MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: March 30, 2008

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April 5, 2008

State Dept. to Renew Blackwater's Security Contract in Iraq

After Blackwater operators opened fire on civilians in Baghdad last September, killing 17 and wounding more than 20 others, there was speculation that the controversial firm would be replaced by another security contractor when its five-year contract with the State Department expired in May. After all, initial investigations by the military and the FBI indicated that—contrary to Blackwater's version of events—its contractors were at fault in the shootings. "It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," a military official told the Washington Post back in October. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. And none of the IP [Iraqi Police] or any of the local security forces fired back at them." For a company that has maintained that the actions of its contractors were justified, the steps it took immediately after the shootings certainly seemed suspicious. Initially, Blackwater said that damage to its vehicles would prove its side of the story—that its contractors were attacked and were simply defending themselves and their clients. Yet, after the incident, the company reportedly repainted and repaired its vehicles, destroying key evidence that could potentially exonerate the company.

While a cloud still hangs over Blackwater, and it remains the subject of multiple investigations, including one by Henry Waxman's House oversight committee, the State Department shocked some Blackwater watchers yesterday by announcing that it would renew the firm's contract for another year.

The State Department says it can terminate Blackwater's contract at any time—and that the results of the FBI's ongoing investigation, when released, could also affect Blackwater's deal. That said, it's fairly remarkable that State would endure what is sure to be an onslaught of bad PR just to keep Blackwater on the job in Iraq. But there's a reason the agency may be willing to weather the flack—it is scared that the job of guarding the civilians currently protected by Blackwater could fall to its Diplomatic Security branch, which is spread pretty thin as it is. According to the Washington Post, State has a total of 1,400 diplomatic security agents, which are stationed at various posts around the world. Blackwater, by comparison, has close to 1,000 contractors working in Iraq and the ability to deploy many more at a moment's notice. The truth is, the government has become so reliant on PSCs that it is likely willing to overlook a shooting here and a shooting there so long as it doesn't have to deploy its own to resources to do the very dangerous work of guarding diplomats and dignitaries (and, yes, members of the press).

But whether or not Blackwater's contractors are guilty of massacring civilians, there's a rather big problem with the State Department's decision to keep Blackwater on. Many Iraqis already believe that Blackwater, and other security firms, operate with complete impunity, shielded from any form of accountability for their actions, and the U.S. government has done nothing to dispel that notion. Now, by renewing Blackwater's contract, it probably only reinforced the already widespread belief that security contractors are above the law.

Last winter, as Bruce Falconer and I reported our recent story on Blackwater's sister company, Greystone, I rang up retired marine colonel T.X. Hammes, who served in Iraq during the early days of the war and who has been vocal in his belief that security contractors have no place there. He has nothing against Blackwater and said its operators are among the most well-trained and professional of the security contractors working in Iraq, something I've heard from numerous sources. But, he noted, the mission of security contractors—protecting their clients—is inherently in conflict with the military's overarching strategy in Iraq, which involves appealing to the hearts and minds of the people and paving the way for some form of political accommodation. You can imagine how security contractors can and have set these efforts back, when, for instance, they run cars off the road when they get too close to their convoys or, worse, when they wound or kill civilians. "I don't think they belong in an insurgency ever, or in a combat zone ever," Hammes told me. "In a counterinsurgency, essentially it's a competition for the legitimacy of the government. The government is legitimate if it can provide security and hope for a better future. But as part of that hope for a better future, there has to be a feeling that in some way that government is accountable to you.... Iraqis have known these guys will never be punished; they just leave the country." He added, "The very fact that you're using contractors undercuts the legitimacy of the government."

April 4, 2008

The Internal Black Debate over Obama

Glenn Loury posted on TPM this week an amazing response to the challenge leveled in Obama's "Black, But More Than Black" speech. All I can say is—Wow.

