the conservative ideology and ideologues that sired them -- but to the basic concepts that Reagan championed. The Gipper can't lead Republican candidates out of the wilderness because, to paraphrase, his conservatism is the problem, not the solution.

CAF is doing their part to bury the philosophy of conservatism dead like communism is dead. They've got a whole one day conference on just this going on today, with plenty of juicy updates at Rick "Before the Storm" Perlstein's outstanding new weblog, The Big Con.

And Vanity Fair has another reminder of both this failed philosophy and why Giuliani is dangerous, despite his seemingly narrow chances of getting through the primary:

Rudy, arguably, is the most anti-family-values candidate in the race (this or any other). And yet, in some sense - which could be playing well with the right wing - what he may be doing is going to the deeper meaning of family values, which is about male prerogative, an older, stubborn, my-way-or-the-highway, when-men-were-men, don't-tread-on-me kind of thing.

It's all comes down to enforcing moral orders with conservatives, and the overwhelming majority of Americans don't want to live in the country that results from this kind of dog eat dog approach.

Update: Howard Fineman tunes right into the creepy lizard brain aspect of this:

Commenting on the candidates, Fineman said, "There is a hierarchical, there is, dare I say it, male, there's an old-line quality to them that some voters, indeed a lot of voters, find reassuring."

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

Wal-mart Corporate Espionage

April 05, 2007

Tapping management consultant servers? Infiltrating anti-corporate activist groups? This is astonishing:

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

Voting to kill the troops - even here

March 21, 2007

You wouldn't think this would be possible in our state, but two Congressman have perfect zeros on votes for supporting the troops: Jerry Lewis and John Doolittle. Down With Tyranny has great coverage and links to their progressive punch scores. This was an ad from 2006 about this issue:

Doolittle is the sicko who had party operatives send out a piece of mail the weekend before the election accusing his opponent, retired Air Force Lieutenant Charlie Brown, of being a Nazi sympathizer. Despite being in a district that is among the most lopsidedly Republican in the state (by almost 20 points!) he almost lost. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to accuse a veteran of being a Nazi sympathizer and a special kind of incompetence to blow a 20 point lead. You can contribute to Charlie Brown here. He is absolutely running again.

Dailykos, Calitics, and D-Day all have more on these two.

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

Woah! Tom McClintock on hate radio!

March 16, 2007

According to the CARepublic.com website and an email announcement this morning, conservative State Senator Tom McClintock appeared on a Disney-owned talk radio station with a ten year history of hate speech, racist fearmongering and authoritarian and eliminationist rhetoric this morning. This is the station that has prompted this letter from Media Matters to Disney executives, with examples of some of the on-air violence and death threats that are typically employed.

The questions that arise from this are troubling. Does Senator McClintock support and endorse these points of view? Do we really want to live in a state where death threats can be broadcast to millions of people so that they become just another part of the background noise?

The standard conservative dodge is that "we were just joking." But is any of this remotely funny? When did it become ok to say things like this and have there be no consequences?

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

Seriousness

February 26, 2007

In Sunday's SF Chron, clever seeming anti-urbanist critic Joel Kotkin tells an increasingly familiar story about the tarnished reputation of the Golden State:

Our magnificent state may still be the home to Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the nation's largest port complex and the world's richest agricultural valleys, but by many critical measurements the state is slipping.

What are the problems, and how can we move forward through them? Is Mr Kotkin or anyone else in the state proposing serious solutions?

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Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

Mourning Molly Ivins

February 02, 2007

One of my very favorite stories as a child was "The Emperor's New Clothes." I suspect it was for many who identify as progressives today. For the few who may have missed this great parable, it is a story of courage and honesty in the face of enormous imperial power and public timidity. It is about the bravery (or perhaps simply innocence) of a young child who shouted out as the Emperor marched through the town, ostensibly to show off his magnificent silk clothes, that the Emperor was, in fact, quite naked. No townspeople dared point out the obvious for fear of beheading, although no one with two eyes could otherwise ignore the obvious. Yet the entire town did just that---except for the young child.

