So, Yes, Republicans Do Indeed Impose Voter Restrictions In Response to High Turnout by Minority and Lower Income Voters

OK, OK! This may fall into the "My Grandmother Knows That!" category. But it is nice to have solid research to confirm Nana's suspicion that, yes, Republicans propose and pass voter restrictions in states where turnout by m minority and lower income voters is relatively high. Shocking, I know!

Politics, Movement and Electoral

Interesting political developments. In Chile, according to this report at The Guardian,  Camila Vallejo Dowling, was one among several leaders of student mobilizations in 2011 elected to Congress. And The Los Angeles Times reports that here, in the U.S., Kshama Sawant - OWS activist and freakn' self-proclaimed socialist - was elected to the City Council in Seattle.  You can find another report on Sawant here at The Guardian. These may seem blips on the radar. Perhaps they are. But each raises the issue of what possibilities a movement might generate.

The Court and Voting Rights

Dick Posner: The Court "struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act (the part requiring certain states with a history of racial discrimination in voting to obtain federal permission in advance to change their voting procedures—called “preclearance”) as violating the “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” of the states. This is a principle of constitutional law of which I had never heard—for the excellent reason that . . . there is no such principle.  . . . The opinion rests on air."  Just so. [source]

Emily Good - Green Party Candidate for Monroe County Sheriff

I do not subscribe to the Democrat & Chronicle (our local Gannett paper) and I only very rarely read anything in it. I won't rehearse the reasons here. But I have to admit that this column by Nestor Ramos is a nice surprise. I cannot vote for the Green Party candidates for City Offices since I am not a resident. But I can and will vote for Emily Good, the Green Party candidate for County Sheriff. If you live in Monroe County you should too. Criminal justice policy in the US is inexcusable and she is putting that embarrassment out there for all to see. Here is Emily announcing that she is running for office:

So Much for the Idea that Obama is a Progressive

In his inaugural address on Monday Obama went all 'progressive' on us, simultaneously generating swoons from liberals and drawing the ire of Republicans and their media mouthpieces. There are at least two important items to note before being swept away with either great enthusiasm or reactionary revulsion.

First, as James Thindwa notes here at In These Times: "During his re-election campaign, and in his personal reflections about the election, President Obama went to great lengths to avoid publicly acknowledging the valiant and very consequential contributions of organized labor to his re-election." This sets the stage for the perennial post-election move by Democrats - dump organized labor after they help get you elected.

 Second, on Thursday Obama nominated the fox (Mary Jo White) to guard the chicken coop (financial sector).  (He is proposing her to head the SEC.)  My friend, the estimable Lester Spence, brought to my attention this piece on the matter from Salon. The relevant line from the author (David Sirota): "So I fired up Google this morning and sure enough, I discovered why my superficially good feeling was quickly turning into a deeply ominous nausea."

Unions tossed (once again) under the bus, Wall Street keeps getting a pass. So much for the new progressive' Presidency. So much for the ability of the red-state crowd to gauge political reality. Maybe Obama really is the most centrist President in recent memory!

Urban-Rural My Keester - Can We Please Mention Race in a Direct Way?

Election Day results at Southern polling places reflected the same 
urban-rural divide that appeared everywhere else. 
Photograph © Travis Dove for The New York Times.

I live in - very conservative - rural western NY state. And I have good friends - mostly liberals and progressives - in the south, including North Carolina. So in many ways I am sympathetic to the distress that the author of this Op-Ed expresses. I found the 'some of my brother's best friends are Hispanic' portion of the essay laughable, but not surprising. That aside, I am not sanguine that demographic change alone will change red states blue. And, like it or not, in terms of presidential politics the hue of North Carolina approximates NC State considerably more than it does either UNC or Duke.

Nevertheless what stuck me most about the piece was the image above, which accompanied it in today's New York Times. Speaking of hue, why are we not talking about black and white here. That is, after all, what the image reveals. All this euphemistic chatter about "urban" and "rural" is just that - euphemism. And unless the unidentified precinct pictured here somehow incorporates city and farmland (not impossible) the operative distinction is race. Period.

Post-Election Desperation on the Right

This image was made by photographer Scout Tufankjian not this week but in Iowa last summer.* This week, however, it acquired notoriety because the Obama campaign included it in a celebratory - "Four More Years" -  tweet and plastered it across their Face Book page.

