Haiku Politics

Democrats would sustain US involvement in Iraq

2007-07-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

Contrary to the impression that the Democrats would like to give, they do not favor a total withdrawal from Iraq. Note the following, from the SFGate Politics Blog:

Democrats are not aiming for a total withdrawal. Biden said 10,000 U.S. troops will be needed merely to maintain the "Green Zone" in Baghdad, and thousands more are contemplated for remaining operations to train the Iraq military, prevent jihadis from controlling territory, and keeping neighboring states at bay.

I particularly like the bit about "keeping neighboring states at bay." Which neighboring states would those be? They wouldn't include Iran, by any chance, would they?

The Democrats, in other words, would continue US military involvement in the region, and perpetuate the policy of Empire.

Democrats avoid the issue of impeachment

2007-03-07T07:54:00.000-08:00

Here's a news report for you: 32 towns in Vermont voted yesterday to urge the impeachment of George Bush.

And how do the Democrats feel about this issue? Well, let's see:

The new Democratic-controlled Congress has steered clear of the subject, and Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold's call last year to censure Bush -- a step short of an impeachment -- found scant support on Capitol Hill, even among fellow Democrats. Vermont's congressional delegation has shown no serious interest in the idea.

But you knew that, didn't you?

Pay to play

2007-02-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle has written an article that describes the way the Hillary Clinton campaign, fundraising juggernaut that it is, has made it clear to potential donors that they should not expect any post-election favors to come their way if they spread their donations among other candidates than just Clinton herself.

"The Clintons have made it very clear that, in the political world, no dalliances are allowed. There is zero tolerance for that,'' Huffington laughed. "It's sheer loyalty versus sheer fear.''
And it's reinforced, she said by the "constant e-mails being sent out about the senator's poll numbers, along with the implication that 'if you give any money to anybody else, you're on the outs.' And that when she is the nominee, and when she's the president, she will remember."
A veteran California Democratic campaign strategist -- speaking only on condition of anonymity because of clients he represents -- agreed.
The message from the Clinton campaign, particularly its chairman, Terry McAuliffe, has been blunt, the strategist said, "that you're with us or against us. This isn't one of those races that you can max out (in contributions) to all the candidates. The message from Team Hillary is: We're ahead, we're going to be the nominee -- and we will remember who our friends are.''
But Chris Lehane, the White House spokesman for Bill Clinton, said remembering who your true-blue friends are is a must for a political winner.
"I think history is pretty clear that those folks who are loyal to the Clintons find the loyalty is really reciprocated -- and that is one of the reasons why so many people have stuck with them for so long,'' he said. "They really do respect and appreciate it when someone is loyal, and that manifests itself in many ways ... that is what good politicians do.''

Here we have an admission from a Clinton operative that the Democratic Party, not to mention our political system as a whole, has a deeply ingrained system of trading favors with those who give money to the campaign. It is a system of pay to play--and everyone knows it.

This, in a nutshell, illustrates why the Democratic Party cannot and will not be a progressive political force. Its ties to the corporate and wealthy interests that finance its campaigns is plain for all to see. One can try to excuse the Democrats by saying that it is the money-dominated system of campaign finance that forces them to behave in this way. But it doesn't really matter what their reasons are for their pay-to-play mentality. Regardless of why they do it, the fact is that they do it. And they all do it--everyone from Nancy Pelosi to former California Governor Gray Davis have invested great efforts towards cultivating close relationships with wealthy and corporate donors. The Clintons were clearly tied to corporate interests throughout Bill Clinton's tenure in the White House. That's life under the Democrats.

The point is simply this--to expect the Democrats to be a progressive political force in these conditions is clearly a pipe dream. They are beholden to the wealthy and to the corporate ruling class in this country. The fact that Democratic operatives like Chris LeHane admit that pay to play is a reality within their party and within our political system only serves to bolster this point. What we need is to change the system--and that is not something that Democrats are going to push for.

When corporate interests trump religious conservatism

2007-02-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, a conservative Christian, has bypassed the state legislature and ordered the vaccination of girls for the virus that causes cervical cancer, much to the chagrin of his constituents on the Religious Right. Why would he do this?

It seems that the pharmaceutical company Merck has been bankrolling an effort to get girls vaccinated, including providing funds to a group called Women in Government, and Perry has close ties with Merck:

Perry has several ties to Merck and Women in Government. One of the drug company's three lobbyists in Texas is Mike Toomey, Perry's former chief of staff. His current chief of staff's mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state director for Women in Government.

Perry also received $6,000 from Merck's political action committee during his re-election campaign.

I am in favor of vaccinating girls for HPV, so I would say that Perry has taken the right action in this case, but for reasons that say much about the interplay between corporate interests and religious conservatism as it relates to right wing politics. Ultimately, for this governor, his ties to corporate interests won out over his affiliation with the Religious Right. It is true that because drug companies provide a product that often serves public health needs, they and their shills may from time to time promote policies in individual cases that can support health needs against narrow minded opponents. But we should not be falling over ourselves praising Merck; the reality is that, for Merck, it is all about profits, not human needs. And for the governor of Texas, it is about his ties to corporate interests that, in this case, even trumps his religious convictions. Capitalism is always, ultimately, about profits. When religious conservatism runs smack up against this reality, which side ultimately wins?

Germany issues arrest warrant for CIA agents

2007-02-01T09:20:00.000-08:00

A German court has issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents who were involved in the kidnapping of a man who was kidnapped and then tortured in Afghanistan.

Bush's approval rating at a new low

2007-01-23T10:20:00.000-08:00

According to one poll, Bush's approval rating is now at 28%.

Pelosi proves once again that she's full of crap

2007-01-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

Nancy Pelosi, in an ABC News interview, proves once again why she and her party are worthless as an opposition force to George Bush and his war in Iraq.

In the interview, Diane Sawyer asked her, "Are you going to move to cut off funding for troops going into Iraq as part of the surge?"

In response, she said, "Democrats will never cut off funding for our troops when they are in harm's way."

This is, of course, complete nonsense. Pelosi has reiterated this excuse on other occasions as well. The best way to take the troops out of harm's way would be to cut off funding for the war so that they will come home. But that is one step the Democrats just won't take.

No comment

2007-01-09T17:28:00.000-08:00

From today's LA Times:

Steps to curb global warming. Tougher fuel economy standards for automobiles. Repeal of massive tax breaks for the oil industry.

Environmentalists are busy these days crafting their holiday wish-list, giddy about the prospects for success in the new Democratic-controlled Congress.

But industry groups are gearing up to fight, and their forces may include more than the usual Republican allies.

"We're confident that there are plenty of Democrats who know and understand us," said Charles Drevna of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Assn.

Justify?

2007-01-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

The LA Times reports the following information about the Democrats' response to the Bush administration's plans on the Iraq War.

First, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid call for "a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, starting in four to six months". Not an immediate withdrawal, mind you, but a staged one, so that more American troops can be killed during the continuing occupation through the first half of 2007.

Second, Pelosi once again "emphasized that Congress would not cut off funding for U.S. forces now in Iraq." The one tool at her disposal for ending this war is the one tool she refuses to wield.

Third, Pelosi said in response to Bush's plans to send more troops, "If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it." Justify it? What's to justify? Is she suggesting that if he gives a justification, she might go along with it?

Another skirmish in the class war, and guess who's winning

2007-01-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

The CEO of Home Depot is apparently pushed out the door after the company had a period of poor earnings. The sum of his severance package is worth $210 million.

The prevailing capitalist mythology is that high executive pay is necessary in order to attract competent managers. Isn't it funny then how incompetence gets rewarded as much as competence does? If executive salaries were really tied to competence, then CEOs would not be rewarded like this when they were pushed out the door.

Clearly, it's all about the ruling class grabbing all that it can for itself; the "competence" ruse is just a cover for the promotion of ruling class interests. The marketplace pressures that make these obscene payouts possible benefit the interests of the ruling class as a whole.

Ah, life under capitalism.

Reality sets in

2007-01-02T13:23:00.000-08:00

As an AP article from today points out, "Recent polls show Americans remain frustrated with Bush's handling of the war, but don't think Democrats have offered much of an alternative." The article, written by Anne Flaherty, suggests that the Democrats were able to avoid being associated in the public's mind with Bush's war (despite the fact that many Democrats have been cheerleaders for it) as long as they were the minority party. But now that they are in power, it is their war too.

In other words, reality is finally about to set in, as the Democrats now assume majority control of both houses of Congress. The problem is that the Democrats refuse to do the one thing that could end this war--cut off funding for it. Last month, Marc Sandalow of the San Francisco Chronicle reported this lame answer by Nancy Pelosi to the question of whether she would vote to cut off funding for the war:

"Absolutely not,'' Pelosi responded without hesitation. "As long as our troops are in harm's way, we will be there to support them."

Uh huh. As long as our troops are in harm's way, "we" (meaning the Democrats) will continue to vote to keep them in harm's way. Or something like that. You figure it out.

As Flaherty points out in her article,

Biden and other Democrats agree that Iraq will dominate much of their work next year, but contend they must not be blamed for a war run ultimately by the president. "This is President Bush's war," Biden said.

But political experts say the public might not agree.

"When you're in the minority, you don't have to do much more than criticize the status quo that wasn't working," said Norman Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. "When you're in the majority, people will look to you for leadership."

And it is that leadership that is lacking. The reality is that the Democrats continue not to offer any real alternative to the Bush policies in Iraq. They refuse to cut off funding for the war. Now that they have the purse strings in their own hands, the war has stopped being just Bush's war. It is their war, too.

Politics in the name of love

2006-12-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

Bono gets frustrated with the Democrats:

Meetings in Washington last Thursday between rock star Bono and Democrats, including Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada, yielded a nice photo-op but not much else, according to Bono.
Bono, the U2 frontman and anti-poverty activist, was on Capitol Hill to seek assurances that $1 billion in planned U.S. spending to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa would not be lost if Congress freezes agency budgets in the coming year.

Bono said he also was seeking to close a "commitment gap" between what President Bush has requested for anti-poverty efforts and what Congress has agreed to spend in the past.

After meetings with incoming Senate Majority Leader Reid, House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, Bono said he came away empty-handed.

"I'm alarmed we could not get a commitment from the Democratic leadership to prevent the loss of $1 billion in the continuing resolution," Bono said Thursday in a statement.

The charade of "bipartisanship"

2006-12-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

The Iraq Study Group has published its report. Regardless of how Bush reacts to it, Helen Thomas has offered a refreshing perspective on the matter. As reported in the SFGate politics blog: "Helen Thomas complains that the report contains nothing critical of President Bush. She says it avoids addressing the fact that the United States invaded Iraq, destroyed the country and killed tens of thousands of people."

I say, thank God for Helen Thomas's refreshingly forthright characterization of the war. A mismanaged war is not the same as an immoral and illegal invasion. Blaming a President for mismanagement is not the same as identifying him as a war criminal who should never have gone to war in the first place.

And given that James Baker, who helped Bush steal the 2000 election, was co-chair of the commission, and centrist Democrat Lee Hamilton was the other co-chair, should any of this come as a surprise? The entire composition of the panel, with its "bipartisan" composition (as if there were only two opinions on any issue, with both opinions naturally coming from the different factions of the corporate ruling class), and chosen for its "centrist" ideology, it was doubtful that the critique would address the kinds of issues that Helen Thomas brings up.

Those kinds of critiques will have to come from outside the Washington establishment--from people like Helen Thomas, Cindy Sheehan, and those on the left who point out that the war was not some well intentioned but mismanaged affair, but rather it was in fact an immoral act of US aggression.

Democrats and the Iraq War

2006-12-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

As this article published yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle points out, the Democrats, even those ostensibly "antiwar", are all talk and no action with respect to the Iraq War. The fact is that the Democrats, if they were serious about ending the war in Iraq, will now have a simple tool at their disposal as the majority party in Congress, a tool that was used late in the Vietnam War. They could simply refuse to fund the war.

But that isn't in the cards. For example congressman George Miller, a senior Democrat and strong ally of Nancy Pelosi, claims to be against the war. But rather than calling for an immediate withdrawal, he wants a slower withdrawal that will take six months--which will mean six more months of American soldiers dying in a needless conflict. Tellingly, the article reports that "Miller ruled out cutting off funding for the war." Well, surprise, surprise.

The article points out clearly that without being willing to use the option of cutting off funding, the Democrats' position on the Iraq War is simply one of meaningless posturing and utter impotence:

Bush can maintain course in Iraq if he insists on it, some believe.

"The only way for Democrats to undo that preference is to de-fund it, and they've said over and over again that they're not willing to do that," said Stephen Biddle, a senior defense policy fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former chair of military studies at the U.S. Army War College. "So what are they going to do? Kill him by op-ed column?"

Herein lies the problem. As usual, the Democrats who are portrayed in the media as "antiwar" are all about putting up a show, while in reality they are completely divorced from the priorities and values of the bona fide antiwar movement in this country.

Pelosi team tries to steer Democrats to the center

2006-11-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

The headline to this Boston Globe article reads, "Pelosi team tries to steer Democrats to the center". The article explains that Pelosi is "anxious to chart a centrist course with Democrats' new majority in Congress" and that she want to "rein in" her party's more progressive elements.

Some on the left have argued that the Democrats have to be supported despite their ruling class orientation because third parties don't work and because the first priority is to "stop Bush" at all costs. The theory behind this kind of lesser evilism is that we deal with the immediate danger first, then then worry about moving the country to the left at some point in the far off future. I do have to wonder at what future point anyone thinks the Democrats are going to take this magical, sudden turn to the left that keeps getting promised to us.

The richest just keep getting richer

2006-11-20T16:29:00.000-08:00

Here's a quote from an article in the Sunday New York Times:

The chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, H. Lee Scott Jr., made more than $15 million last year in cash, stock and options, according to the company’s annual report, an amount equivalent to roughly 850 times the pay of Wal-Mart’s average “associate” tending to shoppers on a superstore floor.

If that doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, here are some more statistics from that article:

"the top 0.1 percent of Americans in income receive nearly 7 percent of the total, the highest share since the 1920s."
"half of the income gains derived from the increase in productivity from 1966 to 2001 accrued to the top 10 percent of earners. The wages of typical American workers, meanwhile, barely grew at all."
"In 2000, the share of national income reaped by the top 1 percent of taxpayers reached 16.5 percent, its highest level since 1936, and higher than that of the next 4 percent of taxpayers combined."

Kind of makes you feel all fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

What the Clintons are up to

2006-11-20T16:21:00.000-08:00

Another reason why the Left should not be celebrating the Democrats victory in the mid-term elections can be found in the current issue of Newsweek magazine. Here we see Bill Clinton making clear that progressivism is one thing that will not be part of the Democratic Party agenda. According to the Newsweek article,

The beauty of the Democratic Party midterm victory, Clinton muses, is that voters said no to ideology. They wanted to move past fearmongering and demonizing toward true debate. "America rejected shorthand," he says. "People are thinking again." But they are not thinking of a set of liberal policy prescriptions. He argues that the election was about more than Iraq and corruption; it turned on the unmet needs of middle-class voters for whom the country "isn't working anymore." And yet no one is exactly sure how to make it work again. "The people didn't give Democrats a mandate," the former president cautions. "They gave us a chance."

But a chance to do what?...All that is clear so far is that "the chance" will inevitably take centrist form. Just as every Republican candidate has for decades been required to describe himself as a conservative, every Democratic candidate in 2008 will don the Clintonesque cloak of moderation. It's a vindication of Clinton's "Third Way" presidency...

Nothing could be plainer. As Newsweek points out so clearly, while Republicans push a right wing agenda, Democrats push a centrist agenda. Notice what is missing from that equation? You guessed it--no left wing agenda to be found anywhere.

You can't make this stuff up

2006-11-16T13:17:00.000-08:00

The USDA no longer says that people suffer from hunger; instead, they suffer from "very low food security."

2006 Election results: Both Parties moved to the right

2006-11-12T21:56:00.000-08:00

From an article in today's New York Times:

Whatever their views on the war, though, conservatives agree on aspect of the midterms: Republicans may have lost, but their ideology did not. Among other things, they argue that the midterms turned both the Republican and Democratic caucuses further to the right....

Democrats, meanwhile, have arguably grown more conservative as well. After two decades of defeats, they have largely dropped their former calls for major defense spending cuts, talk of a Canadian-style national health insurance, or campaigns for gun control. They work hard to avoid getting tagged as tax raisers, and since 2004 they have tried to open their doors to opponents of abortion as well.

So both parties moved to the right in the aftermath of this election. It seems that when the Democrats win, the Left loses. And that is the sad truth of American politics.

Meet the New Boss--Same as the Old Boss

2006-11-08T07:59:00.000-08:00

From Mark Sandalow's article in today's San Francisco Chronicle, the headline tells says it all: "Pelosi vows cooperation".

Pelosi was quoted in Sandalow's article as saying that the Democrats will be "working with the administration and the Republicans in Congress; working in partnership, not in partisanship."

Lest there is any doubt what that means, "Pelosi has waved off suggestions that Democrats use their new power to impeach the president, block funds from being sent to Iraq, or other bold steps..."

As the Times of London puts it: "But there are pitfalls for Democrats too. The party now has to actually run part of the US Government – and accept responsibility when things go wrong. This remarkable election will be the last time for a while when the American people will have only one party to blame for their ills."

Election Day

2006-11-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

Today is election day, and in honor of that, I would like to cite Joshua Frank's article, "Wake Me When It's Over", as the best commentary on the sad state of the 2006 elections that I've seen to date.

Politicians ignore poverty as an issue

2006-10-26T13:41:00.000-07:00

Reuters reports that the "war on poverty slips from U.S. election agenda":

Hurricane Katrina exposed an underclass of poor Americans to the rest of the world, but poverty has slipped off the agenda in the runup to midterm congressional elections next month.