Coming from someone like Glenn, who is a friend (I kept my list of wedding invitees brutally short. He and his lovely, accomplished wife were on it), this is utterly unexpected and a welcome relief! He completely disagrees with me on the import of the speech, but he does so in such a worthy, worldview-tilting way, I'm still rereading it, trying to make sense of a rebellion so cogently, unapologetically worded. Now, it's on! This, as opposed to the kneejerk "how dare white people tell us what to do?" reflexive response of the stick-it-the-man crowd, we can work with.

In short, Loury demands to know where Obama, who inherited but played no part in earning freedom, gets off telling him he's a neurotic, tragic figure for still being angry. More, he argues that elder-generation black anger is not a pathetic symptom of PTSD, but a legitimate reflection of how far blacks' limited freedom falls short of true equality. Just as young women refuse to accept that we old school feminists are right that they don't yet know how un-liberated they still are—that they're living in a post-feminist fool's paradise that will dissolve before their eyes when the boss suddenly demands sex in exchange for a promotion that will otherwise go to his mistress—older, Talented Tenth blacks furiously reject the notion that past racism has made them incapable of noticing that Jim Crow is dead and that being black is just a state of mind.

Loury argues that black anger, as funneled through the black prophetic tradition that runs from (at least) Frederick Douglass through MLK and onto Wright, is all that stands between America and kinder, gentler apartheid (I exaggerate, but see his post to get my drift). Its counterintuitiveness was bracing for those, like me, who want us to pragmatically stifle our anger in exchange for something like separate but truly equal (again with the oversimplifying exaggeration).

Finally, a real debate with unexpected twists and turns that can't be dismissed as mere defiance! I'm all tingly! Sometimes, not often when a dance floor remains uninvolved, it's a hoot to be black. Whatever else you think of Obama, he is engendering the kind of dialogue and debate which alone can move America forward on race. That an intracommunal fracas is raging among blacks is the surest sign of that; we have to gain ground in-house before we can gain ground with outsiders. Offerings like this will do exactly that.

You simply have to read the post in its entirety, but here's a slice of the frontal assault Loury flings right back in "his son's" face:

...Wright's error, Obama tells us, is that Wright's view of America is static, ignoring how things have changed—so much so that one of his own parishioners now stands on the threshold of being elected to the highest office in the land. As a (more or less) angry black man of Jeremiah Wright's approximate generation...and while offering no brief for Wright himself and no defense of the remarks that have created this firestorm, I nevertheless find that argument very patronizing. I know, just as Wright surely knows, that things have changed a great deal. I also know that, as I write this, one million young black men are under the physical control of the state; a third of black children live in poverty, and, the Southside of Chicago, with more than one-half million black residents, is one of the most massive, racially segregated urban enclaves ever to have been created in the history of the modern world...These things are a reflection of social, cultural, economic and political forces deeply enmeshed in the structure of American society. They are not merely the consequence of attitudes embraced by some more or less well-meaning but benighted black and white persons—attitudes which can be thrown off if only we were to become determined, under the inspiring and inspired leadership of the junior senator from Illinois, to work together to solve our common problems, etc.

I can’t get past the fact that Obama was negotiating with the American public on behalf of MY people in Philadelphia last week. In the process, he presumed to instruct a generation of angry black men as to how they ought to construe their lives. I am not really sure that Barack Obama has earned the right to do either of those things. How the Senator’s negotiations will ultimately shake out—in terms of American attitudes about the nation’s responsibility to act so as to reduce racial inequality—is something I'm not very confident that anyone can predict. Advocates of the interest of black people have to consider what hand we’ll be left to play, should he be defeated in November. The narrative-defining moves that Obama is making now, in the heat of a political campaign and in the service of his own ambitions, must be critically examined as to what impact they will have on the deep structures of American civic obligation, for generations to come.