For the past several decades, Molly Ivins has been that voice---willing to say what so many of us believed yet so few, especially those in power, were willing to acknowledge. She said it with extraordinary intelligence and humor---qualities so often lacking today. She spoke often and courageously about the folly of war--and the idiocy of George W. Bush, whom she nicknamed "Shrub". With that excellent descriptive title, she wrote and published a book shortly before he was "elected" President in 2000 (obviously not enough voters read the book, but should have) entitled: Shrub-The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush

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Posted by Hannah-Beth Jackson - Comments (0)

Not everyone found the SOTU address riveting

January 24, 2007

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

The gleam in the Governor's eye

January 10, 2007

During the debate with Phil Angelides, one of the Governor's "hey look, I'm a movie star, I can say whatever I want up here" lines was accusing Mr Angelides of getting a "gleam in his eye" when he talked about taxes.

What gives the Governor the gleam, though, is the spending. On some level this is great: pro-civilization Republicans are unfortunately few and far between. But at some point, the Governor has to square his love of spending with some thinking about who is going to pay for all this stuff. He simply can not keep putting everything on the credit card. If you missed the State of the State address last night, the Gov has an incredibly fancy website up where you can go for the details.

There is broad agreement across left and right on this. The FlashReport's Jon Fleischman agrees...

I opposed the Infrastructure Bonds on last November's ballot because I felt that with a state budget of well over $100 billion, the Governor and legislators should be making a large, very real annual contribution towards infrastructure in current dollars (and not just by committing a fraction of the budget towards bond repayment).

Speak Out California did not oppose the bonds because it's blindingly obvious that the future prosperity of our state requires them. Ditto for what the Governor calls his "Strategic Research and Innovation Initiative" - investing in the future of this state is the definition of a wise investment. But we made the case then and continue to believe that this spending must be coupled with a realistic assessment of the state's revenue picture. We still have a structural deficit (which could get much worse over the next few years as the housing slowdown kicks in) and we still have a essentially a flat to slightly regressive tax distribution. Until those problems are fixed, the legislature should act to keep the Governor away from the credit cards.

Also, the Governor went zero for two on our health care principles. More on that soon.

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

The real bogeyman in the healthcare debate

September 10, 2006

Thanks go to the Sac. Bee's editorial today on pointing out that progress in dealing with the serious healthcare crisis in California-and nationwide is that government is not the bad guy that the Bush/ Schwarzenegger team try to portray but that government has a proven track-record on this issue (with Medicare and Medicaid as obvious examples) and will continue to demonstrate that it has a very important role in the solution.

We here at Speak Out California believe it is critically important to scratch off the thin veneer the Bush spin machine has created in order to mislead Californians into believing that the Governor is "moderate" and not beholden to the same special interests that control the Bush administration's shameless pro-corporate agenda. The fact is that this Governor is completely beholden to the same large corporate influences, among them the same insurance giants that are fighting against making health care available to all Californians because it will, by necessity,pull the plug on their corporate greed.

In order to get the full and complete picture of SB 840 and the Governor's complete dishonesty in characterizing the terms of the measure, we asked Andrew McGuire, the Executive Director of Health Care for All-California to give us his thoughts on this important and ground-breaking effort to bring real health care REFORM to our state. Here are his observations and a call-to-action for all Californians who believe the time has come to take the profit out of healthcare and give Californians the opportunity to have healthy lives for themselves and their families:

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Posted by Hannah-Beth Jackson - Comments (2)

It's the new cruelty

August 01, 2006

In terms of sheer, unmitigated callousness, this may be the worst thing the Republican Congress has ever done. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the minimum wage "increase" bill that just passed the House and is now in the Senate would in fact decrease the minimum wage in some places, by invalidating the way some states have changed the rules around how tips and wages are calculated. From the EPI piece:

H.R. 5970 is the first time in history that the federal government has acted to put a ceiling on minimum wage levels, rather than establishing a national floor from which the states can make improvements.