Health care issue ignored by Governor candidates in California

2006-10-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

Today's San Francisco Chronicle reports that even though health care is a "key issue" for voters, the candidates of the two major parties in the gubernatorial race have largely ignored it.

This is hardly surprising. When a single payer universal health care bill was voted on by the state Assembly earlier in the year, Phil Angelides, the Democrat, refused to endorse it.

Democrats trying to "out-right the right"

2006-10-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

The headline from this New York Times article from Roger Cohen reads, "Hedging Their Bets, Democrats Lean Right".

The article suggest that Nancy Pelosi is "way to the left" of Democrats in many Congressional races. This is rather amusing, since, as we know, Pelosi is not particularly far to the left. The author also claims that Democrats are "smart" to move be moving rightward. These comments notwithstanding, Cohen does highlight the problem with the Democrats when he points out:

So from Tennessee to Indiana, from Virginia to Nebraska, from North Carolina to Ohio, Democratic candidates for the House or Senate or governor are breaking with the party line. In short, they're trying to out-right the right.

Given that the "party line" is not progressive to begin with, where this leaves the Democrats as a progressive force is obvious. Cohen cites a couple of examples:

In Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., the Democratic candidate who is in a neck-and-neck race for senator with the Republican Bob Corker, has made much of his vote for a tough anti-illegal immigration bill. In Ohio, a key battleground state that appears to be veering heavily Democrat, John Cranley, the Democratic challenger to the Republican representative Steve Chabot, has also suggested he's tougher on immigration.

Democrats like Brad Ellsworth, a candidate from Indiana for the House of Representatives, are making quite clear what their values are. "This election isn't about Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton," he says in a television ad. "Here's what I believe: I'm pro-life. I believe in a traditional marriage."

This attempt by the Democrats to "out-right the right" illustrate once again why the Left should not be supporting the Democratic Party.

Beware of what you wish for

2006-10-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

The Democrats must be rubbing their hands in glee these days, in the run up to the election. Yesterday's New York Times reported, for example, that polling data in "the bellweather state of Ohio" shows that the Republican party is in trouble there. Some are suggesting that this election might be the Democratic Party's equivalent to what happened in 1994, when Republicans took over the reins of Congressional power from the Democrats.

If the Democrats win control of Congress this year, it will not be because they have offered any kind of positive alternative to the Republicans. On the contrary, their deliberate ambiguity on Iraq, their lack of interest in proposing social legislation, and their general support of ruling class interests suggests that there will be little real change. Swing and independent voters seem to be turning to the Democrats out of disgust with the status quo, not out of any positive and principled program that the Democrats might be offering as an alternative.

On the other hand, it could be argued that US elections often have little to do with ideology anyway. Given the tweedledee-tweedledum nature of the two ruling factions of the American ruling class, when an opposition party sweeps the ruling party out of power, it has more to do with the inevitable pendulum swings of voter dissatisfaction with how those in power have squandered the promised opportunities afforded to them, than it does with any ideological shift. Those promised opportunities inevitably end in disappointment, and the voters swing back and forth between one failed party and another. This is the reality of American politics under the current duopoly of corporate-sponsored political parties.

It is easy, when the Democrats are out of power, to acquire this glow of support, but once they acquire power, they will suddenly be held accountable for what they do. Given the lack of ideological coherence on their part, the honeymoon will probably be short. The worst thing that could happen to the Democrats is the acquisition of a majority in the Congress. That glow that they've acquired from being powerless will quickly fade, and reality will set in.

It is interesting to see what has happened to the Republicans, after nearly six years in power. Even their evangelical supporters have become disillusioned. David Kuo, who was involved with Bush's "faith based initiatives" for a time, has now written a book titled Tempting Faith (great title, by the way), in which he reports that the Bush regime essentially used evangelicals for political gain. To which I say--duh. Bush's base of support, which includes his hard core constituency on the religious right, is starting to crumble.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian, which fancies itself as "progressive" but often endorses Democrats (although this year they have endorsed some Green candidates as well), interviewed Lewis Lapham in last week's issue. When asking him about a hypothetical Bush impeachment and an imagined ascent by Pelosi into the White House, Lapham responded,

Well, that wouldn't happen. I would not like to see Nancy Pelosi in the White House, if you're asking me that question, because I don't think her policies would be that much different from — I don't think they'd be extreme as Bush — but I don't think she has at heart the interests of the American people, if that's what you mean. She's a servant of the [ruling class] interests, as is [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein.

Bravo, Mr. Lapham. That is the reality of American politics. And the sooner progressives come to realize this, the better off they will be.

Workers are getting less

2006-10-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

The New York Times business section yesterday ran a story about the ever decreasing share of the economic pie that workers in the US (and elsewhere in the capitalist world) are getting. According to the article,

Job growth is starting to slow, and wages are barely keeping up with inflation. Five years into a relatively robust economic expansion, it’s understandable that many American workers feel that they are not getting their fair share of the pie.

In fact, the share of the economy devoted to workers' wages and benefits has eroded in the United States over the last five years.

The Times points out that the percentage of the economy that is paid out in wages "is perhaps the broadest measure of the workers' share of economic growth." And in the last five years, this percentage in the U.S. has dropped 2.5 percent. But here's the kicker. According to the article, "The recent declines are hardly atypical. While there have been some periods when the workers' share has risen, the overall trend since the 1970’s has been downward in most industrialized countries." In otherwards, for the past three decades, workers' have been getting less and less of the economic pie!

And why is this happening?

Economists have identified some important forces causing this erosion, but they are mostly perplexed by the long decline. "It’s a bit of a mystery why the labor share is falling so much," said Alan B. Krueger, a professor of economics at Princeton.

So, as the rich continue to get richer in today's capitalist economy, the rest of us are having to make due with less. What lesson can we draw from this about the capitalist system?

I'm shocked, I tell you--shocked!

2006-10-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that big corporations are giving large sums of money to Nancy Pelosi's campaign--as if this is a surprise. Says the Chronicle:

Corporate PACs that gave Pelosi more included those from San Francisco international engineering giant Bechtel. Donations from the company, which is located in Pelosi's district, went from $2,000 in the 2003-04 election cycle to $5,000 this year.

AT&T's donation went from $5,500 to $12,500 and Microsoft's from $6,000 to $10,000.

Employees of the Menlo Park-based venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have given Pelosi $10,500 so far this year, up from $1,000 in 2004.

Brokerage UBS gave $10,000 to Pelosi's committees in 2003-04 and doubled the donation to $20,000 this year.

The brokerage firm's political action committee shows exactly how business can be a bipartisan giver: Of the almost $1.5 million it has contributed thus far during the current election cycle, 48 percent has gone to Democrats and 49 percent to Republicans, data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows.

Thompson, former head of the business council of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has worked for years to dispel the notion that the Democrats are anti-business.

"You can be Democrat and understand business. We're working with them," he said.

And so there you have it from the horse's mouth--an admission that Democrats support corporate interests. Not that this comes as any surprise.

The Democrats and Iraq: Nothing New

2006-10-04T09:47:00.000-07:00

A Reuters article from today gives us the headline: Democrats use strategy of ambiguity on Iraq. To which I say--what else is new? The Democrats have been using this "strategy" ever since 2002. Their 2004 presidential platform refused to take a stand on the war in Iraq, saying instead that "people of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq".

Here is an extract from that Reuters article:

President George W. Bush and Republicans have taken a battering over Iraq, but it's not because voters believe Democrats have a clear strategy for ending the conflict and bringing American soldiers home.

"If you ask people out on the street what the message is, they wouldn't know," said Joan Lowery, a 60-year-old insurance company manager, at a recent Democratic fund-raiser in Cincinnati.

Lowery is not alone. Only a quarter of Americans think Democrats in the Congress have a clear plan for Iraq, far less than the 36 percent who believe the president has one, a USA Today/Gallup poll in mid-September found.

But experts said the lack of a clear Democratic plan made no difference at all to most voters. Ambiguity has been part of the Democratic strategy on Iraq all along and has worked quite well, they said. (emphasis added)

This tells us what we need to know about the Democratic Party. The Democrats are clearly not a progressive political force in American politics. A legitimately progressive party would serve as a voice of conscience against imperialism, occupation, empire, and war. The Democrats are not that party.

Interview with Hugo Chavez

2006-09-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

The following is an extract from an interview that Greg Palast conducted with Hugo Chavez. The entire article can be found here:

Q: Your opponents are saying that you are beginning a slow-motion dictatorship. Is that what we are seeing?

Hugo Chávez: They have been saying that for a long time. When they’re short of ideas, any excuse will do as a vehicle for lies. That is totally false. I would like to invite the citizens of Great Britain and the citizens of the U.S. and the citizens of the world to come here and walk freely through the streets of Venezuela, to talk to anyone they want, to watch television, to read the papers. We are building a true democracy, with human rights for everyone, social rights, education, health care, pensions, social security, and jobs.

Q: Some of your opponents are being charged with the crime of taking money from George Bush. Will you send them to jail?

Chávez: It’s not up to me to decide that. We have the institutions that do that. These people have admitted they have received money from the government of the United States. It’s up to the prosecutors to decide what to do, but the truth is that we can’t allow the U.S. to finance the destabilization of our country. What would happen if we financed somebody in the U.S. to destabilize the government of George Bush? They would go to prison, certainly.

Q: How do you respond to Bush’s charge that you are destabilizing the region and interfering in the elections of other Latin American countries?

Chávez: Mr. Bush is an illegitimate President. In Florida, his brother Jeb deleted many black voters from the electoral registers. So this President is the result of a fraud. Not only that, he is also currently applying a dictatorship in the U.S. People can be put in jail without being charged. They tap phones without court orders. They check what books people take out of public libraries. They arrested Cindy Sheehan because of a T-shirt she was wearing demanding the return of the troops from Iraq. They abuse blacks and Latinos. And if we are going to talk about meddling in other countries, then the U.S. is the champion of meddling in other people’s affairs. They invaded Guatemala, they overthrew Salvador Allende, invaded Panama and the Dominican Republic. They were involved in the coup d’état in Argentina thirty years ago.

Q: Is the U.S. interfering in your elections here?

Chávez: They have interfered for 200 years. They have tried to prevent us from winning the elections, they supported the coup d’état, they gave millions of dollars to the coup plotters, they supported the media, newspapers, outlaw movements, military intervention, and espionage. But here the empire is finished, and I believe that before the end of this century, it will be finished in the rest of the world. We will see the burial of the empire of the eagle.

Q: You don’t interfere in the elections of other nations in Latin America?

Chávez: Absolutely not. I concern myself with Venezuela. However, what’s going on now is that some rightwing movements are transforming me into a pawn in the domestic politics of their countries, by making statements that are groundless. About candidates like Morales [of Bolivia], for example. They said I financed the candidacy of President Lula [of Brazil], which is totally false. They said I financed the candidacy of Kirchner [of Argentina], which is totally false. In Mexico, recently, the rightwing party has used my image for its own profit. What’s happened is that in Latin America there is a turn to the left. Latin Americans have gotten tired of the Washington consensus—a neoliberalism that has aggravated misery and poverty.

Q: You have spent millions of dollars of your nation’s oil wealth throughout Latin America. Are you really helping these other nations or are you simply buying political support for your regime?

Chávez: We are brothers and sisters. That’s one of the reasons for the wrath of the empire. You know that Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world. And the biggest gas reserves in this hemisphere, the eighth in the world. Up until seven years ago, Venezuela was a U.S. oil colony. All of our oil was going up to the north, and the gas was being used by the U.S. and not by us. Now we are diversifying. Our oil is helping the poor. We are selling to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, some Central American countries, Uruguay, Argentina.

Q: And the Bronx?

Chávez: In the Bronx it is a donation. In all the cases I just mentioned before, it is trade. However, it’s not free trade, just fair commerce. We also have an international humanitarian fund as a result of oil revenues.

Q: Why did George Bush turn down your help for New Orleans after the hurricane?

Chávez: You should ask him, but from the very beginning of the terrible disaster of Katrina, our people in the U.S., like the president of CITGO, went to New Orleans to rescue people. We were in close contact by phone with Jesse Jackson. We hired buses. We got food and water. We tried to protect them; they are our brothers and sisters. Doesn’t matter if they are African, Asian, Cuban, whatever.

Democrats leap to Bush's defense

2006-09-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

Leading congressional Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have leapt to George Bush's defense after Hugo Chavez criticized him at the United Nations.

Kinda tells you everything you need to know about the Democratic Party, doesn't it? When anyone on the world stage makes the effort to point out the evils of US imperialism, does the Democratic Party stand firm on the side of the oppressed, or do they come to the defense of the oppressor?

Good terrorists versus bad terrorists

2006-09-18T15:33:00.000-07:00

This juicy item comes from Time magazine:

The Bush Administration prefers to paint the War on Terror in stark terms of good and evil, but the reality is not all terror suspects are considered equal. That much was clear on the same day that the nation solemnly recalled the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, when a federal magistrate recommended freeing a man being held on immigration charges who is also awaiting retrial in Venezuela for the bombing of a Cuban airliner 30 years ago that resulted in the death of all aboard, including the Cuban national fencing team.

Why is the Bush administration so unconcerned about terrorists like Posada? The answer is simple and obvious. As Time points out, "Posada, a self-styled freedom fighter, has been involved in anti-Castro activities for decades."

If you are an anti-Castro terrorist, according to the US government, then you are a good terrorist. I am sure that the families of the victims of that bombing of an airliner will be happy to know that the US government sees things that way.

Justice, American style

2006-09-17T23:52:00.000-07:00

From this AP story comes this tidbit of information:

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

MoveOn's double standard, part deux

2006-08-31T13:11:00.000-07:00

Here we find yet another fascinating bit of information about MoveOn's lack of credibility . The site factcheck.org has pointed out an interesting detail about their political ads:

MoveOn.org Political Action attacks three Republican House members in TV ads saying they were "caught red-handed" supporting money spent on Halliburton contracts and wasteful Iraq projects. But a majority of Democrats voted the same way on most of the same measures, usually overwhelmingly. MoveOn endorses one Democratic House member who voted the same way 10 out of 14 times, and two senators who voted for the same measures every time they reached a recorded vote in the Senate. (emphasis added)

Apparently you it's bad if you vote a certain way only when you are a Republican, but it is good when you vote that way and you are a Democrat. This is illustrative of the thinking that lies behind liberal loyalty to the Democratic Party.

How AT&T Bought the California Democratic Party

2006-08-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

Today's article by Matthew Yi of the San Francisco Chronicle describes in gory detail the process by which AT&T effectively bought the California legislature and got bill AB2987 passed over the objections of local governments and community activists. Yi reports that "phone companies that stand to gain the most from the legislation, especially AT&T, have pulled out all the stops in making their case before lawmakers, spending more than $200,000 a day during a three-month promotional blitz." The legislature in California is dominated by the Democratic party, and this sordid story serves as an object lesson in why the Democrats are a party of corporate interests.

Yi reports that during this three month period, which took place after state Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, a Democrat, held a news conference introducing the legislation,

AT&T and Verizon spent almost $19.7 million to influence the vote on AB2987, an amount that astounds Capitol veterans.

AT&T led the way by spending nearly $18 million on lobbyists; television, radio and newspaper advertising; wining and dining lawmakers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium; and Lakers basketball tickets for the chairwoman of the Senate committee that held hearings on the legislation, records show.

A few weeks after Núñez's news conference, AT&T co-hosted a golf tournament at Pebble Beach that helped the speaker raise $1.7 million for the state Democratic Party.

Yi also points out:

Despite initial opposition by cable companies and continuing objection from local governments and consumer groups, which say the increased competition for video service won't lower prices, the legislation has yet to receive a single "no" vote during committee and floor votes. Final votes are expected on the bill this week.

"This appears to be an example of special interest(s) using their financial clout to buy public policy," said Ned Wigglesworth, policy advocate of California Common Cause, a nonprofit government watchdog group. "If you look up 'juiced bill' in the dictionary, this would be the definition."

Here we see how the Democratic Party serves the interests of its corporate sponsors. Let this be a reminder to anyone who thinks that the Democratic Party is a "progressive" force in American politics.

The rich get richer

2006-08-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

Clive Crook, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, is no socialist. On the contrary, he has largely been an apologist for the capitalist system; one article that he wrote for the magazine in 2005, for example, complains that capitalism gets an undeserved bum rap. And yet, interestingly enough, in the current issue of the magazine, he has written an article that serves as a devastating critique of modern capitalism. Crook points out that, in contemporary American capitalism, almost all of the productivity gains in the last few decades have gone towards giant salary increases for the richest people. Our increased productivity as workers is not, in other words, resulting in more income for us--it is only serving to pad the pocketbooks of the very wealthy.

Crook writes:

Between 1966 and 2001, median wage and salary income increased by just 11 percent, after inflation. Income at the 90th percentile...increased nearly six times as much--by 58 percent. At the 99th percentile..., the rise was 121 percent. At the 99.9th percentile..., it was 236 percent. And at the 99.99th percentile(...representing the 13,000 highest-paid workers in the American economy), the rise was 617 percent.

Crook points out that "the dramatic rise in the share of national income earned by the very rich is due not to the strength of their investment portfolios but to their growing share of labor income." What is going on here? According to Crook,

Productivity growth has always been seen as perhaps the single most important indicator of rising, broad-based prosperity. But remarkable growth in top-end pay, together with the relative constancy of labor's overall share of income, has an obvious implication: the highest earners are now capturing most of the gain in national income caused by economy-wide productivity growth.

It might be easy to blame all of this on the Bush administration. But Crook cites a study that found that this trend preceded George Bush. In fact, from 1997 to 2001--when Bill Clinton was president--"the top 1 percent captured far more of the real national gain in wage and salary income than did the bottom 50 percent."