At bottom, what is at stake here is a fight over the American historical narrative. Obama, a self-identifying black man running for the most powerful office on earth, does threaten some aspects of the conventional 'white' narrative. But, he also threatens the 'black' narrative—and powerfully so. In effect, he wants to put an end to (transcend, move beyond, overcome...) the anger, the disappointment and the subversive critique of America that arises from the painful experience of black people in this country. Yet, the forces behind his rise are NOT grassroots-black-American in origin; they are elite-white-liberal-academic in origin. If he succeeds, there will be far fewer public megaphones for the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons and Cornel Wests of this world, for sure. Many will see that as a good thing. But a great deal more may also be lost including, just to take one example, the notion that the moral legacy for today’s America of the black freedom struggle that played-out in this country during the century after emancipation from slavery—I speak here of Martin Luther King's (and Fannie Lou Hamer's, and W.E.B. DuBois's, and Ida B. Wells’s and Frederick Douglass's ...) moral legacy—should find present-day expression in, among other ways, agitation on behalf of and public expression of sympathy for the dispossessed Palestinians—who are, arguably, among the 'niggers' of today's world, if ever there were any...."

Speaking for myself, and as a black American man, if forced to choose, I'd rather be "on the right side of history" about such matters, melding the historical narratives of my people with those of the 'niggers' in today's world, than to make solidarity with elites who, for the sake of political expediency, would sweep such matters under the rug (or, worse.) My fear is that, should Obama succeed with his effort to renegotiate the implicit American racial contract, then the prophetic African American voice—which is occasionally strident and necessarily a dissident, outsider's voice—could be lost to us forever.

Intrigued? I hope so. Read the piece in its entirety and come loaded with the same quality ammo if you truly want to improve race relations.

Pentagon Greenlights Same-Sex Partner for Military Flight

Last month, ~~the House's only openly gay member~~one of the House's two openly gay members, Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin, was granted permission to bring her partner Lauren Azar on a congressional military flight. In line with Pentagon policy, which only allows members to bring legally defined spouses on military flights when there is room and when it is "necessary for protocol purposes," Azar was initially barred from boarding the flight. Baldwin and Azar have exchanged vows, but their home state of Wisconsin does not recognize same-sex marriage. No matter, though: Clinton's 1996 Defense of Marriage Act would have made state recognition null and void to the Department of Defense.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stepped in and appealed to Defense Sec. Robert Gates. Gates requested a formal letter of authorization from Pelosi, which allowed him (and the Pentagon) to conveniently sidestep taking responsibility for setting precedent on the rights of same-sex couples in Congress. Azar was subsequently allowed on the flight, but the Pentagon made crystal clear that such an allowance does not reflect any change in policy.

"This is not an issue of DOD regulations," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. "Secretary Gates honored a request from Speaker Pelosi to make an exception to the House rules…But that’s really as far as it goes…This should not be viewed as a precedent which would now permit all nonspouse travel. That said, Secretary Gates will, on a case-by-case basis, entertain the speaker’s future requests to make exceptions."

While guidelines don’t allow wiggle room for same-sex partners, adult children are granted access to military flights if a spouse is unavailable to travel. Of course, taxpayers foot the bill for all this companion travel.

Although Baldwin herself isn't commenting, let's hope she doesn't let this rest as a special case or a pattern of special cases. Exceptions are one thing, but many exceptions over time just make room for systematic discrimination.

—Joyce Tang

Clintons Release Tax Returns — Here Are Most of the Details

After weeks of pressure from the media and the Obama campaign, the Clintons have released their tax returns from 2000-2007. If you're a financial voyeur, you can read them all in pdf form here.

Over the last eight years, the Clintons have made roughly $109 million, have paid roughly $34 million in taxes, and have donated over $10 million to charity.

The Friday afternoon news dump is usually used to catch the media and its readership/viewership off-guard: nobody writes, reads, or watches much news going into a weekend. But these tax returns have been a hot topic in the presidential race for ages. Much scrutiny will be applied to the sources of the Clintons income over the next several days, primarily because of questions about whether Bill Clinton's worldwide business dealings allow nefarious interests to try and curry favor with the husband of a potential future president.

