The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Politics

Campaign 2012 Predictions

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 I thought I’d get this on the record one more time. Since early October, I’ve been predicting that Ron Paul will win the Iowa caucuses. He has a large and fanatical organization on the ground in the Hawkeye State, and the unique nature of the primary process there makes that an advantage. It appears that he’s now leading in the latest polls there, after showing steady gains in recent weeks.

Ron Paul back on top in Iowa, new poll says. [CSMonitor.com] – Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is now leading the pack in Iowa as Newt Gingrich’s support fades.

I have also been predicting that the GOP will eventually nominate a Romney/Gingrich ticket, an idea that seemed laughable to many at the time I first mentioned it.

As to the general election, I believe that it will be a very close contest, with a large chunk of the voting public lending their support to a third-party candidate (and perhaps a fourth). Ultimately, I do believe that Obama will prevail.

If you have thoughts or predictions, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to leave a comment.

Worker-Owners of America, Unite!

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Gar Alperovitz, author of America Beyond Capitalism, writes in the New York Times about a possible trend toward economic democracy.

Worker-Owners of America, Unite! [NYTimes.com] – Some 130 million Americans now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses and credit unions. More than 13 million Americans have become worker-owners of more than 11,000 employee-owned companies, six million more than belong to private-sector unions.

Alperovitz also appeared on Democracy Now! this week to discuss his notion that we may be in the midst of a profound transition towards an economy characterized by more democratic structures of ownership.

NDAA Indefinite Detention Overview

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Here’s a link to some fairly thorough reporting and explanation from The Christian Science Monitor concerning the National Defense Authorization Act anti-terrorist provisions. Highly recommended…

Does defense bill’s anti-terror provision deprive Americans of key rights? [CSMonitor.com] – The US Senate on Thursday approved a controversial measure that affirms broad authority for the nation’s military to indefinitely detain suspected Al Qaeda members and associates captured in the United States.

 

White House Abandons NDAA Veto

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I’ve said in the past that I felt that provisions of this National Defense Authorization Act would mark the end of The Republic. Whether or not that is the case, if the President signs it into law it will mark the end of my support for his candidacy in 2012.

White House says no veto of defense bill. [WASHINGTON (AP)] – The White House on Wednesday abandoned its threat that President Barack Obama would veto a defense bill over provisions on how to handle suspected terrorists as Congress raced to finish the legislation.

Full text of the Press Secretary’s statement is not on the White House Website yet, but you can read it on the Lawfare Blog.

OWS and the Unions

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Yesterday’s direct action at the West Coast ports, though it failed to completely shut down shipping as was hoped, did cause significant disruption to business in many locations from San Diego to Anchorage. The protestors were able to cause a major marine terminal (Portland) to close. They brought things to a standstill for a time in Oakland and in Longview, Washington. They slowed business in Long Beach, in Seattle and elsewhere.

Much of the media coverage of this action has centered on how the protests were viewed by organized labor, and on the broader issue of the relationship between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the unions. Some reports even played-up rifts between the protestors and workers. Mid-morning yesterday, a story from CBS News showed up in my aggregator with this summary. “Anti-Wall Street activists plan blockades to support dockworkers’ labor struggle, but union doesn’t want their help.”

Later in the day a lot of OWS supporters were linking to this post from CleanAndSafePorts.org that’s titled An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports. It’s signed by drivers of many years standing who were elected to speak on behalf of local committees from Long Beach, Seattle & Tacoma, Los Angeles, Oakland and New York & New Jersey. It presents a fairly nuanced description of their issues and their feelings about the OWS Action. Here’s an excerpt.

We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible.

I would encourage you to read the entire letter to learn more about these workers’ lives and the difficulties that they face each day, as well as their (somewhat ambivalent) feelings about the direct action yesterday.

In parts of the country, there have been rather rocky relations between some organized labor groups and the OWS protestors from the very beginning. One need only read a few of the local General Assembly minutes to notice that. Some union leaders seemed suspicious (and perhaps even a little jealous) of a “Johnny come lately” grassroots populist movement shouting about issues of economic injustice around which Labor has been organizing for more than a century. By the same turn, many folks in the Occupy movement seemed suspicious of any of the big institutions of our society, labor unions included. Though there have been many instances of mutual support for causes and actions, it sometimes remains an uneasy alliance.

The sound bites and the headlines miss a lot of the underlying issues – structural, legal and ideological – that have set the stage for the interaction between OWS and the unions. Some of those issues have as much to do with the history of the Labor Movement in the United States as they do with any unique current conditions.

I would highly recommend an article from Richard Myers over on Daily Kos titled Unions, OWS, and Blocking The Ports. He observes that “the union roots of OWS are much broader and deeper than most observers realize.” He particularly notes the similarity in philosophy and tactics shared by OWS and the Industrial Workers of the World (horizontal democratic structure, emphasis on direct action, etc.).

As Richard notes, part of what may be playing out here is the tension between an increasingly radical local rank and file, and the stodgy reactionism of their national union leaders. He concludes, “There is no reason in the world to turn against OWS on the false basis that OWS doesn’t respect workers’ rights. OWS is all about workers’ rights. The really big question is: how far will national leaders of business unions go for the workers?”