This is the reality of modern capitalism--the rich get richer.

Anti-Capitalism Breakfast Cereal

2006-08-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

From Youtube:

MoveOn, liberalism, and the Democratic Party

2006-08-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Norman Solomon has written an article in Counterpunch that highlights the blatant inconsistency in of MoveOn's approach towards Democratic Party politicians. While they joined in with other anti-Lieberman liberals to defeat him in the Connecticut primary, MoveOn is remarkably silent about another prowar Democratic Senator, Hillary Clinton. Clinton has an upcoming primary election in New York, and she is facing an antiwar challenger. But her challenger, Jonathon Tasini, is in fact more seriously antiwar than Lamont. Yet all the liberal energy was focused on supporting Lamont in Connecticut, while ignoring the Tasini campaign.

Any attempt at "reforming" the Democratic Party mysteriously stops when it comes to challenging Hillary Clinton. Or is it so mysterious? Was Lieberman just a scapegoat by liberals who are only willing to go so far in "reforming" the Democratic Party?

I would suggest that for many Democrats, criticizing Hillary Clinton hits a little too close to home. She is the spouse of the last Democratic Party president to win an election, and liberals who are so solidly attached to the Democratic Party are largely willing to overlook his triangulation, his corporate whoring, and his attacks against the poor. Her association with Bill Clinton makes her immune, at least to some degree, to liberal objections to her warmongering. Although it is an open question as to whether she can win a presidential election, the fact that her husband won twice gives her a glow to many liberals who would rather support a winning Presidential candidate than support progressive politics. The willingness to overlook Hillary Clinton's failings really seems to boil down to loyalty to the Democratic Party. It is a little too discomforting for some to openly condemn a politician who is so intimately associated with recent electoral fortunes of the party they love. The fact that she, in many ways, epitomizes the modern Democratic Party, and everything that is wrong with it, just gets overlooked in the process.

Ned Lamont, Wal-Mart stockholder

2006-08-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

Many liberals have lined up to support Ned Lamont's challenge to Joe Lieberman in the upcoming Democratic Party primary. Much of this support is based on Lamont's differences with Lieberman over the Iraq war.

Yet what is interesting about this election is that it highlights one of the fundamental problems with contemporary liberalism. Liberals are willing to support Ned Lamont--a millionaire capitalist who is worth, according to Time magazine, "between $90 million and $300 million", and who, it seems, owns up to $30,000 worth of Wal-Mart stock.

Rather than looking to Lieberman's faults as a symptom of a deeper problem with the Democratic Party, many liberals continue to see him as an aberration, and hope that some "better" Democrat will solve their problems. Loyalty, unfortunately, isn't always a virtue. Here we have a party that has time and time again demonstrated itself to be so utterly corrupt and bereft of ideas. It is a party that demonstrates repeatedly a stark absence of concern about corporate power and the burdensome consequences of capitalism for working people.

For what it's worth, as far as I can tell, the only candidate outside the duopoly who is running for Senate in Connecticut is Ralph Ferrucci of the Green Party.

American Capitalism in the 21st Century

2006-07-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

The headline from a University of Michigan press release reads, "Consumer confidence stabilizes as gap widens between income groups".

Now here is the juicy bit from this article:

"Higher prices have driven a wedge between upper and lower income households that now extends well beyond their personal financial situation," according to Richard Curtin, the Director of the University of Michigan's Survey of Consumers. Comparing households in the lower one-third of the income distribution with those in the top third, the difference in the overall measure of consumer sentiment was larger than any time since the early 1980's. "Households in the bottom third of the income distribution held significantly more negative views about their own financial prospects as well as a more negative outlook for employment and economic growth," Curtin explained.

The gap between income groups is quite different than anything observed in the prior half century. In the past, the gap grew in size immediately following a recession, as upper income households were quicker to recognize and benefit from an improving economy. "The current situation is exactly the opposite as the gap is now due to lower income households voicing much less favorable economic expectations when the economy is closer to the expansion's peak," Curtin noted.

Thus we have yet another example of how our so-called "booming economy" is booming considerably more for some people than for others. The trend in modern American capitalism is for the rich to grow richer, and the poor to get poorer. Rising tides aren't lifting all boats; they are only lifting the luxury yachts, while the beaten up canoes are slowly filling with water and starting to sink. But you knew that, didn't you?

A study in contrasts

2006-07-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

The headline reads, "Pay Raises Struggle to Outpace Inflation". But if you read the article, you find that, in fact, pay raises may be losing that struggle. According to AP Business Writer Madlen Read, "U.S. employers are planning to increase base salaries by 3.7 percent this year", but "the Labor Department's overall Consumer Price Index...is on pace for a 4.7 percent rise for 2006."

In real terms, that means that workers are making less money than they were before.

Meanwhile, back in April, a study was published reporting that, according to the CNN headline, "Bush tax cuts making rich richer" and "the wealthiest Americans are reaping huge gains from reduced taxes on investment income".

Funny how that works.

Cindy Sheehan

2006-07-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

Cindy Sheehan has bought a 5-acre plot of land in Crawford, Texas. This is in advance of her antiwar vigil in Crawford that will take place in late August and early September. Way to go, Cindy!

The problem with iPods

2006-07-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking about buying an iPod, you might want to consider that they are being manufactured by sweatshop labor.

Pelosi kowtows to Wall Street capitalists

2006-07-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal reports that Nancy Pelosi has told her capitalist friends in Wall Street that "if Democrats succeed next year in rolling back President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the money would be used to reduce the federal deficit -- not for new spending."

Thus Pelosi assures Wall Street that no progressive social programs will come out of the Democratic Party. Not surprising, is it? Nor is it surprising that Pelosi is even going out of her way to reassure Wall Street that she will not threaten the interests of the ruling class or that she will do nothing to advance the interests of American's less privileged. She is clearly continuing in the Clintonian tradition when she caters to Wall Street. One thing is certain: the Democrats will not serve as a progressive force in Washington if they take control of the House.

Democratic controlled legislature bows to oil lobbyists

2006-07-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a non-shocker of a news item--it seems that Democratic legislators in California are beholden to the oil industry.

According to this story in today's San Francisco Chronicle, "oil company lobbyists have helped tie up or kill almost a dozen bills considered hostile to the industry, including a plan to tax windfall profits and a proposal to regulate refineries as public utilities."

Which party controls the California legislature? You guessed it--the Democrats. The article reports:

Backed by profits last year that ran into the billions of dollars, oil giants like Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Co. and Occidental Petroleum -- all active in California politics -- have almost unlimited resources to throw into political campaigns.

Chevron, for example, spent $1.2 million in political contributions in 2005 and $1.7 million in 2004. So far, the company has donated $57,000 this year to candidates but has put an additional $4 million into an effort to help defeat a ballot measure that would tax oil production to pay for alternative-fuel programs.

Perhaps what is funniest about this is the reaction of a spokesman for a consumer group, who complained, "Democrats are supposed to care about people who are being forced to choose between filling up their cars and having more food on the table. It is insane that in a state where Democrats control both houses of the Legislature, they can't attack this issue." The naivete that lies behind that statement speaks volumes.

Combating this kind of faulty belief that the Democrats speak for the common folk, rather than for big business, is the biggest challenge facing the left today. When a consumer advocate who is presented with a clear example of how the Democratic party favors big business over the interests of consumers simply tries to resolve this discrepancy between expectation and reality by declaring it "insane", we can see that we have a long way to go.

The task facing the left is clear--we must convince people that the Democratic Party is simply one of the two parties of the duopoly that governs on behalf of the capitalist ruling class. Only by doing that can we ever hope to free this country of its current political morass.

Democrats are up to their usual tricks

2006-07-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

I ran across some interesting blog entries here and here regarding an attempt by the Democratic Party in Illinois to keep a socialist candidate off the ballot.

The Democrats, as we can see, will never fail at resorting to undemocratic tactics to keep left wing challengers from running for office.

Boxer supports Lieberman

2006-07-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

According to this item from the SFGate politics blog, Barbara Boxer plans to campaign on behalf of her Senate colleague, the prowar imperialist Joe Lieberman.

This illustrates the point that when you sign on to the Democratic Party, you sign on to the whole package. Although Boxer is supposedly a more "progressive" member of the Senate, the reality is that, for professional politicians within the Democratic Party, loyalty to the party apparatus is always more important than any issue. Boxer's stand on the Iraq War is not as progressive as many liberals characterize it anyway, since she has not called for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and her failing on this issue is a telling sign of how off base the Democrats really are. Still, her support for an outright hawk like Lieberman only further illustrates this point. In fact, it belies the myth that many progressives hold onto when they think that somehow you can separate "good" Democrats from "bad" ones. When you support a Democratic Party politician, you have thrown your lot with the party apparatus. You can't separate Democratic Party politicians from their party, and Boxer's support for Lieberman illustrates this beautifully.

AT&T and the California Democratic Party

2006-06-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

A story in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle reports that the California State Assembly unanimously voted for a bill that gave AT&T exactly what it wanted in the way of a telephone and cable deregulation bill. Not a single Democrat voted against this bill.

As the article points out:

How did the phone companies get such royal treatment from legislators? Was it simply that, as Ken McNeely, president of AT&T California, said after the vote, "It's hard to be against competition and choice for consumers." Hardly. As usual, it was about money.

AT&T's wooing of the bill's sponsor, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, included hosting a Pebble Beach golf fundraiser for Núñez's Assembly Democrats, raising $1.7 million for their re-election. Perhaps not coincidentally, Núñez threw out the opening pitch at the Giants' AT&T Park on Monday.

This is, by the way, the same AT&T that now claims that its customers have no right to privacy involving their personal data.

Here we have once again an example cozy relationship between the Democratic Party and its corporate sponsors.

Oh, the joys of American capitalism

2006-06-22T10:50:00.000-07:00

According to this Reuters article,

Chief executive officers in the United States earned 262 times the pay of an average worker in 2005, the second-highest level in the 40 years for which there is data, a nonprofit think-tank said on Wednesday.

In fact, a CEO earned more in one workday than an average worker earned in 52 weeks, said the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

The typical worker's compensation averaged just under $42,000 for the year, while the average CEO brought home almost $11 million, EPI said.

The AT&T Death Star strikes again

2006-06-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

David Lazarus explains why AT&T customers can expect no right to privacy.

Corporate Democrats

2006-06-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a quote from an article that appeared on the San Francisco Bay Guardian's web site:

If you wonder why things never change in Washington, look no further than a report released yesterday by Russ Baker's Real News Project (www.realnews.org).

The report documents 25 corporate Democrats -- corporate consultants with strong ties to the Democratic Party leadership inside the beltway.

"Although establishment Democrats are, by and large, still more skeptical of the corporate agenda than Republicans, they have become strikingly less so," Baker writes. "This has led to the creation of a kind of permanent corporate governance structure that is truly bipartisan. Many of the firms employing Democratic operatives have them working side-by-side with Republicans -- often the same Republicans they go up against in political campaigns. In some cases, a so-called conservative Republican and a so-called liberal Democrat are full partners in the same firm."

I would take issue with the statement that establishment Democrats are "more skeptical of the corporate agenda than Republicans"--I see no evidence of that, and in fact the evidence shows that establishment Democrats are just as much in bed with big business as the Republicans are--but otherwise this article does show that even some of the publications that regularly shill for the Democrats (as the Guardian often does) are starting to show concern about the close relationship between Democrats and corporate interests.

Senate Democrats and the Iraq War

2006-06-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

The Senate rejected by a vote of 93-6 a call for withdrawing US troops by the end of the year.

In reality, the troops should be withdrawn sooner than that--immediately, in my view; but the Democrats managed to overwhelmingly cast their votes with the Republicans. The AP article reports that "Democrats decried the debate as a sham. They said Republicans promised an open discussion but, instead, stacked the deck in their own favor by limiting debate to 10 hours and barring any amendments." Nevertheless, what kind of amendments would the Democrats offer? In fact, the article points out,

In both the House and Senate, Democrats appear to be divided into three camps. Some want troops to leave Iraq this year. Others object to setting any kind of timetable. A number of them want the United States to start redeploying forces by year's end but don't want to set a date when all troops should be out.

The Democrats don't know what they stand for with respect to the war. Yet, among all those diverse opinions, notice that none of them said anything about an immediate withdrawal from Iraq; the best we can hope from them is a continuation of the occupation and war for another six months.

Contrast that with what third party left wing candidacies are advocating. For example, Todd Chretien, the Green Party candidate running against Diane Feinstein for the US Senate in California, has this to say on his web site: "If elected, my first act will be to introduce a Senate bill to bring all the troops home immediately". (Emphasis added.) Note his use of the word "immediately". Marsha Feinland is running against Feinstein on the Peace & Freedom party ticket; her party's website has this to say: "The Peace and Freedom Party calls for an immediate end to the military occupation of Iraq, the withdrawal and return of all U.S. troops, and the immediate release of all prisoners of war and detained civilians." (Emphasis added.) Note again the use of the word "immediate".

The lesson is clear: if leftists want to vote for peace in Iraq, they should not cast their vote for the Democrats.

Democrats and same-sex marriage

2006-06-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a front page story today with the headline, "Gays want more from Dems on marriage: Proposed same-sex bans seen as test".

The article reports that Democrats have responded to the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages by offering technical, legalistic arguments about the Federal government leaving the issue of marriage to the states, instead of opposing the amendment on a principled basis as an infringement of human rights.

For example, the Chronicle reports:

[D]uring last week's debate, most Democratic senators argued only that Congress should be confronting more important issues like the economy and the Iraq war; they did not specifically address same-sex marriage. When asked later for Sen. Dianne Feinstein's position on same-sex marriage, a spokesman said Feinstein's speech was her only statement on the topic.

"Her only statement on the topic"--in other words, she was ducking the question. This is typical of the Democratic Party, and it has been their strategy at least going back to the 2004 election, when the party platform opposed a constitutional amendment on the strictly legalistic grounds that this would be an intrusion on the prerogrative of states to regulate marriages. It has been the party strategy to avoid taking a principled stand on this issue by opposing the amendment so as to satisfy gay activists and liberals, without at the same time coming out strongly for gay rights and thus alienating right wing Christian voters. Of course, by doing this, they managed to satisfy no one.

Gay Activists who hold high hopes for the Democratic Party should have learned their lesson from the 2004 Democratic Party platform. Nothing has changed, and the Democratic Party refuses to take an unequivocable stand for human rights.

The CIA and Nazis

2006-06-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a lovely little news item:

Determined to win the Cold War, the CIA kept quiet about the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s for fear he might expose undercover anticommunist efforts in West Germany, according to documents released Tuesday.

The end of the telephone tax

2006-06-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

The decision by the U.S. Treasury a few weeks ago to end the long distance telephone tax signals the end of an era for war tax protestors. I never personally participated war tax resistance. In a way I have always felt that the military budget is paid for out of the general fund anyway, so it isn't like you are really keeping any money from the Pentagon when you don't pay a part of your tax bill, or that you have a choice in where your tax money gets spent. The budget is not a cafeteria, after all. That being said, I sympathize in principle with those who have engaged in war tax resistance, not the least because it holds value as a symbolic gesture and as an act of civil disobedience. Years ago, during the Reagan era, I went to a seminar on the subject of war tax resistance, to learn more about the subject. I learned at the time that the telephone tax was singled out as a target of war tax resistance because it was instituted during the Spanish-American war as a means of financing it, and since that time has served as a convenient and simple way of expressing opposition to war. Thus many protestors withheld the federal tax from their monthly telephone bill payments.

This site provides a history of war tax resistance, and it includes the following bit of information:

A suggestion in 1966 to form a mass movement around the refusal to pay the (at that time) 10 percent telephone tax was given an initial boost by Chicago tax resister Karl Meyer. This was followed by War Resisters League developing a national campaign in the late 1960s to encourage refusal to pay the telephone tax.

Forty years later, the US is fighting yet a new imperialist war overseas. David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle reported last year that, this method of protest had once again become popular among some protestors against the Iraq war.

Now this method of protest is no longer available, but it obviously has no effect on US foreign policy; the US government still has plenty of other means at its disposal for funding its military adventures in Iraq and elsewhere. Life goes on, and war goes on as well.

The Laughable Reality of Democratic Party Conventions

2006-06-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

At the New York Democratic Party convention, Hillary Clinton won the endorsement of her party faithful for relection to the US Senate. While this should come as no surprise, the details surrounding this non-event serve as an interesting object lesson in the futility of any effort by the left in trying to reform the Democratic Party.

According to the Newsday article on this subject,

Backstage, Clinton's aides and consultants frantically beat back anti-war candidate Jonathan Tasini's attempt to get the 10 delegate signatures needed to place his name on the ballot. A Tasini victory would have forced an embarrassing three-hour roll call vote and tarnished a day that was intended to be a seamless coronation for Clinton.

Tasini eventually dropped his bid after delegates including Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., introduced a resolution denouncing the "error of going to war illegally."

Clinton, whose October 2002 support of the Bush administration's war resolution has prompted a backlash among anti-war groups, had no comment on the resolution, which passed in a voice vote after most delegates had already left.

This passage illustrates the fact that we all know about Democratic Party conventions--they are stage managed events, essentially coronations rather than real conventions. How horrible--the thought of actually having a roll call vote at a convention! We can't have that, now can we? The Quixotic attempt by Tasini to challenge Clinton over the war from within the Democratic Party was an obviously doomed effort. While the Iraq War continues to be the single most pressing issue in national politics, the Democratic establishment simply treats the issue as unimportant--just as it did in the 2004 election, when its platform essentially said that you can take any position you want to on the war.