Then arrives in the mail our copy of The Economist sporting the same photo. The publication had, I believe, endorsed Obama. So, what is with the outlandish caption? Surely, if the editors had meant try to hug a Republican they'd have said so. So this cannot be taken as friendly, encouraging advice. And the editors surely know - the accompanying editorial suggests as much - that the overwhelming source of animosity and inaction over the past four years has come from far to the right of our centrist chief executive. Then again, the editors decry Obama's record, proclaiming that "his failure to work successfully with the Republicans has been woeful." Their advice? Another helping of the bi-partisanship that found no takers over the past four years. In the end this post-election campaign is a bit of a mystery. Why not send a message to the reactionaries among the Republican party, especially the Congressional contingent? I am not an Obama fan. But he and his party just kicked the snot out of the hapless Republicans. And they did so under far from auspicious economic circumstances. The right - including not just the usual talking heads but the editorial board at The Economist -  seem not to have noticed. I hope the new Obama administration does notice and that they press their political advantage rather than embracing a supine bi-partisanship.
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* I found this at Tufakijan's web page: "NOTE:  Scout was not employed by or affiliated with the Obama campaign in any manner, shape, or form.  She was a journalist covering the campaign." It is important to underscore that disclaimer because of the potentially misinterpret-able statement in the report to which I link above. It states "Tufankjian has been a campaign photographer with President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign since the beginning."

A Note to Liberals

"Our economy is recovering. A decade of war is ending. A long campaign is now over. And whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you, and you've made me a better president. And with your stories and your struggles, I return to the White House more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead. 

Tonight you voted for action, not politics as usual. You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. Reducing our deficit. Reforming our tax code. Fixing our immigration system. Freeing ourselves from foreign oil. We've got more work to do"

These two paragraphs come from Obama's victory speech last night. Notice what his agenda includes and what it neglects. Deficit reduction. Tax reform. Energy independence. Immigration reform. This sounds like the Romney/Ryan platform minus the assault on reproductive choice and health  insurance reform. Nothing on political economic inequality. Nothing on unemployment - except insofar as that is taking care of itself, however slowly. Nothing on enforcement of financial sector reforms. This is what Obama has in store for you. More center-right policy with a garnish of bi-partisanship.

The Romney Tax Plan - Get the Details

Susan discovered this site on which you can discover the essential feature of the Romeny/Ryan plan for tax reform. It is extremely informative - I highly recommend it.

John Sununu & His Racist Remarks: Calculated Sincerity

John Sununu:  “Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that’s an endorsement based on issues or whether he’s got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama.”

Piers Morgan: “What reason would that be?”

John Sununu: “Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you’re proud of being President of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him.”

Sununu's comments mostly are being depicted in the media as a gaff or some sort, unfortunate, ill-considered remarks that the Romney campaign should disavow and that Sununu himself has (kinda, sorta) retracted [1] [2]. Susan and I have been talking about why such interpretations miss what really is going on. Here is my view:

Let's face it, Sununu is a pasty, pudgy reactionary who will do nearly  anything to win. In that he is much like his employer who has been misrepresenting, lying and bullshitting for most of the campaign. For Sununu this means, in addition, articulating his own racist views in public. So, while I have little doubt that the racism Sununu spewed this week is sincere, it also is calculated. He is playing to the base of the Romney campaign - white folks, mostly white men. 'Watch out,' Sununu is warning in his unsubtle way, 'those blacks are conniving to further dis-empower you!' Then, having inserted the warning into the public agenda, he can efface his actual aim by appearing almost contrite and offering a half-hearted retraction.

In the end, Sununu need not apologize and the Romney campaign need not 'distance itself' from him because, well, their strategy will hopefully work! This was not a faux pas.
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P.S.: In the 'not so fast' category I will point out that indignant readers (white folks)  should not react by insisting that while whites vote for whites, minorities vote for minorities, thereby establishing some sort of comforting moral equivalence. The premise of your self-congratulatory retort turns out to be unpersuasive. Sorry.