Remember that this is on top of tying this mess to the Paris Hilton tax cut. So if you live in an expensive city and love it but are waiting tables and scraping your way out of debt, you're going to get your wages cut, while sister Paris, god bless her, gets a cool $91 million out of the deal. Makes sense, right? We wouldn't want to, you know, punish the people who work the hardest or anything.

As an added stab of irony, this bill would go partway towards fixing another tax related disaster that I've had the pleasure of being personally affected by, the Alternative Minimum Tax. (My whole sob story is here, in the form of written testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, if you're morbidly curious). But instead of being able to get on board with the good folks over at ReformAMT, I now have the singular pleasure of actively opposing something that would right an injustice that was visited on both myself and many of my friends. Senator Feinstein: don't even think about it.

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

Stem cells and the innocent

July 21, 2006

While summer heat continues to set records here in California and across the globe, issues in addition to global warming continue to take front and center stage. This week the fight for stem-cell research shared the headlines with other erupting problems. Remembering that California has been leading the way in the fight to fund stem-cell research, the Bush administration continues to confound and embarass the rest of America as well with its 19th century (probably more like neanderthal) approach to the effort to move important medical research forward and thus provide hope and health opportunities for those living now with possibly treatable pain and despair.

When 70% of Americans believe in the need and importance of stem-cell research to crack a series of life-threatening and certainly life-altering illness and disease, this self-proclaimed protector of virtue steps in to say that the moral fiber of this country cannot accept such opportunities. While the world is heating itself up, both literally and figuratively, because of the abject failure of this administration's leadership in the world and choices in how to use its power, this president had the audacity to reject an opportunity to help those with AIDS, Parkinsons Disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, Alzheimers, brain-stem injuries, etc. etc. as morally unacceptable. His statement is worth repeating, if only for its audacity and offensiveness to everyone who knows someone afflicted with conditions that would benefit from passage of such an important measure. His veto statement reads,

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others.
It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect."

The nerve of this man-whose own lies and incompetence have caused the deaths and maimings of thousands of young Americans in Iraq as well as the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi people. While the President exploits young children at "photo ops" designed to strengthen his support among religious idealogues, the Middle East is collapsing with thousands more deaths of innocent people likely to come. Is he suggesting that only American lives count in all this? The unmitigated gall of a President of the United States to talk about innocent lives, and moral boundaries when he has sat silently for five years while the Middle East has heated up to the powder keg it is today. The embarassment he has created-the leader of our great country, who can only articulate by employing cuss words repeated into an open mike when addressing such complex issues as those reflected in that region of the world today. Is this the best our country can produce to lead us and the world into the future?

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Posted by Hannah-Beth Jackson - Comments (0)

The Reconstruction of Governor Humpty-Dumpty

July 08, 2006

I don't know about you, but I thought that we'd get at least a short reprieve from the Governor and his corporate sponsors once the primary election ended last month. The current attitude toward the state of electoral politics in California is probably best characterized as exhaustion. After all, we endured a Bush-inspired gubernatorial recall, followed by the Schwarzenegger Initiatives special election last November where his wrong-headed efforts were soundly defeated; then, a full-blown primary election seven months later where the public response was a miserable 28% turnout. Enough already, one would think, but no... big corporate donors, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the national Republican leadership (via the RNC) have coffers overflowing with grateful fat-cat contributors. They've got enough money to burn-up the airwaves extolling the greatness of Schwarzenegger and using primary election rhetoric to demean the Democratic nomineee. In the money wars folks, this one isn't even close. Thanks to record corporate profits, provided by Republican policies rewarding corporations with tax-loopholes and the ultra-wealthy with tax-cuts, the rich are getting richer and the middle class is falling further behind and discouraged. Schwarzenegger and the Bushies who are running his reconstruction and re-election have plenty of money to recreate the Governor in a more acceptable (but no less misleading) image in time for the November elections.

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Posted by Hannah-Beth Jackson - Comments (0)

Christian capitalist tools

March 27, 2006

This weekend, the city I've chosen as home played host to 25,000 innocent evangelical youth and their horribly misguided leadership. The culture war has a way of bringing out the worst in people, even when there is potentially some common ground: Assemblymember Mark Leno suggested they should "get out of San Francisco."

