“Why Progressives Must Stay United”: A Split Would Only Play Into The Hands Of The Right
A new report finds more U.S. children living in poverty than before the Great Recession. According to the report, released Tuesday from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 22 percent of American children are living in poverty (as of 2013, the latest data available) compared with 18 percent in 2008.
Poverty rates are nearly double among African-Americans and American Indians. Problems are most severe in South and Southwest. Particularly troubling is a large increase in the share of children living in poor communities marked by poor schools and a lack of a safe place to play.
Which brings me to politics, power, and the progressive movement.
The main event at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, Arizona last weekend was a “Presidential Town Hall” featuring one-on-one discussions between journalist and undocumented American Jose Antonio Vargas and presidential candidates Governor Martin O’Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders.
It was upstaged by #BlackLivesMatter activists who demanded to be heard.
It’s impossible to overcome widening economic inequality in America without also dealing with the legacy of racial inequality.
And it is impossible to overcome racial inequality without also reversing widening economic inequality.
They are not the same but they are intimately related.
Racial inequalities are baked into our political and economic system. Police brutality against black men and women, mass incarceration disproportionately of blacks and Latinos, housing discrimination that has resulted in racial apartheid across the nation, and voter suppression in the forms of gerrymandered districts, voter identification requirements, purges of names from voter registration lists, and understaffed voting stations in black neighborhoods – all reveal deep structures of discrimination that undermine economic inequality.
Black lives matter.
But it would be a terrible mistake for the progressive movement to split into a “Black lives matter” movement and an “economic justice” movement.
This would only play into the hands of the right.
For decades Republicans have exploited the economic frustrations of the white working and middle class to drive a wedge between races, channeling those frustrations into bigotry and resentment.
The Republican strategy has been to divide-and-conquer. They want to prevent the majority of Americans – poor, working class, and middle-class, blacks, Latinos, and whites – from uniting in common cause against the moneyed interests.
We must not let them.
Our only hope for genuine change is if poor, working class, middle class, black, Latino, and white come together in a powerful movement to take back our economy and democracy from the moneyed interests that now control both.
By: Robert Reich, The Robert Reich Blog, July 22, 2015
“Back To The Fuhrer”: Why Republicans Are Obsessed With Comparing Obama To Hitler
Say what you will about Mike Huckabee, the guy has a way with a quip. And when he responded to the Iran nuclear deal by claiming that Barack Obama “will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven,” the only really surprising thing was that it took this long for Obama to go from being Neville Chamberlain on the subject of Iran to Adolf Hitler.
Because this wouldn’t be the first time — or the 10th, or the 100th — that a prominent conservative has compared Obama to Hitler. Given ample opportunity to admit that maybe he went too far in his remarks, Huckabee has been unrepentant. “The response from Jewish people has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said, making one wonder which Jews he’s talking to, since as a people we tend to be a little put off by glib Nazi analogies, particularly ones that are so vivid. But Huckabee has gotten plenty of support from fellow conservatives, who are practically lining up to say that, yes, Obama really is bringing about another Holocaust.
I’m not going to bother to argue with the absurd assertion that: 1) drastically curtailing and inspecting Iran’s nuclear program will actually do more to give Iran a nuclear weapon than just leaving the regime alone to do as it likes; and 2) the moment Iran has a weapon it will launch it at Israel in an act of national suicide. (Don’t forget that Israel has something like 100 nukes, and so could vaporize every square inch of Iran without much trouble.) But I do want to comment on the propensity of conservatives to go back to the Fuhrer time and again.
Let’s step back to Chamberlain for a moment before we move on to Hitler. Conservatives were calling the Iran deal the second coming of Munich even before any of its terms had been worked out. Which highlights something important about their beliefs on this topic: For all their talk of a fantasy deal in which Iran gives us everything we could possibly want and demands nothing in return, the whole point of the Munich analogy is that negotiation is useless by definition.
When conservatives said that Obama was like Chamberlain, they weren’t saying Obama is a bad negotiator and could have gotten a better deal. It isn’t the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000. The clear implication of the Munich analogy is that there shouldn’t have been any negotiations at all, and that war is inevitable so we might as well just get on with it. If your adversary is Hitler — and as far as many on the right or concerned, every potential adversary is Hitler — then war to save the world is the only option, and anyone who seeks a diplomatic solution to a dispute is a sucker.