The Powell Endorsement

So, according to this report at The New York Times, Colin Powell - shown in the screen shot above lying to the U.N. about Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMD program - has endorsed Obama for president. Last time around I was clear about what Obama ought to do in the event this happened. And I have been clear too about Powell and his putative record for being honest, independent, 'honorable' public servant, defender of democracy, and all that (See [1], [2], etc.). I stand by my advice to the Obama campaign. They should repudiate Powell's endorsement. But wait, one of the other page one stories at The Times today is about the small question of whether the administration has been "dissembling" over recent events in Benghazi. Maybe the folks in the administration can learn from Powell? Maybe they already have. After all, it is inconceivable that this sort of endorsement is non-orchestrated. Powell has been saved for the end, to punctuate Obama's victorious run for a second term. How convenient that Powell also now can distract attention from the administration's own foreign policy misstatements.

The 1% Congress

Some time ago I read a paper* by Nicholas Carnes, a young political scientist at Duke University. He studies the economic class background of politicians, specifically members of the US Congress. Unsurprisingly, he discovered that there are a vanishing small number of representatives from working class backgrounds in the U.S. House and Senate. And, unsurprisingly, he postulates that this has skewed the policies that Congress enacts.

Now, you might think this is the sort of thing that everyone, including your grandmother and mine, knows. And a moment's reflection suggests that that likely is so. That said, I think this is smart research that shines a bright, unflattering light on the inbred shallowness of the discipline of political science. And it does underscore the class basis of American politics.

In any case, Carnes has this Op Ed in The New York Times this morning sketching his research findings. The one thing that seems lame to me is the diffuseness of his proposed remedy and the basis for it. He thinks we can turn the under-representation of working class Americans around with a bit of elbow grease. He basically says 'Hey Look, in 1945 only 2% of Congressional representatives were women and now 17% are! Let's congratulate ourselves!" But let's remember that it is now 2012. In nearly seven decades Carnes's numbers  indicate that we have made only glacial progress toward gender equality in political representation.**  And, let's remember too that the the members of the 1% who are represented in Congress have 0% reason to support (and 100% reason to oppose) anything like the decentralized electoral strategy Carnes gestures at. This is a problem that demands direct political action; it is another indication of why the progressive agenda following on OWS should be about political rights.
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* Nicholas Carnes. 2012. "Does the Numerical Underrepresentation of the Working Class in Congress Matter?" Legislative Studies Quarterly XXXVII: 5–34.

Working-class citizens have been numerically underrepresented in policymaking institutions throughout most of America’s history. Little is known, however, about the political consequences of this enduring feature of our democratic system. This essay examines the relationship between legislators’ class backgrounds and their votes on economic policy in the House of Representatives during the twentieth century. Like ordinary Americans, representatives from working-class occupations exhibit more liberal economic preferences than other legislators, especially those from profit-oriented professions. These findings provide the first evidence of a link between the descriptive and substantive representation of social classes in the United States.

** As Susan points out, the increase in female Congressional representatives is overwhelmingly due to the election of African-American women. There are relatively few Republicans. And, I'd bet that the white women who do serve in Congress mimic the overall class background of the two houses.

Why Does Romney Keep Going on About the Jews and Their Special Capacity to Make Money?

Mitt Romney is still trying to clean up after himself for several "gaffes" made during his overseas tour. The one that seems most troubling, as reported here at The Guardian,  is his claim that the differences in economic performance between Israel and Palestine come down to the Jews and their "culture." Romney has repeated the claim upon arrival back in the U.S.. Most reporting on the matter focuses on rightful Palestinian outrage at Romney's apparent amnesia regarding the occupation and its obvious burdens on the Palestinians and their economy. But what I find stunning is that Romney is basically pointing to the Jews and remarking on their special money-making prowess. Where have I heard that sort of line before?

Republicans, Public Goods, and Sheer Idiocy

The Los Angeles Times has run two interesting pieces lately. The first is this essay "So, who really did invent the Internet?" - which sketches the fact that not only did it take government funding and research - not just in the U.S. but in those dratted "European Style Social Democracies" - to 'invent' the Internet, but government officials to open it to private commercial development. The punchline:

So the bottom line is that the Internet as we know it was indeed born as a government project. . . . Private enterprise had no interest in something so visionary and complex, with questionable commercial opportunities. Indeed, the private corporation that then owned monopoly control over America's communications network, AT&T, fought tooth and nail against [its predecessor] the ARPANet. Luckily for us, a far-sighted government agency prevailed.