The article also notes:

Apart from condemning the invasion, the resolution echoed Clinton's recent statements on Iraq, calling for the safe withdrawal of U.S. troops once the country is stabilized.

This is also the typical Democratic Party position on the Iraq War--rather than calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, the party squirms its way into a meaningless call for a withdrawal at some future, unspecified date--"once the country is stabilized", which obviously won't be for a very long time, given that the presence of US troops is actually destabilizing it. But Tasini was willing to accept the worthless bone that they threw him, a resolution criticizing the decision of having gone to war, which might be useful for historical discussion but which doesn't solve the problem of what to do about the troops right now. Tasini's efforts at issuing a challenge within the Democratic Party have proved to be a wasted effort, and by accepting that compromise he merely played right into the hands of the political machine that governs the party.

While a third party challenge from the Left is obviously unlikely to have any success against Clinton in the November election, at least such a challenge will not be tainted by participation in a stage managed coronation that is corrupt and undemocratic. Rather than participate in such a process, it is better to challenge it from without and work towards building a new movement that rejects out of hand the coronation of warmongers.

Quote of the Day

2006-06-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

"I'd rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith. We don't want those kinds of fans."

-- Martie Maguire of the Dixie Chicks

Enron--the future of capitalism

2006-05-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

An article in the Sunday New York Times pointed out that the convictions of Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling did not signal an end to the kind of unbridled free market capitalism that led to their downfall. On the contrary:

For better or worse, the trend toward deregulation and freer markets is not likely to reverse anytime soon in the United States.

"Enron did pioneer a lot of concepts that will be here with us for a long time to come--the trading of commodities that had never been traded before," said James Chanos, a hedge-fund manager. Mr. Chanos was among the first investors to say publicly that Enron was a house of cards propped up by fraudulent accounting. "There won't be any going back to saying we won't trade electricity."

Enron's accounting methods may have been fraudulent, but otherwise there is little to distinguish its corporate culture of unbridled greed from much of contemporary capitalism.

Lessons From The California Democratic Convention

2006-05-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

An interesting article about the recent California Democratic Party convention, from LA Weekly, brilliantly captures the essence of what is wrong with the Democratic Party, as well as the naivete of its legions of liberal activists.

The article describes the huge disconnect between the reformist impulses of liberal delegates within the party and the reality of a stage-managed convention, run by and for pro-corporate politicians. For example:

As the convention was breaking up on Sunday, I couldn't help but chuckle--partly in sympathy but partly in amazement --at the loud laments from some of the self-proclaimed liberals (like the Progressive Democrats of America) who just couldn't believe that the party voted down most of its last-minute proposals. The PDAers were walking around shell-shocked because the party and organized labor had endorsed the re-election of the rather conservative South Bay Congresswoman Jane Harman over her lefty challenger Marcy Winograd. The latter's supporters had diligently gathered up the hundreds of signatures necessary to re-float an agenda item before the convention, and were seeking to overturn the Harman endorsement. What they got was an express railroad ticket, the convention chair rushing the measure through an unaccountable 'nay' voice-vote.

These progressive folks seem to forget that in party conventions, the delegates are there strictly as unpaid extras in what is otherwise a tightly scripted, totally predetermined political reality show. In my experience, Republican delegates to both national and state party conventions seem to know and readily accept this uncomfortable fact about American party politics. The Republican delegates just don't care, and seem more than happy to just sit there with their plastic boaters and rubber elephant ears, clapping on cue in exchange for the parties, free buffets and open bars.

But Democratic delegates--often earnest teachers and oh-so-serious community activists--seem permanently embarked on a crusade to convince themselves that this is really their party, hence the nonstop yammering about taking it back, turning it around, taking it over, etc., etc., etc. I've been watching this now-ritual kabuki for my entire adulthood (stretching back to McGovern '72) and nothing, really, seems to change. I actually met shaking and weeping delegates who were outraged--outraged, I tell you--after the move to endorse Winograd was gaveled down on Sunday morning. Ah.

The article then discusses in detail some of the key players in the corporate sponsored convention, starting with one who wasn't able to attend: Speaker of the Assembly Fabian Nunez, who was a big supporter of AT&T's telecommunications interests, couldn't attend because he was at Pebble Beach being "feted" by--you guessed it, AT&T. And because the Party Chairman couldn't be there, they gave the party podium to corporate lobbyist Willie Brown, who had been paid by the pharmaceutical industry to oppose a pro-consumer ballot measure last year.

This is all interesting reading--and par for the course in understanding not just how corrupt and morally bankrupt the Democratic Party is, but how self-destructive progressives are when they bury themselves inside the Democratic Party--which many on the left correctly identify as the graveyard of progressive social movements.

What is particularly ironic about all of this is that the author of this article, who embraced the ABB argument in supporting Kerry in 2004, has thus exemplified many of the same qualities that he criticizes among the liberal activists at the convention. Amazingly, the same person who complains about those "embarked on a crusade to convince themselves that this is really their party" has himself embraced that same party. Which perhaps illustrates how entrenched the duopoly mentality is--even many of those who sharply critique it nevertheless, when all is said and done, embrace it themselves anyway.

American Democracy and Partisan Politics

2006-05-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's New York Times included an article that suggested that it might be strategically more beneficial for the Democrats not to win a Congressional majority in the 2006 elections. According to this argument, it actually benefits the Democrats not to be a position of sharing power, because the Republican monopoly on power will allow them to continue to hang themselves and further damage their popularity on up to the 2008 Presidential elections.

There is an amazing core of cynical truth that lies behind that proposition. Hope springs eternal, but a hard dose of reality can always shatter that hope. What we see in our current political system is that, as long as a party is out of power, it can rely on the "grass is always greener" sentiment that begins to blossom among many voters with respect to the party that governs. The longer that a party stays out of power, the better it starts to look. By contrast, the longer a party stays in power, the worse it starts to look. The reality of a party being in power has a way of making a party lose its luster; this in part why no single party maintains a monopoly on power in Western parliamentary democracies, and that is why this process is often described as a kind of pendulum swing.

Given this process, the Democrats know that the moment they begin to share or attain power, the clock on their pendulum starts ticking. The longer they stay out of power, the more rose colored the glasses that some voters start to see them through. This phenomenon exists despite the continued inability of the Democrats to offer a real opposition to the Republicans on a host of issues. In fact, it is really the tweedledee and tweedledum nature of our two-party system that contributes to this pendulum process. Many swing and independent voters keep hoping that they will see a real difference when they change the parties in power; but because it is business as usual, they then become disillusioned, and over time they turn their sights back to the party they had voted out of power. Eventually, this other party switches roles from opposition to governing party, and the cycle of disillusionment begins all over again.

The hope of some Democrats that they will need to time very carefully the pendulum swing says much of the cynical nature of politics as being more about a contest for power between two opportunistic factions of the ruling class and less about the battle of ideas. And herein lies a fundamental problem with our political system, which is all about the trappings of democracy rather than the reality.

There are some interesting corollaries to the pendulum understanding of elections in the quasi-democracy of American politics. For example, although Democratic Party apologists in 2004 argued for the ABB philosophy to justify supporting Kerry that year, the loss of the Democrats in that election actually helped them in 2006 or 2008 by giving more momentum to a reversal of the pendulum swing. Bush's poll numbers are, unlike in 2004, at rock bottom, and, his legislative agenda has faltered as his "political capital" withered to nothing. The Democrats are probably better poised to win back Congress in 2006 than they otherwise would have been. The worse Bush looks, the greener the Democratic grass looks to some voters--and Bush just keeps looking worse, the longer he and his party maintain a monopoly on power. A Kerry presidency would have introduced a cold splash of reality to the whole process. This is something that some Democratic Party strategists seem to realize at some level even if they would never articulate it, which is why they want to delay the pendulum swing another two years.

Another interesting consequence that emerges from this pendulum understanding is that even if Gore had won in 2000, or Kerry would have won in 2004, eventually, at some point in the future, a Republican would win the Presidency. If we don't have Bush in 2004, we simply have a Bush clone from his party at some point in the future. Without any real alternative movement from the Left to challenge the Bush and Democratic agendas and thus push the political center leftward, without countervailing pressure from the Left against both parties of the duopoly, and without a vision of how to challenge the lack of genuine democracy in our electoral, political, and economic system, the political agenda of the Bushites is simply bound to win back the White House--if not in 2004, then at some future election. The ABB strategy was a failure because it focused on this election--at all costs--rather than proposing a long term strategy of looking beyond the narrow swings of the duopoly pendulum. The ABB strategy was caught up in the pendulum paradigm and never looked beyond it.

The political pendulum of American politics is dependent on the realities of a political system that is only a shadow of the democracy that it claims to be. Until we introduce real democracy into the American political system--radical democracy that is founded on the self-organized people taking power from the corporate ruling class--we will never have real political change. This means creating new political institutions from the bottom up. Until that happens, tweedledee and tweedledum will do their tango on the dance floor of American politics, back and forth, back and forth--with all the attendant voter disillusionment and apathy, as well as desperate hopes for real and meaningful change that never come to fruition.

Polarization

2006-05-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

Michael J. Smith has written an excellent post on the bizarre but common media characterization of a so-called "polarization" in American politics between two political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, that are in so many ways so much alike.

Hillary Clinton and Rupert Murdoch

2006-05-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports that Rupert Murdoch will be giving a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton.

'Nuff said.

US Foreign Policy

2006-05-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

Today's column by Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle issues a fairly typical liberal criticism of Bush's foreign policy. In his column, Carroll contrasts contemporary US actions with the supposedly halcyon days of yore. He writes:

...once upon a time, we were the leading internationalist nation in the world. We strongly supported the formation of the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We were serious about promoting humane behavior around the world. We preferred peace to war. We did not automatically assume that all foreigners were out to get us.

Now what we care about is "defending America's interests."

One has to wonder what time in history Carroll thinks he is referring to. While it is true that the US has often promoted various international organizations when it served US imperial interests, it is also true that the US has always acted unilaterally against other nations whenever it felt like it, in order to promote "America's interests" (which, of course, meant the interests of US capitalism). From coups that overthrew foreign democracies and replaced them with dictatorships (Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, and Chile 1973), to military invasions (Dominican Republic 1964, Grenada 1983), to unilateral assertions of supremacy over other sovereign nations (the Platt Amendment), to wars of aggression (Vietnam, Iraq), the story has been the same.

Like many liberals, Carroll focuses on the crimes of the Bush administration and then turns a blind eye to the reality that imperial foreign policy has always been a bipartisan reality. Bush may be more brazen about it than some, but there is no qualitative change in foreign policy. In fact, the Democrats have always been keen to support imperialism themselves. Kerry's foreign policy, for example, is little different from Bush's, and in fact Kerry was labeled "the newest neocon" by columnist William Safire for precisely that reason. In 2002, Democrats were eager to line up behind Bush's war threats against Iraq, and they are now doing the same thing against Iran.

The reality is that the crimes of US imperialism can be laid squarely on the shoulder of both parties of the governing duopoly.

The state of American health care

2006-05-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a headline from an AP article published today: "U.S. Newborn Survival Rate Ranks Low". The opening sentence of the article reads: "America may be the world's superpower, but its survival rate for newborn babies ranks near the bottom among modern nations, better only than Latvia."

The headline says it all

2006-05-03T15:35:00.000-07:00

Today's San Francisco Chronicle features this headline about the Republican governor and the two Democrats who are vying for for their party's nomination to run against him:

"Candidates are strangely quiet as voices of immigrants grow
During the rallies, Schwarzenegger left the state -- and neither Angelides nor Westly issued a statement"

Next to the article, on the front page, are photographs of all three, with these comments: "Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-born naturalized American", "Steve Westly is married to an immigrant born in China", and "Phil Angelides is the son and grandson of Greek immigrants.

The unwillingness of any of the candidates, especially the Democrats, to take a principled stand on this issue speaks volumes. In a way, there is nothing "strangely" quiet about this--rather than strangely, the more appropriate adverb would be "fittingly."

It is also worth noting that article itself was written by Carla Marinucci, the Chronicle's political reporter who has, over the years, steadfastly served as a shill for the duopoly, and has refused to cover third party candidacies, even when they were polling well enough to merit such attention. For example, during the 2002 gubernatorial election, she repeatedly ignored the candidacy of Peter Camejo in her articles, even though at one point at least one poll was showing support as high as 9% for his candidacy. In September of that year, she began one article about Gray Davis with the words "Under pressure from his political opponent"; the next day, she described the Republican candidate as Gray Davis's "challenger", as if there were only one challenger. The following month, she began one of her stories with a sentence that referred to "the Golden State's candidates for governor", referring only to two of them--the candidates of the duopoly, thus completely ignoring Camejo even though he was also a candidate.

The nature of her shilling for the duopoly was further exposed when the election results came back. In San Francisco, the very city that her newspaper was based in, it turned out that Camejo--a candidate that she pretended didn't even exist--actually got more votes than the Republican candidate did. Camejo got 33, 468 votes, to the Republican's 33,202.

Unfortunately, Marinucci and others in the press will probably continue to shill for the duopoly this year just as she did four years ago, and the headlines of their articles will still use words like "strangely" when describing the behavior of the duopoly's candidates. This year, there are third parties on the ballot, with candidates running for Governor, that have taken strong stands on immigration issues. The Peace and Freedom Party, for example, issued a press release that stated "The Peace and Freedom Party has endorsed the immigrants rights rallies and strike
planned for May 1, 2006". The Green Party's web page states on its web page that "The Green Party of California has officially endorsed - in sharp contrast to the Democratic and Republican parties - the massive rallies planned Monday." Of course, none of gets the slightest attention from Marinucci or anyone else in the mainstream press.

Leftists versus Liberals

2006-05-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting quote from Robert Jensen's recent article in Counterpunch titled "Why Leftists Distrust Liberals":

...In the short-term in this country it is difficult to see possibilities for serious progressive political change. That’s not defeatist but merely realistic. In such a period, when no mass movement is likely to emerge, one important political task is to consolidate a base of activists with common values and deeper commitments. In such a process, making the distinctions between liberal and left is crucial to the project of building a core radical contingent that can be politically effective in the future.

Second, when leftists and liberals form least-common-denominator coalitions, liberal positions dominate. There’s no history of liberals moving to include left political ideas when right-wing forces are chased from power. Think Bill Clinton, here.

That said, we in left/radical movements have made more than our share of mistakes. It’s time for a period of serious critical self-reflection about our analysis and organizing strategies. That process is not going to be advanced by ignoring the differences we have with liberals. We need to be clearer than ever about those differences in thinking about the long term.

Where is the antiwar movement?

2006-05-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

Michael Donnelly has written an article in Counterpunch about some of the failings of the antiwar movement. One big problem, as he points out, is that the strength of the movement has been sapped by its association with pro-war Democrats. This was true in 2004 when antiwar activists lined up to support the prowar Kerry. It is being replayed again in 2006, with many antiwar liberals once again supporting prowar Democrats who are up for election in Congress or the Senate. Donnelly writes:

And, just as Bush would have the public swallow the very same lies all over again re: Iran; the UFPJ wing of the Peace Movement is gearing up for yet another unquestioning, pro-war Democrat endorsement in 2008. In election year 2006, we have yet to hear any clarion call, or even a peep, from the movement elders (and, yes, "elders" is the correct term) calling for opposition to every one of the Democrat war hawks now up for reelection. (Oh, they'll gladly do it for the Republicans)

Indeed, the peace movement, which should have been actively working against all prowar politicians, including Kerry, instead sapped the momentum of the movement in 2004 just as it should have seen growing. We are seeing this played out again in 2006, another election year.

What is Democracy?

2006-04-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

Sunday's New York Times magazine published an article by Jim Holt titled "Export This?", in which he discusses the difficulties associated with the use of the word "democracy". He points out that the word has been used to refer to forms of government that are often radically different from one another--including some that most would actually consider dictatorial. He also points out that the American system of government differs in significant ways from the original Athenian concept of democracy. Holt writes:

The most distinctive feature of Athenian democracy, as the British political theorist John Dunn reminds us in his forthcoming book, "Democracy: A History," was its "fierce directness." Laws were made by an assembly that every full citizen had the right to attend, address and vote in as an equal. (Excluding women, resident aliens and slaves, that left about 30,000 participants.) The assembly's agenda for each meeting was decided on by a council of 500 citizens, chosen by lot. The only elected figures were military generals, and this was considered the least democratic aspect of the system.

This is clearly nothing like our own system of government. In fact, Holt writes,

Our own government, to the Athenians, would look like an elective oligarchy. In fact, it was deliberately set up to ensure, as James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, "the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity, from any share" in it.

The last point raised in the above quote is particularly salient. The US government was never intended to be a true democracy, and in fact many features of our government were designed to serve as roadblocks to thwart the implementation of the popular will. The bicameral legislature, the division of powers between executive and legislative branches, and the lack of direct election of the President (and originally the Senate as well) are all examples of this.

Holt's article does raise an important question--what is a democracy, really, and what makes a society democratic? Holt points out that the US is governed "by professional politicians". More importantly, Holt adds that

Clearly, politicians do not represent us in the sense of being like us: quite apart from some peculiar psychological characteristics common to the breed, they are older, maler, whiter and lawyers almost to a man. Ideally, though, they represent us in the sense of looking after our interests, the way a guardian represents an infant in law. Unlike an infant, we have an intermittent right to replace them with other politicians if we judge them to be ineffective in this representative role. But, owing to a byzantine division of labor, much of what politicians do is hidden away from the public eye. Moreover, in one of the more devastating theoretical arguments against democracy, Anthony Downs observed that most citizens have no economic incentive to learn enough about what politicians do to vote intelligently. Nearly half of American voters acquiesce in their infantilization by not voting at all.