But that was when they were being kind. Calling Obama Chamberlain suggests that his problem is naïvete, not malice. It accepts that he doesn’t actually wish for the extermination of the Jews, even if that is the inevitable result of his foolishness. But of course, conservatives have thought for a long time that Obama is absolutely brimming with malice — toward America, toward Christians, toward Jews, toward white people, toward just about anyone they like.
Which is why we’ve hardly gone a month throughout this presidency without someone comparing Obama to Hitler, on matters both weighty and mundane. He had only been in office a few weeks when Glenn Beck started comparing his program to that of the Nazi party. “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate,” said Rush Limbaugh in the summer of 2009, just a few months later. Conservative commentators saw swastikas in Obama’s push to register new voters in 2008, and even in his campaign slogans. Conservative favorite Ben Carson says the government under Obama is “very much like Nazi Germany,” because “[y]ou had the government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.” And that’s not to mention all the times some billionaire has compared Obama to Hitler for such appalling things as proposing to close the carried-interest loophole.
Plenty of former presidents were compared to Hitler by their opponents from time to time, but I think it’s safe to say that none has been the target of so many Nazi comparisons, coming so often and from so many prominent people, whether they be politicians or media figures.
It’s more evidence that the opposition to Obama is qualitatively different than what came before it. Never in our recent history has either party been as adamantly opposed to any political compromise as today’s GOP is. Republicans hated Bill Clinton, like Democrats hated George W. Bush, but they were willing to work together fairly regularly — no more. No president has had his legitimate occupation of the Oval Office questioned as often as Obama has; the man even had to show his birth certificate before they’d believe he’s actually an American (and many still don’t).
From the beginning, the conservative argument against Obama from so many quarters has been that he’s not just wrong or misguided, but is actually trying to destroy America and turn it into something twisted and ugly. If you think I’m exaggerating, then you haven’t been listening to their radio shows, watching their TV network, or reading their books, because that’s what they’ve been saying since before he got elected.
And if you believe that, then of course Obama isn’t Chamberlain, because Chamberlain is just a fool. Obama is the really sinister one, the one who wants to snuff out liberty and crush those who love it under his boot. He’s Hitler.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, July 29, 2015
“Sad, Dispiriting And Potentially Disrupting”: How Israel May Be Damaging The Alliance Between Blacks And Jews
“Do u know what Obama Coffee is? Black and weak.”
— A June 21 tweet by Judy Mozes, wife of Israeli interior minister and vice prime minister Silvan Shalom.
Judy Shalom Nir-Mozes, a well-known Israeli radio and television personality, deleted the tweet and later apologized after drawing criticism for what she called a “stupid joke.”
Those who regard the Iran nuclear deal as a grave threat to Israeli and U.S. interests have a moral duty to vigorously oppose it, just as those of us who view the deal as the best way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon should work for its adoption. Vilifying the president of the United States with slurs and insults, however, is out of bounds. Except, perhaps, in some places and with some people.
U.S.-born Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, has done his own anti-Obama number. Citing President Obama’s upbringing, Oren suggested in a series of recent articles in Foreign Policy that the president’s “abandonment” by his mother’s “two Muslim husbands” created in him a desire for “acceptance by their co-religionists” that has now influenced his foreign policy. Conspiracy theorists and birthers could hardly have said it better — Obama’s Christianity notwithstanding.
This is beneath the Michael Oren I thought I knew.
It has come to this: racially charged affronts to the president of the United States from, of all places, Israel.
According to the Book of Esther, Haman, a high official of the ancient kingdom of Persia, sought to annihilate the Jewish people. A few months ago, Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of Efrat, a West Bank settlement, likened Obama to a scourge on the Holy Land, telling an audience, “The president of the United States is lashing out at Israel just like Haman lashed out at the Jews.”
Riskin wasn’t the first rabbi to dub Obama a reincarnation of Haman.
In 2012, Dov Lior, then chief rabbi of another West Bank settlement, Kiryat Arba, also compared Obama to Haman, according to Israel’s Army Radio. But Lior stooped lower. He labeled Obama a “kushi” of the West, which, the Jerusalem Post reported, is a modern-day derogatory term used to describe people of African descent.
It’s not only the name-calling and insults hurled at Obama that grab the gut. Behavior sends signals, too.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress drew rave reviews from his Republican hosts and most — but not all — of Israel’s supporters. Many members of the 46-member Congressional Black Caucus were outraged that Netanyahu would go behind the back of the White House and arrange with Republicans to use the U.S. Capitol as the stage to challenge the president’s Iranian nuclear negotiations. Several chose to stay away.