It's true that the Internet took off after it was privatized in 1995. But to be privatized, first you have to be government-owned. It's another testament to people often demeaned as "government bureaucrats" that they saw that the moment had come to set their child free.

No one beside libertarian ideologues and Republican politicians like Romney should find this observation troubling. But they surely should have the good sense not to embarrass themselves when Obama utters truisms about the social-political-economic infrastructure on which "job creators" and "entrepreneurs" build businesses.

The second interesting essay is this one, suggesting that Romney actually understands what I just said. He apparently finds it no insult whatsoever to elite athletes when he suggested that they had oodles of help accomplishing their great, if various, feats. Why then, does Mitt consider it an insult to entrepreneurs when Obama suggests that they do not build businesses whole cloth? Can't the Republicans come up with a candidate who is less dim than this? Come on! I am not even an Obama supporter. This, though, is ridiculous.

Update: And it gets ridiculous-er and ridiculous-er by the minute - look here.

Elections in Exotic Places (5)

Burgos, Spain: People vote during Spain's regional and
municipal elections. Photograph © I Lopez/AP

Belarus Free Theatre (2)

I posted here a while back on the political repression of the Belarus Free Theatre. You can find an update on their travails here in The New York Times.

Against Bipartisanship (yet again)

And here is a piece by Paul Krugman & Robin Wells, also from the most recent NYRB. They lay out the electoral imperatives that the Democrats confront quite nicely. In short, given the choice between actual Republicans and Republican-lite, voters tend to opt for the genuine article. Among the culprits here are those - from the feckless Obama on down - who've joined the cult of bipartisan consensus. It is way past time to call in the de-programmers.

Belarus Free Theatre

Belarus Free Theatre in rehearsals for their production of
Being Harold Pinter at Soho theatre earlier this year (2008).
Photograph © Linda Nylind/The Guardian.

I came across this story in The New York Times, reporting widespread harassment of political opponents by the Lukashenko regime in Belarus. The story itself chronicles the harassment of the Belarus Free Theatre; here is a clip from Voice of America that goes over some of the same ground.

And, of course, the elections have now taken place in Belarus. Lukashenko, predictably, won re-election. According to this report in The Economist, the results are being contested and the regime has responded with violence and repression.

Elections in Exotic Places (4)

The Week in Pictures: Nov. 27 - Dec. 3, 2010 (Salon.com)

Police officers carry ballot boxes to a counting center at Mahalla
El Kubra, north of Cairo, Sunday. Opposition charges of ballot
stuffing, bullying and dirty tricks clouded the legislative election.
Photography © Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh.

A girl walks over electoral materials after angry voters trashed
a voting center in Port-au-Prince Sunday. Haiti's elections ended
in confusion as 12 of the 18 presidential candidates denounced
"massive fraud" and demanded the polls be annulled. Street
protests erupted over voting delays and problems.
Photograph © Reuters/Eduardo Munoz.

Local residents and opposition party supporters look through
a window into the local opposition party office where a deadly
overnight attack occurred in the Yopougon neighborhood of
Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2010. Gunmen
attacked an office of presidential candidate Alassane Ouattara,
killing at least four people, authorities said. The unidentified
assailants used automatic weapons during the overnight
attack and were able to get to the site and escape despite
a curfew. Photograph © AP/Rebecca Blackwell.

These are three images (and captions) from the Salon.com week in pictures feature. And, as is typically the case, we are get a view of exotic elections as not just exotic, but exclusively as events surrounded by incompetence, mayhem, violence and corruption. (See earlier posts in this series here.)

Sally Goes to Her Polling Place ...

Election campaigns too often revolve completely around the dour, dissembling or irrelevant. Consider, by contrast, this election advert run by the Young Socialists of Catalonia (Spain). Whether or not the advert helps the Socialists win the election, it has gotten them a remarkable amount of international press coverage ~ at the bottom of this report in the BBC are links to similar reports world-wide. I am sure that there will be many who find this "offensive." Is it more offensive than having politicians lie to you? Is it more offensive than haivng them run on programs that are divisive, militaristic, and exploitative?

And, of course, here is one of the funniest movie scenes ever. Coincidentally, it ran on local TV here in Western NY last night. So, before we all get our knickers in a knot ...