Here we see Holt briefly touching on the question of economics, but only briefly. The ostensibly representative nature of our government, as Holt alludes, may not be as democratic as it claims to be. This is not only because voters have no economic incentive, as Holt suggests, to learn about what politicians do. It is also because, for one thing, the system does not operate on a fair playing field. Powerful economic interests influence governance and the electoral process, and elections themselves are limited to--in the case of the United States--a duopoly of two parties with entrenched bureaucracies and a close relationship with powerful economic interests. The range of issues available for public debate are framed and constrained by those two parties and the economic interests they represent. Voters at some level actually have a reduced incentive to participate in the political process because the political process itself is inherently unfair.

Any attempt a addressing the problem of what constitutes democracy without a class analysis is thus inherently limited in its usefulness. In reality, the question of economics is crucial. In capitalist societies, decisions having vast implications for society are left out of democratic control. The management and distribution of social resources are left in private hands, and managed for profit; furthermore, the exigencies of the marketplace result in some decisions being made without any conscious decision whatsoever. Thus the vast majority of people, largely working people who sell their labor on the marketplace, are without any say in the economic decisions that affect their lives.

Holt briefly dismisses the notion of a class analysis by referring to the Stalinist dictatorship as a failed attempt at "expressing the will of the proletariat". However, it is interesting to note that Marx and Engels looked to the Paris Commune of 1871 as the model for a proletarian society. Engels described in his 1891 Postscript to Marx's essay "The Civil War in France" the way he envisioned establishing "a new and really democratic state". Among the characteristics of such a "really democratic" state that he saw in the Paris Commune were the following:

In this first place, it filled all posts, administrative, judicial, and educational, by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion.

The goal of eliminating "place-hunting and careerism" among politicians was thus seen as a key element of such a democratic form of government. Eliminating the privileges of power, both by the right of recall at any time and by eliminating government jobs as a conduit to wealth, are seen as ways of transferring power more democratically directly to the people.

The goal of giving people democratic control over their lives can only be achieved, I would argue, in the following ways. One is to deconstruct the structures of power. This means that representative government is stripped of all the impediments to full democratic control, and bureaucracy is eliminated as much as possible. In addition, economic and political decisions should be merged into a single democratic process, in which working people own the means of production democratically while also exercising the most direct and democratic control over economic and political decisionmaking.

The Socialist Party USA describes this conceptually as "radical democracy" as the cornerstone of democratic socialism. As the party's statement of principles puts it, in its section on a "Democratic Revolution From Below":

No oppressed group has ever been liberated except by its own organized efforts to overthrow its oppressors. A society based on radical democracy, with power exercised through people's organizations, requires a socialist transformation from below. People's organizations cannot be created by legislation, nor can they spring into being only on the eve of a revolution.

They can grow only in the course of popular struggles, especially those of women, labor, and minority groups. The Socialist Party works to build these organizations democratically.

The process of struggle profoundly shapes the ends achieved. Our tactics in the struggle for radical democratic change reflect our ultimate goal of a society founded on principles of egalitarian, non-exploitative and non-violent relations among all people and between all peoples.

To be free we must create new patterns for our lives and live in new ways in the midst of a society that does not understand and is often hostile to new, better modes of life. Our aim is the creation of a new social order, a society in which the commanding value is the infinite preciousness of every woman, man and child.

It seems to me that unless we achieve this kind of radical democracy, then the ostensible "democracy" that is said to characterize American society (and other societies) is little but a charade, masquerading what is at a fundamental level a real lack of democratic involvement by the people in the decisions that affect their lives.

The Democrats' anti-choice candidate in PA

2006-04-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

The New York Times ran a story yesterday on the campaign by Bob Casey, Jr., for the US Senate in Pennsylvania. Despite Casey's appalling views on abortion, Democrats and liberals in the state have lined up to support him. This once again illustrates not only how morally bankrupt the Democratic Party is, but how blind to progressive issues liberals frequently are as they put their blind allegiance to the Democrats above principle.

Just as an example of how low the Democratic Party political apparatus is willing to sink, the Times reports that "the nine Democratic women in the Senate, including some of the strongest advocates of abortion rights, recently signed a letter of support that struck a similar note, describing Mr. Casey's election as "critical to our efforts of regaining the majority in the U.S. Senate." Meanwhile, the usual cabal of liberal drones among interest groups have signed up to support him:

Many supporters of abortion rights,sometimes grudgingly, sometimes led more by their minds than by their hearts, are lining up behind Bob Casey Jr., a Democratic contender for the Senate who opposes abortion rights. The invitation to a recent Casey event in Philadelphia, raising money for his campaign to unseat Senator Rick Santorum, a Republican, perhaps captured the mood. "Pragmatic Progressive Women for Casey," it declared.

The article does note that there is some anger among some liberals over this issue, including the National Organization of Women. Unfortunately, when push comes to show, NOW's membership in Pennsylvania will presumably jump on board and support Casey as well. Here we have a case where many liberals are generally, no matter how grudgingly, willing to toss one of the key civil rights issues of our time overboard in the interests of supporting their beloved party. The Times article points out that Casey was recruited by the Democratic Party leadership to run for the post! I can't help but wonder how many liberals would have supported an avowed segregationist Democrat in 1964 just for the sake of defeating a Republican? And yet, morally, this is the equivalent of what liberals are doing now in their support for Casey. More appallingly, this support for the candidate originated from the Democratic Party leadership.

I contrast the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party and its leadership with that of legitimately left wing parties. To cite just one example among many, the Socialist Party USA states in its platform plank on civil rights the following:

We demand full support for every woman's right to choose when, if, and how to have children, including the right to free abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy, without interference or coercion. Clinics providing abortion services must have the full protection of the law.

Or, to cite another example, the California Peace and Freedom Party states on its website:

We respect the right of all individuals to control their own bodies, including free abortion on demand.

This is not something that the Democratic Party can claim. Its leadership is too busy trying to create a "big tent" that includes anti-woman and anti-choice candidates.

The Rumsfeld Diversion

2006-04-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

Diane Feinstein has joined the chorus of Democrats and generals calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. Given her long history as a warmonger and a war profiteer, this should immediately raise a red flag to any leftist that there is something seriously wrong with how this issue is being handled. And, in fact, there is. That's because this desire to punish Rumsfeld for what is going on in Iraq completely misses the point, and, more importantly, it illustrates once again how utterly misguided the Democratic Party is with respect to the Iraq war.

The push behind getting rid of Rumsfeld is based on the notion that he has incompetently managed the war in Iraq, either by ignoring the advice of his military commander or otherwise bungling the situation. But the problem with the Iraq war is not, and never has been, that it was mismanaged. The problem is that we shouldn't be fighting the war at all. To criticize someone simply for mismanaging the war is to implicitly accept the legitimacy of the war. In fact, this is precisely the tack that Kerry used in his 2004 campaign, where he argued that he would manage the war better than Bush; Kerry would send more troops to Iraq, Kerry would use more force in Fallujah, and so on. Meanwhile, during the last week or so of his candidacy that year, after Lancet published its study on the massive human toll of the war, Kerry was silent on that issue, while instead he went on about a missing arms cache or some such nonsense--as if anyone cared. The point is that, for Kerry, the war was all about running the war competently, not about the morality of the war. This has been the typical Democratic Party approach to the Iraq War, and it is utterly contrary to the belief that antiwar movement holds that the war itself is wrong.

Punishing Rumsfeld for the war going badly would miss the point entirely. Rumsfeld would only be taking the fall for the wrong reasons, and more importantly, it would not affect Bush's presidency or his continuation of the Iraq war. And it is opposing the war as a whole, not just how it is being managed, where the antiwar movement should be focusing its energies.

Democracy, real and imagined

2006-04-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

The ability of the French people, organized through mass action in the streets, to force the government to retreat on the CPE law, illustrates an important principle of the radical left--namely, that mass movements have the power to pressure governments in bourgeois democracies.

This is important because it gets to the heart of bourgeois political culture, and the myths that sustain it. The greatest myth among these is that the purest act of democratic citizenship is voting. We are told that through voting, citizens can affect change by electing representatives who will carry out the popular will. This myth is shared by both liberals and conservatives. What underlies the myth is a belief in the credibility of our political institutions, and an accompanying assumption of a genuinely democratic character that underlies them.

In reality, for activists and radicals who understand the faults in the current system, and who wish to press for social change, voting is among the least useful, and most ineffective, acts of citizenship. The reality is that our political system is governed by two capitalist parties, both of which serve the interests of the ruling class. Voting as a choice between two capitalist parties is no choice at all. Elections are as much distractions as anything else; given that bona fide radical voices are excluded from the public debate, what we have instead is a charade, masquerading as "democracy".

For liberals, this belief in the credibility of the electoral process as the chief means of accomplishing social change leads, inevitably, to support for the Democratic Party. If you have confidence in elections as a means of accomplishing change, then you must correspondingly believe that electoral victory by one of the major political parties is the vehicle for that change. Thus liberal ideology's ties to voting are intricately linked to its ties to the Democratic Party as its electoral expression.

This represents a typically top-down conception of social change. It believes that one of the governing ruling class parties, once in power, will institute social change from above by enacting legislation. But in reality, no social change is possible unless the people demand it; and it is the power of mass action, which scares the ruling classes more than anything else, which serves as the catalyst for social change. Real change comes from the bottom up.

Independent social movements have always been the most effective at accomplishing social change when they took their cause to the streets. It is pressure from below, by popular social movements, that have led to many of the reforms that we have seen in American society, from social security to civil rights. It is not the Democratic Party that we can hold responsible for having given us these reforms, but rather the American people who pressured the government into doing so--not through voting, but through mass actions, such as demonstrations and strikes.

Elections are, ultimately, largely a distraction. They distract social movements from their mission by seducing them into channeling their energies into electoral campaigns for bourgeois candidates. Thus we saw in 2004, when the antiwar movement lost momentum as many of its adherents jumped onto the Kerry bandwagon--this despite the fact that Kerry had voted for the war and was not running an antiwar campaign! How much this lost momentum cost the movement is hard to gauge, but it was only thanks to Cindy Sheehan in the following year--an activist who took her cause to the streets rather than the ballot box--that the movement was kick started again.

In France this year, all of this was made abundantly clear, as the people took to the streets and opposed the attempts at chipping away at workers' rights.

I am not arguing that the left should abandon electoral activity. On the contrary, elections are very useful, if the radical left avoids the trap of supporting bourgeois political parties, and if radical third parties use elections as a means of education and mobilization of activists. I support left wing parties when they run in elections--such as Socialists, Peace & Freedom, and sometimes the Greens. What I do think, though, is that it is important that the left not fall into the trap of accepting the legitimacy of a corrupt political system that passes itself off as "democratic", and then as a result jump onto the bandwagon of one of the parties that actively participates in that corrupt system. Real democracy will come only when we replace the current political and economic system with one in which the people institute radical democratic rule from below. Economically, this means rule of the workplace by the workers, and social planning of resources at a broader level of society. It also means establishing radical democracy as the basis of a new political system, built from the bottom up, and based on the people's organizations that arise as part of popular struggle. Only through legitimately participatory democracy that cuts through the existing bureaucratic institutions and that replaces rule by the capitalist ruling class can we find the ultimate expression of our radical demands for social change. In the meantime, we can pressure the existing ruling elite through the action of mass political movements that are independent of the two ruling parties.

NY Times: income inequality "worse than we thought"

2006-04-10T12:52:00.000-07:00

In an article by Louis Uchitelle, published in the Sunday New York Times, titled "Seizing Intangibles for the G.D.P.", we find the following juicy little quote:

The numbers show that the profit portion of the gross domestic product has risen mildly in recent years, while the wage-and-salary share has shrunk slightly. There is evidence, however, that because of the way the G.D.P. is calculated, the actual shift is much more pronounced.

"We know that income inequality is quite substantial," said Harry J. Holzer, a labor economist at Georgetown University, "and this new evidence suggests that it is worse than we thought."

The article delves into the complexities of the way the G.D.P. is calculated, specifically detailing one small change that is being experimentally proposed by the government bureau that produces the quarterly G.D.P. report. This change, involving how R&D expenditures will be calculated, has the interesting effect of exposing a fact that has been at least partially masked up to now:

This reclassification leaves no doubt that workers are being left behind as the G.D.P. expands. When R & D is counted as profit, the employee compensation share of national income drops by more than one percentage point. In a $12.5 trillion economy, that's big money.

Here we have yet further confirmation of a trend that other signs are also pointing to--namely, that in the US economy, the disparities in wealth between the riches and the rest of us are increasing. The article concludes with this comment: "Then, too, most of the nation's workers are bereft of bargaining power. Unless that returns, labor's share of national income seems likely to continue its decline."

The Antiwar Movement

2006-04-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

Scott Ritter has written an interesting blog entry about the problems besetting the antiwar movement. One of the important points he makes is that the causes of US militarism are rooted deep in our political and economic culture, and only if the antiwar movement successfully addresses these root causes will it ever have any success. In particular, he notes that the Bush regime is plagued by widespread popular dissastisfaction over the war in Iraq--but this is only because the war has gone badly. Had the war gone well, most Americans would at this point have been fully in favor of the war.

What Ritter is criticizing is what is essentially a practical, rather than a moral, view of imperialist war adventures. Ritter is right. Only until the morality of imperialist aggression is part of the political debate in the US will Americans begin to look beyond whether a war is quick, relatively painless, and "successful". An imperialist war should be wrong whether it is quick and easy, or nasty and devolves into an unending catastrophe. The problem is that this "pragmatic" view of war--that all that matters is whether the war is managed well--is precisely what the opposition Democratic Party has been advocating in recent years. John Kerry's campaign in 2004 was all about running a more competent war than Bush was doing; Kerry would have sent more troops, would have used more force in Fallujah, would have kept better control of munitions supplies, and so forth. Kerry never ran an antiwar campaign, and yet many in the antiwar movement blindly followed lockstep in the Democratic Party path and voted for him anyway.

As Ritter says,

Take the example of Congressman Jack Murtha. A vocal supporter of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, last fall Mr. Murtha went public with his dramatic change of position, suddenly rejecting the war as un-winnable, and demanding the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. While laudable, I have serious problems with Jack Murtha's thought process here. At what point did the American invasion of Iraq become a bad war? When we suffered 2,000 dead? After two years of fruitless struggle? Once we spent $100 billion?

While vocalizing his current opposition against the Iraq War, Congressman Murtha and others who voted for the war but now question its merits have never retracted their original pro-war stance. Nor have they criticized their role in abrogating the Constitutional processes for bringing our country into conflict when they voted for a war before the President had publicly committed to going to war (we now know the President had committed to the invasion of Iraq by the summer of 2002, and that all his representations to the American people and Congress about 'war as a matter of last resort' and 'seeking a diplomatic solution' were bold face lies). The Iraq War was wrong the moment we started bombing Iraq. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein is no excuse, and does not pardon America's collective sin of brooking and tolerating an illegal war of aggression.

The reality is, had our military prevailed in this struggle, the American people for the most part would not even blink at the moral and legal arguments against this war. This underlying reality is reflected in the fact that despite our ongoing disaster in Iraq, America is propelled down a course of action that leads us toward conflict with Iran. President Bush recently re-affirmed his embrace of the principles of pre-emptive war when he signed off on the 2006 version of the National Security Strategy of the United States, which highlights Iran as a threat worthy of confrontation. This event has gone virtually unmentioned by the American mainstream media, un-remarked by a Congress that remains complicit in the war-mongering policies of the Bush administration, and un-noticed by the majority of Americans. America is pre-programmed for war, and unless the anti-war movement dramatically changes the manner in which it conducts its struggle, America will become a nation of war, for war, and defined by war, and as such a nation that will ultimately be consumed by war.

Actually, it is worth pointing out that Murtha did not call for an "immediate" withdrawal, but rather one taking place over six months, and it wasn't a withdrawal from the region, but rather a redeployment of troops elsewhere in the area where they could be used for further militaristic adventures. But the point remains that the US is, as he says, "pre-programmed for war", and as long as the focus in our political system is on the competence of warmaking rather than the morality of it, we will never see our way out of the woods.

A Need for Radicalism

2006-04-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

Liberal blogger Michael Stickings wrote this posting, which is an unapologetic defense of liberalism and an argument that liberals need to reverse the recent rightward pull of the center of political gravity and move it back leftward.

He makes a valid point about the fact that the political center of gravity has shifted rightward in American politics over recent years. But where I disagree with him is that I believe that this rightward pull is due to the inherent failings of liberalism itself. I also strongly disagree with his praise for some of the leading political hacks of the Democratic Party as representing any kind of political salvation for this country.

I wrote the following as a comment in that blog entry:

There is no question that the center of gravity in American politics has been pulled rightward over the last 35 years or so, and as a result, the definition of "liberal" has also been pulled rightward. That is why Nixon, lying scumbag warmonger that he was, is sometimes refered to as the "last liberal President"--because after his presidency, in which we saw the creation of the EPA, OSHA, and the Clean Air Act, and in which Nixon once proposed a guaranteed minimum income for all Americans, the "liberals" in Washington moved ever rightward, to the point where Al Gore in 2000 was essentially farther to the right than Nixon was in 1970.

This is one of several of the problems with modern liberalism. Liberals turn to their heroes, various Democrats like Al Gore or Howard Dean, whose ideology would historically not have been considered particularly left of center. They pin their hopes on a supposedly "progressive" ideology that isn't particularly progressive and a political party like the Democrats that is intensely tied to corporate interests and US imperialism abroad.