U.S. representative and caucus member James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat, said he regarded Netanyahu’s speech as an “affront to America’s first black president.”
In an interview with USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham, Clyburn called Netanyahu’s White House end run “a real in-your-face slap at the president, and black folks know it. . . . [Netanyahu] wouldn’t have done it to any other president.” Pressed as to why Netanyahu would disrespect Obama, Clyburn responded, “You know why.”
Should it come to a search for 40 Democratic votes to join the House’s 247 Republicans in voting to override a possible Obama veto of legislation blocking an Iranian deal, don’t look for help from the Congressional Black Caucus. Hostility to the current Israeli leadership is real, and not just among caucus members. Many of their African American constituents are quietly seething, too.
Clyburn’s “and black folks know it” speaks volumes.
To no surprise, Republicans are trying to exploit the situation.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a petition urging people to sign and “[t]ell Obama it’s now time to stand with Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu.” Are the petitions being circulated in Zip codes where large numbers of blacks reside? It would be wasted effort.
There is a larger concern. While the jury is still out, the argument over the Iran deal could well stress the long-standing and largely fruitful political alliance between blacks and Jews in this country.
It would be a pity if the nuclear arms debate shapes up as a dispute between U.S. supporters of Netanyahu’s policies and Americans who respect and trust Obama’s judgment. And it would be a sorrow to those of us who still look with favor upon an alliance that has stood the test in the hardest of times.
That may explain why the “Obama Coffee” insult, the rabbinical slurs and the below-the-belt punches of Israeli officials are so sad, dispiriting and potentially disrupting in ways that once seemed unimaginable.
By: Colbert I. King, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 24, 2015
“Sure, Why Not?”: Is Donald Trump Serious About His Independent Threat?
Might Donald Trump run for president as an independent next year as he is threatening? Sure, why not.
My first reaction to the report in The Hill that former reality TV star Donald Trump is threatening to run for president as an independent if the GOP is too mean to him was a derisive chuckle – of course he’s not going to run as an independent, I thought. But hey, I also doubted that he’d ever actually declare for the presidency in the first place and even after he did that I wouldn’t have guessed that he’d file a real financial disclosure but he has. (And it’s the classiest, most unprecedented financial disclosure God ever created – I mean, Trump Drinks Israel?)
But having given it a little more thought … sure why not?
The fundamental question one must ask when pondering Trump’s “candidacy” is how seriously to take him as a politician seeking office. Does he really believe that he can be elected president and does he actually want to be? Does he, in other words, believe the nonsense that pours forth from his perpetual-motion-machine mouth? Or is this just a publicity stunt, a more elaborate version of his near-quadrennial attention grab?
If you’re not sure of the answer, consider this from The Hill’s story: “Real estate mogul Donald Trump said … he could run for president as an independent if he’s unable to win the Republican nomination in 2012.” Oops, sorry – that was The Hill’s story from April, 2011. So yeah, we’ve seen this show before.
In any case, regardless of whether you buy Trump as a serious candidate or not, an independent bid is sure-why-not plausible.
Suppose for a moment that he’s serious. If he’s really vainglorious enough to think he can win the GOP nomination barring establishment dirty tricks – and if he really thinks what the country needs is a Trump White House (and of course I mean that literally, with his name in huge gold letters on the roof) then why not run as an independent? Is he worried that he’s going to lose his credibility with Republicans? That he’s going to burn his political bridges? Like he cares? Trump’s political convictions are hardly set in stone. (For example: Per Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey, the day before he told The Hill he might run as an independent he told conservative radio host Dana Loesch that “I will only ever run as a Republican.”)
The case for an unserious run is even more compelling: What better way to keep himself in the spotlight without having any chance of actually having to take on any responsibility or govern? What’s the downside? He has already demonstrated an unparalleled ability to get the media’s attention (and so, thus far, keep his poll numbers rising) so all he’d have to do is make some nutty pronouncement every few days and he could continue to soak up the limelight.
Does it ultimately matter if he decides to run? Less than you might think. Running as an independent requires the kind of 50-state political infrastructure for which Trump has demonstrated neither an interest nor any ability. There are 50 different sets of rules for getting your name on the ballot – sorry, Donald, you can’t simply license your name onto it – with 50 different deadlines. If he isn’t on a significant number of ballots is he likely to get onto a debate stage? Or siphon a determinative number of votes from, presumably, the GOP nominee?
It takes more than a sure-why-not campaign to make that sort of difference.