It seems to me that he hits the nail directly on the head.

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Read Richard Myers’ article at Daily Kos.

Learn more about the West Coast ports direct action.

Find out about the IWW.

The United States of Amarionette

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Let’s say that you have tickets to see a new production of Shakespeare’s Othello. You’re thrilled at the prospects for the evening, and after weeks of anticipation, opening night has finally arrived. There you sit, a first-nighter at last, among thousands of others. The curtain goes up…

…and it turns out that it’s a Punch and Judy style puppet show.

There is a vague resemblance to Othello. Some of the plot lines and characters are familiar, but it’s far from what you expected. At first, you consider that maybe this is some sort of high concept theatre and you just don’t get it. As the evening wears on though, you become more and more outraged. It’s not Othello. It’s not even artful. It’s just plain old Punch and Judy batting each other in the head.

Would you blame the puppets?

Of course not.

Yet, over the past few decades, and in particular over the past few years, there has been an ever more boisterous chorus of outraged citizens in the United States blaming our government and our elected officials for all manner of evil, both real and imagined. If we could only get rid of those bastards in Washington, or make them ever less relevant to our lives, everything would be just peachy.

That, my friends, is blaming the puppets.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending the Congress, past or present, for their failures to lead, to solve problems, to respond with any coherence or common sense to any number of critical issues and dangers facing The Republic. I’m not defending the ham-handed dimwittedness of the Bush Administration, nor the calculating cynical ineffectualness of the Obama Administration. I’m just saying “don’t blame the puppets.” Blame the folks pulling the strings.

There’s no kind way to put this. The government of the United States has by now been so corrupted by our system of electoral financing that the Sons of St. Tammany would blush. It is, in effect and in the truest sense of the word, owned by the funders.

Some might suggest that I have fallen prey to cynicism myself, having made that statement. To them, I would ask a simple question. Do you believe that the United States Congress is responsive to the will of the people? If so, your opinion is at odds with 90% of the voting public. If not, the question becomes “to whom is Congress responsive, then?” The answer to that one should be obvious.

Over the past decade the financial services industry alone spent more than $2 billion on federal campaign contributions, according to the authoritative source on such things, Opensecrets.org. That amount was more than the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Is it any wonder that one Senator recently admitted “frankly, they own the place?”

Immediately upon being appointed to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the so-called “Super Committee”), members began to see huge sums of money flowing into their re-election coffers from the political action committees of Lockheed, Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, the National Association of Realtors and others. Is it any wonder that they failed to reach an agreement that would impose a single penny of higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, or to even consider any cuts to our bloated defense budget?

Is it surprising that the health care bill that passed in the last Congress is little more than a vehicle for subsidies to the big pharmaceutical and insurance companies? These ills, and scores more, can all be traced back to that single question. To whom are our elected officials most accountable? Who is pulling their strings?

Perhaps it’s fair to aim at least some of our ire at the government. After all, our elected officials aren’t made of wood. They are (presumably) human beings with the power of reason and conscience – but I submit that they are puppets nonetheless. Voting for new puppets, or downsizing the puppets, or placing term limits on the puppets, or getting rid of the puppets altogether won’t solve the problem.

We need to focus our attention toward the folks with their hands on the marionette bars, and we need to do our damnedest to cut the strings.

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Resources For Change:

Open Secrets

Rootstrikers

Occupy

Regrets From A Chase Regional VP

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A Banker Speaks, With Regret – NYTimes.com.

…some account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers — those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English — and nudged them toward subprime loans.

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times recently spoke with James Theckston, who was a Regional VP for Chase during the housing boom. Theckston now speaks with regret about his culpability in the financial meltdown, as well as that of his bosses.

…they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.

Full article is here.

McCain: Citizens Can Be Held Indefinitely

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McCain says American Citizens Can Be Sent to Guantanamo. [The Progressive]

In this exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Senator John McCain while discussing provisions of the Defense Authorization Act, Senator McCain indicates that even U.S. Citizens could be arrested and held without trial indefinitely if they were considered a security threat.

Sen. Paul: “My question would be under the provisions would it be possible that an American citizen then could be declared an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely?”

 

Sen. McCain: “I think that as long as that individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat.”

 

Read the full article at The Progressive.

Here’s more coverage from The Huffington Post.

Strange Bedfellows

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Any issue that has these two in agreement ought to make us think twice.

Senator Rand Paul:

“It’s not enough just to be alleged to be a terrorist. That’s part of what due process is – deciding, are you a terrorist? I think it’s important that we not allow U.S. citizens to be taken.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein:

“Congress is essentially authorizing the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge. We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge.”

What are they talking about? There are provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act that will require that the U.S. military dispose with anyone who is suspected of terrorism, without regard to where they are, or who they are.

Let’s be clear about this. Under this law, if it passes, United States citizens, arrested within our own borders, could be imprisoned indefinitely without trial for the mere suspicion of having terrorist sympathies.

Democracy Now has more.