As I see it, liberalism was stillborn, and its failures have only come to fruition in recent years, because it didn't really know what it wanted to be. It was so afraid of socialism, it distanced itself from radical solutions to the serious problems of the capitalist system, that one could argue that it was as much a reaction to radicalism and socialism as it was to conservatism. Liberals like Hubert Humphrey in the 1940s purged the Democratic Farmer-Labor party of radicals and socialists, thus insuring that the Democratic Party would not be a party that dared to threaten corporate interests. In fact, the very use of the word "liberal" in our nation's political discourse for its so-called left wing is telling--in American politics, no mainstream politician dares uses a word like "socialist" or even "social democrat". It is this fear of the left that inevitably led liberalism to slide rightward over the years.

I think there are other fundamental problems with liberalism. As I wrote in my blog enter "Corporate Consolidation and the Failure of American Liberalism", liberalism never really offered a successful or meaningful challenge to corporate power, nor did it ever, with its attachment to market economics, come up with any way of taming the evils of capitalism that would ever work--and this is essentially because the evils of capitalism cannot be tamed without replacing the system with something better. Liberals, afraid of radicalism, are unwilling to seek radical solutions, and instead pay allegiance to the economic and political system that creates the very evils that liberals say they want to address.

In this modern era of globalization and neoliberalism, American liberalism is at a loss to really cope with modern international capitalism. Ultimately, liberalism has proved itself to be a failed ideology.

Possibly the most heartening thing I have seen in all of this is the possiblity that some liberals are starting to see the light. For example, consider a recent article in the liberal magazine Nation, in which Ronald Aronson said, "It's time to break a taboo and place the word "socialism" across the top of the page in a major American progressive magazine. Time for the left to stop repressing the side of ourselves that the right finds most objectionable. Until we thumb our noses at the Democratic pols who have been calling the shots and reassert the very ideas they say are unthinkable, we will keep stumbling around in the dark corners of American politics, wondering how we lost our souls--and how to find them again."

As I see it, failures of liberalism could not be plainer than they are now. The solution to our problems lies not in a return to liberalism, but a birth of radicalism.

Nancy Pelosi and corporate interests

2006-04-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Chronicle is running a three-party series of investigative articles on Nancy Pelosi. Yesterday, as part of this series, the Chronicle ran a story detailing her fundraising activities. It provides fascinating reading for those of us on the left who recognize the close ties that the Democratic Party maintains with wealthy and corporate interests. For example, the article points out

With the connections she gained through her investment banker husband, Paul Pelosi, her unfailing devotion to the Democratic Party and a lifelong propensity for building relationships with loyal supporters, Pelosi has been in an ideal position to recruit wealthy believers in the Democratic cause. "If you travel in upper socio-economic circles, it's always good to tap those people,'' said Agar Jaicks, a San Francisco Democratic activist, who was one of Pelosi's earliest political advisers. "She became very good at it, and the better she got, the more in demand she was."

The Chronicle lists some of her top contributors, which include several northern California capitalists, including the owners of the Gallo Winery in Modesto, the heirs to the Levi Strauss Company, the owners of The Gap, and others.

None of this should server as any surprise, of course. Pelosi is the epitome of the modern day liberal Democrat, who will certainly not do anything to rock the boat or otherwise offend her corporate contributors or her friends in big business; her husband, Paul Pelosi, is quite wealthy; the article reports that "Paul Pelosi's investments range from an ownership share in the Wine Country resort, Auberge du Soleil, to millions of dollars of stocks in companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Disney Co. to ownership of a three-story commercial building in downtown San Francisco." This she has in common with her fellow Democrat and San Franciscan Diane Feinstein, whose husband the war profiteer benefited from the Iraq war enough the couple could sell their old mansion and buy an even bigger $16.5 million mansion in Pacific Heights.

Once again we can see why progressives, leftists, and radicals should have nothing to do with the Democratic Party.

Capitalism Under Fire

2006-03-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

William Pfaff of the International Herald Tribune has written an interesting article that places the current conflict in France in the context of broader changes that he sees taking place in the world economy.

Pfaff believes that a series of changes have taken place in global capitalism since the 1960s that are having dire consequences for the future of capitalism. One of the changes, he argues, is that a new corporate model has taken over in which

corporation managers are responsible for creating short-term "value" for owners, as measured by stock valuation and quarterly dividends.

The practical result has been constant pressure to reduce wages and worker benefits (leading in some cases to theft of pensions and other crimes), and political lobbying and public persuasion to lower the corporate tax contribution to government finance and the public interest.

The result, he argues, is that

In short, the system in the advanced countries has been rejigged since the 1960s to take wealth from workers, and from the funding of government, and transfer it to stockholders and corporate executives.

Pfaff seems to hold in his mind an ideal vision of an idyllic capitalism of yore. In reality, capitalism, based on the profit motive, has always been geared toward this end. The idea of capitalists seeking to make more money at the expense of workers and social needs is hardly new; it has been around since the beginning of capitalism. If it is true, as Pfaff argues, that the worst traits of capitalism have started to become exacerbated in the last 40-50 years, the question is, why is this happening, and why now? This is something that requires serious analysis, and rather than praising some past capitalism of another era, one might ask what it is about capitalism that seems to have inevitably taken us to the state we are in today. And although Pfaff does not say this, I believe that what is really new about Pfaff's "new model" of capitalism is that the old social democratic (or, in US parlance, liberal) model of trying to tame capitalism and rein in its worst excesses is now clearly failing, and has been failing for some time. Can the profit motive really be "tamed"? It seems to me it cannot. And that is the real problem--liberalism and social democracy, as reformist rather than radical ideologies, were ill equipped to fight the evils of capitalism, and ultimately capitalism won.

Pfaff also describes the process of globalization as having a critical impact on the evolution of modern capitalism. Globalization, as he points out, "puts labor into competition with the poorest countries on earth." Again, there is nothing particularly new about this particularly critique of globalization, but it is Pfaff's conclusion that is quite interesting. He writes:

We need go no further with what I realize is a very complex matter, other than to note the classical economist David Ricardo's "iron law of wages," which says that in conditions of wage competition and unlimited labor supply, wages will fall to just above subsistence.

There never before has been unlimited labor. There is now, thanks to globalization - and the process has only begun.

These are serious conclusions, and it is fascinating to find these words, not on the pages of a marxist journal, but in a serious bourgeois newspaper. When he writes of "the human consequences of a capitalist model that considers labor a commodity and extends price competition for that commodity to the entire world", he is not writing anything that any socialist would not have said over the course of the last century and a half. And yet, Pfaff is no socialist. That does not prevent him from understanding the crisis that is overtaking capitalism at this point in history. And if even supporters of capitalism are beginning to understand this, there is hope that those of us with a different vision may be more able to get our own message out.

No comment

2006-03-30T12:37:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Cruz Bustamante, who is the leading Democratic Party candidate for California state insurance commissioner, has accepted $120,000 in campaign contributions from--you guessed it--the insurance industry! (Those would be the very people he supposedly will be regulating if he is elected.)

Michael Berg's antiwar campaign in Delaware

2006-03-30T11:15:00.000-08:00

Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg, whose beheading in Iraq was videotaped, is running an antiwar campaign for Congress as a Green in Delaware. The New York Times article reports that

As he bicycles across the state giving speeches at schools and churches and holding fund-raising house parties, he says he has found a receptive audience, not just to his call for an immediate withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq but also to the rest of his platform: universal health care, a livable wage and increased spending on education.

"A lot of voters are frustrated by the lack of options beyond the two major parties," Mr. Berg said. "And a lot of these people have not been voting before."

The article adds a comment that Berg made which should be nominated for quote of the year:

Mr. Berg said that he was originally approached by a representative of the state's Democratic Party to oppose Mr. Castle but that he opted to go with the Greens because "the Democrats have the money to get the message out, but they have the wrong message."

Indeed, that is the problem with the Democrats--they have the wrong message. As if to underscore this point, in the next paragraph of the article, we see a quote from the Democratic Party candidate for Congress, Dennis Spivak, who said, "We don't want to pull out in a way that will make things worse in that region, especially at a time when Iraq is on the verge of a civil war." This is pretty much the standard position of the Democratic Party--a reluctance, if not outright opposition, to an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Even John Murtha's supposed "immediate" withdrawal from Iraq is nothing but a redeployment to elsewhere in the region, and it isn't even particularly immediate.

France and the CPE

2006-03-29T09:16:00.000-08:00

The mass strikes and demonstrations by students and workers in France against the new labor law that Dominique Villepin rammed through the National Assembly illustrate once again the intense problems that Western capitalism faces over the powerful pressures of neoliberalism.

Villepin has made matters for him worse by committing serious tactical mistakes. Villepin is an appointee who has never been elected to any office, and his incompetence as a politician clearly showed in his handling of this matter. But the reality is that to focus on tactical mistakes is to miss the broader picture. While his interior minister and fellow party member Nikolas Sarkozy may be distancing himself from Villepin's tactics, the overall principles of neoliberalism are embraced by broad sectors of his party and by the leading capitalist interests in France. More importantly, the problem that the opposition Socialist Party faces in France is whether they are capable of offering a truly radical vision that can oppose the enormous market pressures that have led governments throughout Europe, even those supposedly of the "left", to abandon the interests of workers and students in favor of policies of neoliberalism and globalization. Given the history of the Socialist Party when it has been in power in France, this seems unlikely.

The reality is that European social democrats, which includes the French Socialist Party, are caught in a bind of their own. Embracing many of the details of market capitalism, and eschewing class warfare in favor of accommodation with capitalist principles, the French socialists haven't figured out how to ensure a viable economic system that can both guarantee protections of workers and yet still bow to the pressures of the market economy that they are unwilling to seriously challenge. As a result, they pay lip service to the interests of the working class while being unwilling to challenge the immense problems that the market economy poses. Unemployment is held hostage to the power of the global marketplace, and globalization will continue to serve as both a lure and a yoke around the neck of the French people until they are willing to overturn the powerful class interests that rule their country.

Naturally, we should support the efforts of students and workers to protect their rights against a reactionary onslaught such as what Villepin has proposed. But those of us on the left need to accompany our support for these mass demonstrations with radical demands of our own, because it is only by making radical change can the French people--not to mention all other people in the corporate-dominated economies of the West--really resolve the quandary that they face. This can only be solved by overturning corporate power and giving the people democratic, social control over economic resources and the means of production, replacing profit with human needs as the basis of economic activity. And this is something that ultimately cannot just be solved in France, but must take place around the world.

Hillary Clinton and Wal-Mart

2006-03-10T13:54:00.000-08:00

My previous posting, about the cozy relationship between modern-day Democratic Party liberalism and corporate interests, is borne out by an AP news story that was released today. The article documents Hillary Clinton's close relationship with Wal-Mart over the years, which included a six-year stint on the board of directors. According to the article, "Clinton had kind words for Wal-Mart as recently as 2004, when she told an audience at the convention of the National Retail Federation that her time on the board 'was a great experience in every respect.'

In addition, the article points out:

Throughout the 1980s, both Bill and Hillary Clinton nurtured relationships with Walton, a conservative Republican and by far Arkansas' most influential businessman.

Among other things, Hillary Clinton sought Walton's help in 1983 for Bill Clinton's so-called Blue Ribbon Commission on Education, a major effort to improve Arkansas' troubled public schools. The overhaul became a centerpiece of Clinton's governorship.

And Wal-Mart's Made in America campaign, which for years touted the company's sales of American products in its stores, was launched after Bill Clinton persuaded Walton to help save 200 jobs at an Arkansas shirt manufacturing plant. The Made in America campaign has virtually vanished in recent years, as the company's manufacturing has gradually moved overseas Â another point of criticism by many anti-Wal-Mart activists.

The Clintons also benefited financially from Wal-Mart. Hillary Clinton was paid $18,000 each year she served on the board, plus $1,500 for each meeting she attended. By 1993 she had accumulated at least $100,000 in Wal-Mart stock, according to Bill Clinton's federal financial disclosure that year. The Clintons also flew for free on Wal-Mart corporate planes 14 times in 1990 and 1991 in preparation for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential bid.

The close ties that the Clintons have exhibited with Wal-mart are par for the course, although it is interesting that they were particularly close with a company that embodies many of the worst corporate abuses.

Corporate consolidation and the failure of American liberalism

2006-03-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

The last great antitrust action by the US government against a major American corporation was carried out in 1984, when AT&T was broken up into various "Baby Bells" which provided local phone service, while AT&T itself provided long distance phone service. In the intervening years since that action, we have seen the gradual reconsolidation of these various phone companies. This reconsolidation has, in essence, undermined the original act of breaking up the original monopoly. The latest example of this is the buyout of BellSouth by AT&T. This serves as yet another nail in the coffin of the 1984 antitrust settlement.

The government doesn't really pursue antitrust cases much anymore. There was an abortive attempt at breaking up Microsoft a few years ago, but it never actually took place. Antitrust laws are seen as rather passe by the political establishment of both political parties these days. It used to be that antitrust action was seen by liberalism as an important tool in fighting corporate power. The Sherman Antitrust Act, and later acts of trustbusting by reformers during the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, served as a response to the power of corporations. Of course, this posture of trustbusting came back at a time when liberals thought that corporate power was a problem that actually needed to be addressed. Such is not the case anymore, when Democratic Party politicians and corporate interests are deeply intertwined, when members of the Clinton Administration and corporate executives moved back in forth between their mutually interlocking spheres.

There is, of course, an inherent problem with antitrust enforcement, and this is highlighted by what we have seen in the telecommunications industry since that 1984 antitrust settlement. The natural tendency of corporations under capitalism is to grow and consolidate. An antitrust enforcement is only a temporary remedy; over time, as we have seen with the Baby Bells and AT&T, the corporations will simply merge once again into larger and larger corporate entitiess, until competition once again diminishes. This is the nature of capitalism. Thus antitrust laws only work as a temporary reversal of an inevitable process in capitalist economies.

Antitrust laws are inherently self-contradictory. This is because such laws are predicated on a celebration of the virtues of competition--and as such, their goal is to stimulate more competition by trying to undo the very thing that competition inevitably leads to. Competition is good, according to this theory--but as soon as we increase competition via antitrust action, we have created the very conditions under which competition will diminish.

There is another, more fundamental, underlying problem with this philosophy of celebrating competition. Competition lies at the heart of market economics, and it is the anarchic nature of market economics that serves as one of the most serious indictments of capitalism. Competition produces an irrational and ruthless system by which profits, rather than human needs, serves as the basis of economic activity. Competition also means business failures, layoffs, unemployment, and massive disparities in wealth. By celebrating competition, we celebrate "letting the market decide". But the market isn't always very good about deciding things. The market doesn't care anything about human needs. You can't separate competition from the various attendant evils of market economics.

The very process of corporate consolidation, which is also a by-product of competition, often produces more of these very evils. Such consolidation almost inevitably leads to layoffs--it is likely that this AT&T takeover of BellSouth will result in job cuts.

These failures of antitrust policy have highlighted the failure of liberalism as a means of reforming capitalism. American liberals, out of an apparent desire to disassociate themselves from socialism as much as possible, generally did not call for nationalization of large corporations. The sole hope they offered for countering corporate power, during those times when they actually cared about such things, was a failed attempt at limiting the power of the trusts by breaking them up. This strategy, which over the past century has proven to be a failure, has left liberalism with no viable tools to offer as a means of reforming corporate power. As a result, modern liberalism, especially as manifested by its electoral organ the Democratic Party, doesn't even bother to oppose corporate power anymore. The Clinton Administration, for example, maintained a close relationship with Monsanto. As a 1999 newspaper article by Tom Rhodes of the London Times reported:

[Monsanto's] ties with the White House are strong. Mickey Kantor, the former trade representative and chairman of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, is a board member. Marcia Hale, Monsanto's international regulatory director, was a top presidential assistant. Linda Fisher, the vice-president for federal government affairs, mapped pesticide policy for the Bush White House. Michael Taylor, a former FDA commissioner, has been hired as a strategist.

Shapiro has courted the Clintons, sponsoring the president's welfare-to-work programme and involving Monsanto in the micro-enterprise summit for developing nations, one of Hillary Clinton's pet interests. The White House views Monsanto as a "Democratic company" and actively promotes biotechnology through the good offices of Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, and Al Gore, the vice-president.

This is what liberalism and the Democratic Party are left with--close ties with corporate interests. No longer even bothering to attack big business, liberal politicians now lie in bed with it instead.

With the failure liberalism and the Democratic Party to address corporate power, we are now left with an economic system in which market forces are allowed to operate full throttle. Simply hoping to renew antitrust enforcement is a naive response to the problem. The solution to corporate power lies not in breaking it up, but in society taking control of "the commanding heights of industry" and managing the economy on the basis of human need rather than profits.

The Duopoly Protects Its Own

2006-02-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

Cindy Sheehan has talked about challenging Diane Feinstein for her Senate seat in the Democratic primary this year. In general, I think any challenge to Feinstein is a good thing, although I don't agree with her strategy of running against her as a Democrat, mainly because I do not believe in supporting the duopoly under any circumstances. But what I think is interesting about this is that Barbara Boxer, California's other Senator--supposedly one of the "Good Democrats" who voted against the war--has urged Cindy not to run against Feinstein in the primary.

The implications of this for party politics within the duopoly--where loyalty to the political machine trumps progressive values--speaks volumes. For Boxer, first and foremost she will support her fellow elected Democrat, a centrist drone who opposes free speech (she has been a supporter of banning flag burning), who voted for the war, and who continues to support funding for the war. Boxer, like other leading elected Democrats, has distanced herself time and time again from Cindy Sheehan's campaign. It is hardly surprising that she would oppose Cindy this time as well.

There is this idea that there are "good Democrats"--progressives within that party who should be supported by the left even as we abhor the centrists and DLC hacks who dominate the party. Yet this supposes that you can separate politicians from their party. A politician who runs as a Democrat is engaged in a symbiotic relationship with that party; he or she uses the party's brand name, its organizational strength, its fundraising, and everything else that the party has to offer, in order to get elected. In turn, that same Democrat is necessarily committed to maintaining his or her loyalty to the organization that it used to get elected. Not to do so would be political suicide for that politician. Party loyalty, and the fundraising apparatus associated with it, are more important than progressive ideology.