By: Robert Schlesinger, Managing Editor for Opinion, U.S. News & World Report, July 23, 2015
“The Free Market Failed”: Here’s Some More Good News About Obamacare. Too Bad It Won’t Dent The Debate
Whenever a health insurer announces that it will be requesting significant premium increases in the coming year, it’s guaranteed to generate news stories that are waved triumphantly by conservatives as proof that the Affordable Care Act is a failure and, just as they predicted, premiums are skyrocketing because the government is messing around in health care.
When a story like this one comes along, on the other hand, it seems to generate much less attention:
California’s Obamacare exchange negotiated a 4% average rate increase for the second year in a row, defying dire predictions about health insurance sticker shock across the country.
The modest price increases for 2016 may be welcome news for many of the 1.3 million Californians who buy individual policies through the state marketplace, known as Covered California.
California’s rates are a key barometer of how the Affordable Care Act is working nationwide, and the results indicate that industry giants Anthem and Kaiser Permanente are eager to compete for customers in the nation’s biggest Obamacare market.
Leading up to Monday’s announcement there had been a steady drumbeat of news about major insurers outside California seeking hefty rate hikes of 20% to 40% for Obamacare open enrollment this fall.
Keep in mind that before the ACA went into effect, annual premium increases of 10 percent or so had become the norm. California is only one state, and when you go across the country the picture is complicated — in some states premiums are rising more slowly than they did before the law; in other states they’ve jumped; and in some places they’ve declined. There are many reasons why. But what’s important to understand is that the predictions of the law’s critics — that both overall health spending and premiums would explode — were completely wrong.
The key word in this story comes in the first paragraph: “negotiated.” California is one of the states where officials running the health care exchange negotiate with insurers over rates, and when you have a negotiation, you can get better terms for the people you represent. Yet incredibly, we’re still arguing over whether what the health insurance market needs is less government involvement and more of that free market magic.
So for the millionth time: the reason we have the world’s most expensive health care system is precisely because the free market failed.
If conservatives were right and government is the problem, then in all the world’s other advanced nations, where there is much more government regulation of health care than we have, they’d be paying more for their health care than we do. But they spend far less, often with better health outcomes and usually with virtually no uninsured. And after watching this debate for the better part of a decade, I’ve yet to hear a single conservative explain why that’s the case, and how it squares with their beliefs about government and markets. How can it possibly be that government-heavy systems — whether you’re talking about a completely socialized one like Great Britain’s or a system like France’s that combines a basic government plan with heavily regulated private supplemental insurance — work so much better and cost so much less than ours? If you have a religious belief that markets are always right and government is always wrong, it’s just impossible to reconcile.
The point isn’t that the ACA is a perfect piece of legislation that has solved all our problems, because it isn’t and it hasn’t. The ACA is a gigantic kludge layered on top of what was already a terribly dysfunctional system. Health insurance in America remains incredibly complicated — for instance, if you’re on an exchange, in order to get the best rate you may have to shop around every year. Unfortunately, Republicans have made it impossible to fix the law’s weaknesses as we used to do with complex legislation, because they’ve fed their constituents a lie that any day now they’re going to repeal the whole thing, so there’s no point in trying to make it work better (and that doing so would be a compromise with evil, of course).
Fifty years ago this Thursday, Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law. At the time, Republicans predicted not only that the program would be a failure, but that it would send America hurtling toward a socialist nightmare of oppression. Ronald Reagan famously said that if the law passed, “we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” Yet this big-government, single-payer health insurance program for seniors turned out to be one of the most successful and popular pieces of legislation in American history. Not only that, due in part to the Affordable Care Act, the projected future cost of Medicare keeps going down — another conservative prediction about the ACA that has proven wrong by 180 degrees.
And today, Republicans pretend they love Medicare and only want to preserve it, while they present plans that would eliminate its guarantee of coverage and turn it into a voucher program, on the failed theory that whatever the private sector does in health care must be superior. These efforts always fail, because the program is just too popular.
The ACA isn’t politically bulletproof in the same way, in large part because it’s so many different things. No one “has” Obamacare in the way you have Medicare, with a card in your wallet; in fact, tens of millions of people are affected by the ACA, usually in positive ways, without ever realizing it. But here’s a crazy idea: What if we looked at where the law is succeeding and tried to build on that success, and looked at where it isn’t and tried to correct those shortcomings, doing it all with the best understanding of the actual facts we can gain?
Oh, who am I kidding.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, July 28, 2015
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