That might not be the most delicate way of putting it, but it is understandable. I'm sure that somewhere the conservatives are trotting out the predictable line here: oh look, the left isn't so "tolerant" after all, look at the counterprotests.

Yes, progressives are intolerant of hatred. No apologies there. And we're mighty damn intolerant of leaders who employ fascist sounding language to rope kids into being pawns for their political games. They are literally calling advertisers "virtue terrorists," a better sound bite could hardly have been pulled from The Onion.

Maybe the most unfortunate aspect of all this is that, if these leaders were honest with themselves about the processes really happening in society, there might easily be some common ground here. This is from Henry Luce, the organizer of the event, with emphasis added:

The villains, Luce said, range from the promiscuity and "sexualization" of young people on MTV and the popular online meeting hub MySpace.com to a corporate culture that spends millions trying to woo the under-21 crowd.

Incidentally, it's fascinating that they're blaming a social networking website for anything; apparently that's the scapegoat du jour, and pairs nicely nicely with long-time target MTV. Mr Luce at least mentions what's obviously been the largest force in rearranging teenager's mental furniture over the past few decades: turbo charged, unregulated, free market fundamentalist capitalism.

But is that the process he's really quesitoning? Nope - much easier to blame and then pick on gay people, I suppose, and go stand on the symbolic steps of our city hall where they made their last halting step towards true equal rights under the law. Why didn't they go and protest at the Bank of America building, or some other icon of the almighty market? Mad props to SF Chron write Joe Garofoli for wrapping up the story with this little bit of accidental commentary on these people's uncritical relationship with big money:

"We're going to be back here in a year, to see what kind of progress we've made," he said. "And we're going to be at AT&T Park. Or whatever it is called then."

By following the same tired old culture war script, Mr Luce is leading thousands of kids towards a compliant and unquestioning relationship with market fundamentalism, encouraging them to blame a minority group that has nothing to do with the issues that most affect the problems they ostensibly want to solve, clouding their minds with proto-fascist language, and turning them into tools of the very forces that need questioning. They're welcome to come to my city but they sure better be ready to answer for that.

Addenda: Upon further reflection this post seems like it could be interpreted as being a little anti-pop culture. Don't get me wrong, I'm very much in favor of an inclusive, diverse and participatory popular culture, in fact I think it's pretty close to being a central part of what's good about progressivism. When capitalism supports that, which for the most part it does very much, that's a good thing. When it doesn't, or when it gets out of hand (whether it's marketing things to kids or the recent battles over DRM), that's when progressives draw the line. Democracy defines the rules of the marketplace.

Also, some good news: the conservative Christians weren't the only folks getting together this weekend. Check out these wonderful pictures of the movingly large pro-immigrant rallies from this weekend.

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (0)

Crunchy cons

March 05, 2006

This morning's opposition research turned up something interestingly nonsensical: the Crunch Cons weblog over at the National Review Online. They really do have the big tent dialed; they apparently have no problems making room in the movement for people whose principles are completely and 180 degrees at odds. The weblog is annoying - it's a kind of writing I see a lot on NRO's site, these mostly self-referential discussions between three or four people that never seem to go anywhere, and are mostly disconnected from any recognizeable version of reality. Maybe they don't realize how hostile to new readers that style is. Of course, there are no comments.

I was thinking of responding point by point to the crunchy con manifesto, but I'm not sure it's worth it. There are some things to agree with, of course: if these ideas were to somehow gain traction, maybe there will be some common ground on real conservation and pro-family policies, not "voluntary compliance" and the hatred strewn garbage that the James Dobsons of the world spew and label family values.

But one problematic angle with it is the overall focus on culture. It's easy to try to move the focus away from economics if you're economically privileged, but go back and look at some pictures from Katrina or Sudan and tell me again how we still don't have political or economic issues. And given that these people are ostensibly conservatives, one has to wonder what they propose as cultural remedies. Book burnings? Edicts against degenerate art? Lots of fingerwagging and sermonizing? The mind boggles.

Posted by Dan Ancona - Comments (1)