This happens at all levels of the party. At the local level, we see this as well. In the 2003 San Francisco mayoral race, there were two candidates in the runoff election--a Democrat, and a Green. The Green candidate, Matt Gonzalez, was the more progressive. The local Democratic Party closed ranks; it outspent Gonzalez 5-1, and enlisted the support of national heavyweights like Bill Clinton to help their candidate squeak by an election victory with 52% of the vote. A few weeks ago, the San Francisco Bay Guardian published a naive editorial in which it pleaded with the local Democratic Party central committee not to expel the Harvey Milk club for having endorsed the occasional Green in the past, including Gonzalez. This editorial envisioned liberals and progressives in the Green and Democratic Parties as all one big happy activist family. This is utter nonsense. Contrary to the Guardian's ridiculous assertion, the Democratic Party is not an "activist group", it is an electoral organization that will use whatever tactics it deems necessary to preserve its electoral privilege. Like Democrats everywhere, these people don't play fair--they play to win. Progressive values have nothing to do with it, and will always lag a distant second place to duopoly power politics.

The San Francisco Chronicle article on Boxer's comments includes a quote from Todd Chretien, who is running a peace campaign as a Green against Feinstein this year:

"How can replacing a senator who voted to send our troops to kill and die in Iraq, Dianne Feinstein, with the country's leading anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan, 'hurt' Cindy or the anti-war movement?" said Chretien, who co-wrote the successful ballot measure last year that encouraged schools and universities in San Francisco to ban military recruiters from their campuses.

"Sen. Boxer's comments only go to show that the Democratic Party's leadership is more concerned with defending their own than in bringing our troops home from Iraq," he said.

He is completely correct on this point. Chretien's Green Party campaign, along with the Peace and Freedom Party's candidate (who may be Marsha Feinland, although that depends on the outcome of the June primary election), represent alternative peace candidacies to Feinstein's warmonger policies. The duopoly always protects its own, and there represent two third parties in California that are offering an alternative the morally bankrupt policies of war and imperialism.

So the Abramoff Scandal is bipartisan after all--whoops!

2006-02-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

Many liberal apologists for the Democratic Party have been incensed over any characterization of the Abramoff scandal was bipartisan in nature. But today, we learn that none other than Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has himself had close ties with Abramoff.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone on the Left who has objected to the corporatism of the governing duopoly. The Democrats have routinely shown willingness to maintain close times to corporate and corporate lobbying interests for years. This is nothing new.

This latest piece of news only confirms, once again, the need for a mass left wing third party alternative to the corporate duopoly that governs the US.

"Don't be evil"

2006-02-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

There has been much hand-wringing lately in the halls of congress and on the editorial pages about the willingness of software companies like Google and Yahoo to yield to censorship demands by China. Many have pointed to the way that Google, for example, has not conformed to its own corporate motto, "Don't be evil".

What is really surprising about this is that anyone is surprised. Corporations operate to serve one simple goal--profits. There are huge profits awaiting internet companies who participate in the world's most populous nation. No corporate can ever take seriously a motto like "don't be evil" if it conflicts with the profit imperative. It is really as simple as that. That is how the capitalist system operates. The inexorable demands of making a profit determine all decisions that corporations make, and most apologists for our economic system actually praise this as a beneficial aspect of our economy that reaps benefits to society. Many of those same apostles of the virtues of profits as the engine of capitalism have suddenly changed their tune with respect to China, and claimed that profits should not precede human rights as a fundamental consideration of corporations. Republican Congressman Chris Smith, for example, has said, "Human rights should trump profits."

One has to wonder what rock all those people who claim that "human rights should trump profits" have been hiding under. Profits have always trumped human rights, and always will. The reality is that US imperial foreign policy has proved, time and time again, that it will support dictatorial regimes as long as they protect US corporate interests. When Chilean leader Salvador Allende was overthrown with CIA support and replaced with the brutal Pinochet dictatorship--a dictatorship supported by the US--we learned the cold, hard, brutal lesson about what trumps what. The US government has always acted to support profits, even at the expense of human rights.

It's time to recognize the truth of the matter. "Don't be evil" is a meaningless corporate motto. No corporation, driven by the capitalist system to engage in the ruthless pursuit of profits, can ever ask itself not to be evil if there are profits to be found. Maybe we have to ask ourselves what the real evil is in this world. I would suggest that the answer to that question lies in the very system in which we live.

Democracy and the will of the people

2006-02-02T08:58:00.000-08:00

Now that the dust has settled a bit after the Palestinian elections brought Hamas to power, it is worth reflecting on what the implications of that election are when we talk about "democracy".

Many pundits, when reflecting on why it is that Hamas won that election, have pointed out that many Palestinians did not agree with the party's program, but voted for Hamas anyway out of a desire to "throw the bums out"--in other words, they saw the existing ruling party as corrupt, and thus they cast they votes for the leading alternative party out of a desire to clean house.

The same situation seemed to be the case in the recent Canadian elections. Paul Martin's Liberal Party was plagued by scandals. Despite an early lead in the polls, the Liberals lost ground as voters felt turned off by the corruption issue. Regardless of ideological considerations, voters wanted to clean house. Who can seriously say that the Canadian election was a referendum on ideological questions?

There is an implicit understanding in that interpretation of the Palestinian or Canadian elections--a radical suggestion that elections are often decided on all sorts of matters that don't necessarily reflect the ideological will of the people. Yet who is willing to apply that same logic to, for example, American elections? Regularly, pundits in the US assume that if, for example, a conservative Republican candidate wins an election, it must be because the voters agree ideologically with that politician. Bush's election victory in 2004 clearly must have reflected that most Americans are conservative, according to this logic. But in reality, elections simply don't work that way.

What are the factors that influence voter choices? Candidates don't just run on issues--they run on such non-ideological questions as competence or personal style. Even when it comes to the question of ideology candidates run on a platform that constitutes a cluster of positions on a range of issues. Even if it were true that ideology were the sole factor that determined elections, it would be nonsensical to argue that the mass of voters agreed with the winning candidate on every single issue.

Most importantly, the biggest problem with elections in the US is that voters are not offered real choices. It is hard to take seriously the notion that US elections express ideological decisions when the range of ideologies made available to them are limited to those presented by the ruling duopoly. Large numbers of issues are simply not put on the table for voters to consider--they are in fact shut out of consideration. Televised debates between the two corporate-sponsored candidates of the ruling duopoly do not present a comprehensive range of issues for voters to consider.

It is time to stop considering elections, as they are conducted in western-style capitalist regimes, as if they were referenda. They are not. For decades, a majority of Americans have wanted universal health care. Why haven't they gotten it? How can anyone claim that the US is "democratic" when the people can't even get what they want?

The political system has simply worked against the possibility of real radical reform taking place in the US. Real, bona fide , radical democracy is simply missing from our political system. We have the illusion of democracy, but there is little substance behind it. The facade of democracy is what keeps people from rebelling against the system. It is time to tear down this facade and expose it for the fraud that it really is.

The obscenity of American capitalism

2006-01-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

A recent study has shown that the gap between rich and poor has increased in the United States. This is consistent with other statistics that we have been seeing lately about the state of American capitalism. For example, it was earlier reported that Wall Street bonuses for 2005 reached a record $21.5 billion.

The obscenity that is American capitalism knows no bounds.

Cindy Sheehan quote

2006-01-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting quote from Cindy Sheehan's interview in Counterpunch:

And about Bill Clinton . . . . You know, I really think he should have been impeached, but not for a blow job. His policies are responsible for killing more Iraqis that George Bush. I don't understand why to rise to the level of being president of my country one has to be a monster. I used to say that George Bush was defiling the Oval Office, but it's been held by a long line of monsters. We don't have to support our administrations to love our country. True patriots of my country dissent when our country's doing something so wrong.

Statement by the Socialist Party USA

2005-12-16T12:58:00.000-08:00

US OUT OF IRAQ NOW

The Socialist Party USA opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start, and we continue to demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. The United States had no legitimate reason for invading Iraq and it has no legitimate reason to remain there.

The invasion of Iraq was not a mistake, or an error based on faulty intelligence. It was the logical consequence of a foreign policy designed to ensure that U.S. based corporations control vital resources and that the U.S. military dominates key regions throughout the world. The United States is in Iraq to control its vast petroleum deposits and to solidify its control over the Middle Eastern region.

After thirty months of occupation and chaotic violence, mainstream politicians are beginning to question the continued deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq. Nevertheless, a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal was overwhelmingly defeated by both Democrats and Republicans in a recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. While we welcome the first timid signs that the United States is preparing to step back from the Iraqi abyss, we remain committed to an immediate and total withdrawal.

Still, there are worrying signs for the future. After remaining silent for two years, former president Bill Clinton has begun to criticize the Bush administration's war policies. According to Clinton, the problems with the invasion stem from the administration's underestimate of the difficulties inherent in a successful occupation. The United States should have deployed even more troops from the start so that the occupation forces could have sealed off the borders of Iraq as Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed.

Clinton has always spoken for the corporate center. His critique of current policies can only lead to further military adventures requiring an even larger military. Unfortunately, the great majority of progressives continue to believe that the Democratic Party can be transformed. In fact, the Democrats have always stood for U.S. imperialism, as they do now. Indeed, Clinton's recent comments demonstrate just how dangerous this illusion can be.

As the United States begins a phased withdrawal from Iraq, it is critical that we maintain popular pressure to accelerate this process and to ensure that it is a total withdrawal of all military and intelligence units. Yet we also need to expand our horizon beyond Iraq. The Socialist Party stands for a drastic reduction in the military budget, beginning with an immediate reduction of 50%. The hundreds of billions of dollars currently wasted on weapons of destruction need to be reallocated for schools, hospitals, mass transit and low-cost housing. We also call for the return of all U.S. soldiers from overseas and the closing of military bases around the world. U.S. imperialism benefits the corporate elite and not working people either here or abroad.

U.S. military force is the glue that holds together a world that is being torn apart by global capitalism. As the gap between the rich and the poor widens under the impact of an integrated world economy, divisions between social classes, regions, countries and ethnic groups are accentuated. Ultimately, the creation of a U.S. foreign policy that is not based on bolstering the empire will require a new society, a democratic socialist society based on decentralization, cooperation and equality. The tasks are enormous, but the need for change is imperative.

Passed unanimously by the SP USA National Action Committee 12/15/05

The NY Times withheld its story on the NSA spy scandal for a year

2005-12-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

Here's a quote from today's NY Times article on the Bush regime's use of the NSA to spy on Americans :

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting.

In the aftermath of the Judith Miller fiasco, it seems that the Times has shown a continued willingness to do the White House's bidding.

Tookie Williams and the Death Penalty

2005-12-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

I was never really expecting Arnold Schwarzeneggar to commute Tookie Williams's death sentence, and now, in the aftermath of the execution, we can only ponder once again the moral bankruptcy of the American justice system.

Tony Blair was asked in parliament about the the fact that 97% of the world's executions take place in China, Vietnam, and the United States. These days, it is the worst human rights violators that generally carry out capital punishment, which means that the US is in particularly interesting company. While condemning capital punishment, Blair, in his response, predictably made excuses for the United States, claiming that the US is a nation characterized by "the rule of law".

Claiming that the US has "the rule of law" is a rather bizarre claim in light of the fact that the US has almost certainly was imprisoning individuals in secret European countries, carried out by agents of the CIA who acted with impunity and beyond the rule of law. And it is also bizarre to talk of the "rule of law" when the US President flouts international law and has advisors who claim that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to the US when it imprisons its "terror suspects", or when it renders to them to other countries to be tortured, or when its own CIA carries out torture in those secret prisons.

Furthermore, when we talk of the "rule of law" in a society where black people are more likely to be executed than white people, it makes a mockery of the very concept.

But let's ignore all of that and suppose that the US really is a nation of justice and law. Blair claimed that "though I strongly disagree with the death penalty, I think if we're looking for human rights abuses it is sometimes right to look elsewhere at severe human rights abuses that happen around the rest of the world." This statement ignores the fact that capital punishment is, in and of itself, a human rights abuse--something that the EU itself recognizes.

Schwarzeneggar's refusal to commute the death sentence is part of a deeper problem in American culture. It has little to do with which party rules a state government. Schwarzeneggar's predecessor, Gray Davis, was a Democrat who staunchly supported the death penalty. Meanwhile, it was a Republican governor in Illinois who instituted a death penalty moratorium.

Tookie Williams will not write any more children's books condemning gang violence, because he is now dead. Such is the irrevocable outcome of taking a human life as a form of punishment--you can't undo death. This is one of the myriad problems with capital punishment. It is important to remember that this isn't about Tookie Williams per se, or his rehabilitation in prison or the books he has written, or whether or not he ever admitted his guilt. It is about all executions, and the morally wrong path that a nation takes when it carries out capital punishment

Harold Pinter on Nicaragua

2005-12-07T21:58:00.000-08:00

Harold Pinter devotes one section of a longer article published today in Counterpunch to a discussion of the US policy towards Nicaragua during the 1980s. It is important to remind ourselves of Reagan's crimes in Central America for two reasons. First, a ridiculous mythology has developed around Reagan in recent years, particularly since his death--something that is due to an appalling blindness towards the horrible things that he did while in the White House. Second, Reagan's policies in Central American are part of a pattern of imperialism against sovereign nations that continues today, particularly toward nations such as Venezuela.

Here is what Pinter had to say about Nicaragua:

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

Hey Condi, We Sure Are Glad You Cleared Things Up

2005-12-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

Here's a telling quote from an AP article published today:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that cruel and degrading interrogation methods are off limits for all U.S. personnel at home and abroad. But she gave no examples of banned practices, did not define the meaning of cruelty or degradation, did not say if the rules would apply to private contractors or foreign interrogators and made no mention of whether exceptions would be allowed.

For example, are water boarding, do the attention grab, the attention slap, standing for hours, cold treatment, and water boarding count as examples of banned practices?

It would be interesting to know, but, naturally, Rice always refuses to answer questions about specific practices.

What it thus boils down to is a matter of the Bush regime expecting the world to implicitly trust the US, with no accountability and no public access to the detainees to provide independent confirmation. It is all a laughable charade. We all know it is a charade. Bush knows it, Rice knows it, and so does the rest of the world. The fact is that there is a reason why these actions are carried out in secret. The only question is whether the European nations will carry this investigation forward enough to actually bring meaningful pressure on Bush.

Is American Capitalism Headed for a Crisis?

2005-12-07T17:18:00.001-08:00

An article in the Christian Science Monitor discusses the effects that recent layoffs in the US auto industry have had on its victims and on the economy in general. The article asks the following pertinent question:

What's playing out here in America's automotive alley may be the last gasp of the assumption that good factory jobs will last a lifetime. And workers here see it as something more: a warning that the American dream itself is at risk.

The outlines of the challenge go beyond the auto industry, they say - global competition, shrinking union bargaining power, an eroding industrial base. If middle-class paychecks continue to be clipped, they wonder, what will drive the economy forward? What tax revenue will the government have?

This is a valid question that needs to be asked. As global capitalism continues to exert powerful market pressures on the American economy, what is happening to American jobs? Many might point to the fact that the US unemployment rate has dropped since the end of the recession, as a sign that the economy is doing better. But the unemployment rate, in and of itself, doesn't tell us anything about the downward or upward economic mobility of a nation's working class. If certain kinds of jobs go away, and are replaced by lower paying jobs, the unemployment rate in and of itself will not reflect this. As the Monitor article points out:

Nationwide, unemployment remains low by historical standards, but sectors of the labor market, especially manufacturing, have been losing in recent years. And despite a growing economy, wages for nonsupervisory workers haven't been keeping pace with inflation

In other words, despite the rosy picture of the economy that the some economists and government spokespeople have been painting, workers know that the story is a bit different--they know that the wages of workers have been going down over recent years. This is the reality of our current economic system.

The Monitor article also summarizes the argument that apologists for American capitalism often use, namely that "the nation's prosperity hinges on its extraordinary flexibility in deploying labor and investment." Of course, one problem with this argument is that the nation's economic system does not live in a vacuum. In this era of neoliberal globalism, the result of this "flexibility" is to respond to the pressure of global market forces by cutting back on higher paying jobs in the US. As the article points out,

In many cases, the economy's vaunted flexibility has helped displaced workers find new jobs, but typically at lower pay than before. That's what has happened with legions of US steel workers since the 1970s, when that industry declined.

Jared Bernstein, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, says that the typical layoff results in a 10 to 20 percent pay cut for the workers involved. And US manufacturing, long a foothold of working-class prosperity, has been hit particularly hard. "We are losing that foothold at a very rapid pace," he says.

As workers' wages decline in real terms (adjusted for inflation), while the incomes of the ruling capitalist class continue to increase, what this means is that there is a growing gulf in the incomes between the two classes in American society. Whether this bodes a crisis in the short run is difficult to say. But it is clear that for ordinary Americans, the empty promises of the capitalist system are proving to be tragic lies.

What traditionally was seen as protecting workers from the worst excesses of capitalism were the social and government programs of American liberalism. Capitalism could be tamed, so the argument went. But the political collapse of liberalism in the US, combined with the powerful pressures that global market capitalism have placed on the US economic system, which is no longer insular enough to resist these pressures, have shown that traditional post-New Deal liberalism offers no way out of this conundrum. The solution instead lies with a new paradigm in which the people democratically manage social resources for human need rather than profit. Only by overturning the capitalist system at a global level can these problems be solved.

The CIA's use of torture

2005-12-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

The London newspaper The Independent has provided a chilling summary of the known facts surrounding the CIA's use of torture.

According to the article, several CIA agents have publicized what is going on because they were appalled by what has been going on:

Details of the secret prisons and the methods used in them have emerged mainly from CIA officers themselves, who said the public needed to know 'the direction their agency has chosen'.

The CIA even had some apparent difficulty finding interrogators who would use such practices:

just over a dozen CIA interrogators were trained and authorised to use the 'enhanced interrogation' techniques. At least three had declined involvement.

What is important in this issue is that the CIA is currently able to do all of this with impunity. The fact that the CIA is keeping prisoners in secret sites, in violation of international law and human rights standards, means that they are allowed to act without any international supervision. This need for secrecy has always been an important matter for human rights violators who commit the most egregious outrages. According to the article:

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was US Secretary of State, said last week that he knew of more than 70 "questionable deaths" of detainees under US supervision up to the end of 2002, when he left office. That figure, he added, was now around 90.

These incidents are in addition to the increasingly well-documented practice of "rendition": flying suspects to Middle Eastern countries where torture and deaths in custody are routine. "If you want a good interrogation, you send them to Jordan. If you want them dead, you send them to Egypt or Syria," one former CIA agent is reported as saying. The McCain amendment, however, will have no impact on foreign torturers. It is mainly aimed at halting the abuses exposed at Abu Ghraib, where routine humiliations degenerated into sadism.

Yet only the low-ranking military police caught on camera in Abu Ghraib have been prosecuted. America's covert forces are operating in a climate of impunity, described by Cofer Black, then CIA counter-terrorism chief, who told a congressional committee in 2002: "After 9/11, the gloves were off." At one point, according to Newsweek, the Bush administration formally told the CIA it could not be prosecuted for any technique short of inflicting the kind of pain that accompanies organ failure or death.

In light of European outrage over the apparent presence of secret prisons within the EU, Condoleeza Rice has already indicated that she will go on the offensive on the matter. She has already implicitly suggested that the CIA's techniques are a good thing because they have produced valuable results. According to Rice, these tactics have "stopped terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives, in Europe as well as in the U.S. and other countries." Although she denies that the US carries out torture, the reality is that she is simply engaging in semantics without justifying that claim with any specifics.

Among the torture tactics that the CIA has used, according to the Independent article, are the following:

THE ATTENTION GRAB: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him. Israel, the only democracy to have openly debated coercion of prisoners, declared this legal in 1987, but the Supreme Court ruled it out in 1999

THE ATTENTION SLAP: Interrogators may deliver "an open-handed slap", which is "aimed at causing pain and triggering fear"

THE BELLY SLAP: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage

STANDING FOR HOURS: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to a ring bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are claimed to be effective in yielding confessions

COLD TREATMENT: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept at around 10C, and constantly doused with cold water. Misapplication of this technique is blamed for the death of a detainee in Kabul

WATERBOARDING: The prisoner is bound to a board, head slightly below the feet. Plastic is wrapped over his face and water is poured over him, or his head is lowered into a bath. The gag reflex is automatic; few can endure more than a matter of seconds

It will be interesting to see if the European heads of state back down on this issue. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has already made plain her intention of being more of a lapdog to US imperialism. Despite all the attention that this issue has been given in recent days in the European press, one has to wonder if the leaders of those nations will simply be too intimidated by the US to do anything about it.

What Do We Have To Do?

2005-12-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times featured a story on the layoffs taking place at GM--particularly focusing on Saturn, where the dreams and hopes of a "different kind of car company" have been crumbling in the face of the realities of market capitalism.

The failures that are evident at Saturn illustrate the point that even a "different kind" of capitalist enterprise remains, after all is said and done, a capitalist enterprise. Workers under capitalism continue to be at the mercy of market forces, regardless of how "different" the company might be. In the face of these impersonal forces that govern capitalism, workers are confronted with their utter helplessness:

Workers have got to be asking themselves, What do we have to do?" said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

"The social contract was that if we build a quality product, we're going to have jobs, our kids are going to have jobs, and the plant will still be in town," Professor Chaison said. "Now, that idea is gone."

"What do we have to do?" is both a rhetorical lament and a reflection of the reality that there is nothing that workers can do under a system such as capitalism, where there is no rational democratic decisionmaking over society's resources; instead, workers are subject to forces outside their control. Thus the rhetorical question "what do we have to do?" has only one possible answer--the only way to solve the problem is to replace capitalism with democratic socialism.

Many might have suggested that the Saturn model represented a reformation of capitalism. That is because it attempted to engage the workers in a kind of partnership with their capitalist bosses. As the article points out:

Saturn was "an opportunity to show everyone the worker had some influence in the making and building of a car, that we weren't just line rats," said Mark Wunderlin, 49, who moved here from Oklahoma City in 1990.

Saturn workers took part in brainstorming sessions, sharing ideas with management that they might have never mentioned at a conventional plant. Leaders of the U.A.W. served alongside G.M. executives on an advisory council, sharing decisions affecting Saturn.

Granting a measure of worker participation in a private capitalist enterprise that is owned by capitalists, however, is not socialism. It is an attempt at reforming elements of the traditional capitalist workplace model--but, and this is important--it does so while retaining capitalist fundamentals. The workers at Saturn plants did not own or control the means of production. Similar attempts, often by legislation, at instituting worker involvement within the context of capitalist enterprises has been tried in various countries--Germany, for example. But the fundamental reality is that, when push comes to shove, the helplessness of the worker in the face of capitalism cannot help but rear its ugly head, as capitalist market forces will ultimately turn against the worker.

The solution to this kind of helplessness lies in creating a society in which workers, communities, and consumers manage social resources to satisfy human needs rather than profits. Private ownership of the commanding heights of industry can be turned over to the radically democratic institutions of people's organizations that emerge in the struggle against capitalism. Once workers have a democratic participation in a rationally planned economy, they will no longer be overcome by the helpless that leads to the question, "What do we have to do?" Helplessness comes from powerlessness. Give the power to the people, and the helpless will end. That is the vision of revolutionary democratic socialism.

The Antiwar Movement versus the Democratic Party

2005-11-27T14:06:00.000-08:00

Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch put it very well this weekend as he summarized how the Democrats continue to show how contemptible they are in their inability to embrace the antiwar movement:

Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' leader in the House abruptly retreated from a scheduled pres conference to express support for Murtha. Scenting weakness, the Republicans put up a resolution calling for withdrawal now. Democratic panic escalated into pell mell retreat, shouting back over their shoulders that they weren't going to fall for such a dirty Republican trick. Why not? What better chance will they get to go on record against the war? In the end just three Democrats (Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, Jose Serrano of New York, and Robert Wexler of Florida voted for immediate withdrawal and six voted "present"). McKinney put it starkly:

"I will not vote to give one more soldier to the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney war machine. A vote on war is the single most important vote we can make in this House. I understand the feelings of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who might be severely conflicted by the decision we have to make here tonight. But the facts of US occupation of Iraq are also very clear."

They may be clear to McKinney, and Murtha and 60 per cent of the American people, but not to the three Democratic Senators interested in the presidential nomination in 2008. Even after Murtha's lead Russell Feingold continued to mumble about the "target date" for withdrawal being 2006, as does Kerry. For her part Hillary Clinton announced at the start of Thanksgiving week that an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be "a big mistake" which "would cause more problems for us in America. It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state"

The most important lesson that we can take from this is that the Democrats and the antiwar movement have nothing to do with one another. This is an important lesson to consider as we read today about a man named Steven Greenfield, who has left the Green Party in New York and joined the Democrats so that he can challenge Hillary Clinton in the primaries next year. His intention is to run an antiwar campaign; he was quoted as saying of Clinton that "she's in favor of the war and in favor of continuing the occupation". While his criticisms of Clinton are true, his strategy of abandoning a third party movement precisely at a time when the Democrats are so vulnerable shows that Greenfield is more interested in opportunism than in building the third party that he had supposedly been committed to.

This kind of opportunism unfortunately does crop up among some participants in third party movements who seek public office. It shows the seductive power of the duopoly, but it is a failed strategy. The antiwar movement must not delude itself by allying itself with a party that has repeatedly shown its disinterest in our cause.

Support your friendly neighborhood Left wing third party

2005-11-22T10:34:00.000-08:00

If there ever was a time for third parties on the Left to fill a vacuum in American politics, now is it.

Terry Neal writes in the Washington Post that the Democrats will continue to flounder without proposing a principled antiwar voice in opposition to Bush's quagmire in Iraq. Neal reports that a" senior Democratic staff member in the House" told him that

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has called a meeting of House Democratic leaders on Dec. 7 to begin trying to build consensus on what to do with the troops in Iraq. But Pelosi has decided against a plan to have the conference endorse a version of Murtha's plan.

With the majority of Americans opposing the war in increasing numbers, now is the time for a strong voice on the Left to speak strongly and firmly against the war. This would have been a golden opportunity for a genuine and principled opposition party to seize; but the Democrats are clearly not that opposition party.

In fact, according to Neal,

A new Wall Street Journal poll has Bush's approval rating down to 34 percent. The problem for Democrats is that they're rated by the public even lower than the Bush administration and are essentially tied with congressional Republicans, with only about a quarter of the public approving of the job both are doing.

With so much discontent and dissatisfaction among Americans with both parties of the duopoly, it is clear that the solution to our problems does not lie with pursuing the status quo.

Hillary Clinton, warmonger extraordinaire

2005-11-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

Hillary Clinton says that an immediate pullout from Iraq would be a "mistake".

She has been one of the leading warmongers in the Senate all along, so this comes as no surprise.

Yet another commentary on the Murtha proposal

2005-11-21T16:03:00.000-08:00

I saw an interesting comment from Joanne Landy, director of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, about what Murtha proposed. It was forwarded in an email list that I am on. Here is what she said:

As far as I can tell, the main "nuance" in Murtha is that while he wants immediate withdrawal from Iraq, he wants to redeploy U.S. troops somewhere next door to Iraq. In his Nov 17 speech he said that his plan wants:
To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.

To create a quick reaction force in the region.

To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.

To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq
Murtha's speech is dynamite because it shakes up the status quo by sharply raising the issue of withdrawal from Iraq -- a position that is rejected by mainstream Democrats as well as Republicans because it would represent a defeat for U.S. empire. BUT in calling for a continuing strong U.S. military presence in the Middle East, Murtha retains an imperial approach. This needs to be pointed out. As far as I could tell from their incoherent ramblings during the debate, many of the Democrats in Congress were furious because the Republicans had stripped out the imperial elements from Murtha's position when they introduced an immediate-withdrawal-from-Iraq resolution for a forced vote without including the imperial codicils.

More on the Democrats and the war

2005-11-21T13:28:00.000-08:00

As a followup to my comments about the Democrats and their response to the Republican resolution on Iraq, ZNet has published an insightful commentary by Gilbert Achcar and Stephen R. Shalom on this subject. Here is a key part of the article:

[T]he anti-war movement needs to be careful not to confuse Murtha's position with its own.

When Murtha says "redeploy" -- instead of withdraw -- the troops from Iraq, he makes clear that -- despite his rhetoric -- he doesn't want to really bring them home, but to station them in the Middle East. As he told Anderson Cooper of CNN:

"We ... have united the Iraqis against us. And so I'm convinced, once we redeploy to Kuwait or to the surrounding area, that it will be much safer. They won't be able to unify against the United States. And then, if we have to go back in, we can go back in."

Moreover, Murtha's resolution calls for the U.S. to create "a quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines" to be "deployed to the region."

We strongly disagree. The anti-war movement cannot endorse U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, whether over or under the horizon. We don't want U.S. troops remaining in the region and poised to go back into Iraq. They don't belong there, period. Some -- though not Murtha -- suggest keeping U.S. bases within Iraq, close to the oil fields or in Kurdistan, in order to intervene more or less on the pattern of what U.S. forces are doing in Afghanistan. But this is a recipe for disaster, since the Iraqi view that the United States intends a permanent occupation is one of the main causes inciting the insurgency. Moreover, stationing U.S. forces in Kurdistan could only deepen the already dangerous ethnic animosities among Iraqis. In any event, if U.S. troops continue to be used in Iraq -- whether deployed from bases inside the country or from outside -- they will inevitably continue to cause civilian casualties, further provoking violence. Having a U.S. interventionary force stationed in Kuwait or in a similar location will continue to inflame the opposition of Iraqis who will know their sovereignty is still subject to U.S. control. As for the impact of keeping U.S. forces anywhere else in the larger region, it should be recalled that their presence was the decisive factor leading to 9-11 and fuels "global terrorism" in the same way that the U.S. military presence in Iraq "fuels the insurgency" there.

Murtha, we need to keep in mind, is not opposed to U.S. imperial designs or U.S. militarism. He criticizes the Bush administration because its Iraq policies have led to cuts in the (non-Iraq) defense budget, threatening the U.S. ability to maintain "military dominance."

Murtha's resolution calls for redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq "at the earliest practicable date" -- which is reasonable only if it means that the withdrawal should be started immediately and completed shortly after the December elections, with the exact details to be worked out with the elected Iraqi government. In his press conference, however, Murtha estimated it would take six months to carry out the "redeployment," which seems far longer than the "earliest practicable date." (Recall that U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam in 90 days from the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty.) To set such a long time period for the evacuation of Iraq is all the more worrying given that the decision to withdraw the troops is not even being considered yet by the Bush administration or the bipartisan majority of the U.S. Congress.

Congressional Republicans, in a transparent ploy, offered a one-sentence resolution stating that the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq be terminated immediately. Murtha called this "a ridiculous resolution" that no Democrat would support (Hardball with Chris Matthews, Nov. 18). In point of fact, the resolution was opposed by all of the pro-war Democrats and most of the anti-war Democrats, who (as the Republicans hoped) didn't want to be accused of "cutting and running." But actually the resolution wasn't ridiculous at all understood in the sense we have just explained.

Achcar and Salom hit the nail right on the head. The fact is that Murtha's resolution, while a step in the right direction, represented something different from what the antiwar movement is advocating. The devil is in the details, and the reasons behind his proposal are more practical than principled--the war is a failed implementation of an agenda that he still seems to support; so let's end the war, he seems to be telling us, but the imperial goals that lay behind the way are still worth pursuing. Let us not forget that he was a war hawk. His six month timetable is excessive and his goal of redeploying troops elsewhere in the mideast is just a continuation of US imperialism. The prowar Democrats--as well as people with muddled views on the war like Nancy Pelosi, who has herself refused to endorse an immediate withdrawal or to endorse Murtha's proposal at her Friday press conference--actually used the Republican resolution to duck behind, to avoid taking a real, principled stand against the war.

The Democrats Fail the Test

2005-11-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

Many Democratic Party apologists and many pro-Democrat bloggers got into a tizzy over the fact that the Republicans offered a different resolution on the Iraq War than the one that John Murtha wanted to vote on. But the reality is that the Republicans called the Democrat's bluff. The resolution that the Republicans offered was actually better than the one that Murtha wanted a vote on, because it called for an immediate end to US involvement in Iraq. The problem is that the even the supposedly "antiwar" Democrats don't really know what their stand on the Iraq War is--they sort of support it, and they sort of are against it. A grand total of 3 Democrats voted for that resolution. The rest of the Democrats blinked. They just refused to take a firm stand against the war.

The Socialist Party USA has issued a statement on this issue that speaks to the point:

STATEMENT ON CONGRESSIONAL TROOP WITHDRAWAL VOTE

In a highly uncharacteristic move, members of the United States Congress recently brought to the floor a resolution perfectly representing the position of the Socialist Party USA, namely "... that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately."

There was no surprise regarding its fate, however: only 3 Democrats and no Republicans voted for it. As usual, the imperialist agenda of both capitalist parties ruled the day: just more proof that the game-plan for both Republicans and Democrats is long-term political and economic control of the Middle East through the continuing use of U.S. military force.

This comes through clearly in the conditions of the Democrats' newly-minted anti-war position. Part dove, part hawk, the Democratic "plan" couples a vague time-table for troop withdrawal with a call for the establishment of a "quick-reaction force" and a nearby presence of Marines. More hypocrisy and opportunism in the service of global capitalism, and more need than ever for independent political action in general and Socialist Party candidacies in particular.

The Socialist Party USA stands firm in its call for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and for an immediate cut of at least 50% in the military budget. We also demand that revenue currently funding the military machine be redirected to education, health care, child care, housing, mass transit, and social services, and that additional revenue be generated by instituting a steeply graduated Federal income tax targeting the income and wealth of the very rich.

Bring the troops home now! Cut the military budget! Tax the rich! People before profits!

John Jacobs, in Counterpunch has written an article titled "If It Walks Like a Withdrawal Resolution, and Talks Like One, Then Why Won't You Vote For It?" In the article, Jacobs points out:

Now, excuse me if I don't get it, but it seems to me that if one is against the war and wants to see an immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, then one votes for immediate withdrawal, no matter who sponsors the legislation. Only Cynthia McKinney (GA), Jose E. Serrano (N.Y.), Robert Wexler (Fla.) agreed with this approach and voted for the resolution (and for immediate withdrawal). Six other Congressional members voted present and the other 403 voted to continue the war in Iraq as is. This may have been a political trick by the GOP, who may have hoped to get some Democrats to vote for immediate withdrawal and thereby paint them into some corner with Saddam Hussein or the phantom al-Zarqawi come election time in the hope that a war-weary public might start supporting the war again. Instead, what the GOP got was an overwhelming vote for the war--a vote that they can also use to their advantage come election time when Democratic candidates attack the same war that they are to chickenshit to genuinely oppose.

The reality is that while Murtha's call for withdrawal represents a positive step, the Democrats continue to cling to their confused and irrelevant approach to the Iraq War.