The Clintons asked for an extension on their 2007 taxes, meaning we don't know what the former President has been up to in the last year. The campaign did list some sources of income, including $150,200 from Senator Clinton's salary and $186,600 from President Clinton's pension. Less transparently, there is also $2,750,000 from unspecified "partnership income" and $400,000 from "advisor income" from a sketchy company called InfoUSA.

On this issue, the Clinton campaign does have a legitimate gripe with the media: reporters have not been good about presuming innocence. That said, the campaign fueled speculation about the tax returns' contents by not releasing them, despite endless calls for them to do so, and not providing a reason for why.

Note: Prior to this, the last time the Clintons released their tax returns (which has been the norm in presidential politics since the 1970s) was in 2000 when they made $416,039. They've certainly seen an income uptick.

Hillary's Prayer, Revisited

Hillary Clinton's campaign is doing its part to keep the Obama-Rev. Wright controversy alive. A few days ago one of Clinton's top advisers acknowledged that the campaign is aggressively pushing the Obama-Wright connection in its pursuit of uncommitted super-delegates. Hillary herself has repeatedly said that Wright "would not have been my pastor." And while there's no doubt the Wright issue will continue to be a headache for Obama, our prediction that Hillary's own untoward religious connections would become an issue has come true.

Last night NBC interviewed MoJo author Jeff Sharlet on Hillary's longtime participation in a secretive Capitol Hill group called the Fellowship.

Regular Mother Jones readers will be familiar with Hillary's involvement in the group from Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet's feature on the topic last September:

These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives' group into what may be Coe's most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfast—regularly attended by about 40 members—is a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.

Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn't condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics.

A few weeks ago over at The Nation, Barbara Ehrenreich called on Clinton to "explain—or, better yet, renounce—her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family." Today a Daily Kos diarist concurred that Hillary "owes us all an explanation." But the Clinton camp is keeping mum (Hillary declined to comment for the MoJo feature last year). Maybe she'll reconsider now?

Keep your eye out for continuing coverage of the Hillary-Fellowship connection and an excerpt of Sharlet's new book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, to be featured soon on MotherJones.com.

—Justin Elliott

Religious Conservatives Revolt Against... Mitt?

The movement conservatives that had long-standing problems with John McCain have begrudgingly come to accept him. Now some of them are threatening to leave McCain again... if he chooses Mitt Romney as his VP.

According to a newspaper ad taken out by the Government Is Not God PAC and signed by 26 conservative leaders, Mitt is a deal-breaker because "his recent 'conversion' to conservative and pro-life principles is not credible." Romney's "well-timed conversions," says the ad, are "mere political opportunism, and are offensive to those who demand 'straight talk' from their leaders."

The ad carries a threat, as well. After pointing out Romney's previously moderate positions on abortion and gay marriage, the writers tell McCain a Romney VP choice would "fatally harm your appeal to voters with deep constitutionalist and social conservative commitments." Decoded, that means "don't count on us turning our people out if you put Romney on the ticket."

GING-PAC, which also has a petition Romney-haters can sign, is explicit about this being push back against "Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and others in the economic wing of the Republican Party."

Clinton and Obama: We (Heart) Gays, Especially in Pennsylvania

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want you to know they're not just tolerant, they really like gay people. And they want their votes, especially in Pennsylvania later this month.

In her effort to court the gay vote, Clinton gave an exclusive interview to the Philadelphia Gay News during which she talked about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," among other issues. The publisher of the paper says both Clinton's and Obama's campaigns have made noises about buying ad space, "but we haven't gotten an insertion order."

Though Barack Obama hasn't done a Pennsylvania-specific appeal to gay voters yet, he has in other parts of the country. According to Editor&Publisher, in March Obama bought full-page, full-color ads in four Ohio and Texas LGBT publications shortly before their state primaries. It was the first time (sez Obama's campaign rep) that any presidential candidate has placed ads in local gay/lesbian publications for the express purpose of "asking for the support and the vote of LGBT voters statewide."

John McCain was asked to do an interview by the Philadelphia Gay News, but declined, as did Obama. "It's a sad day when we are treated with more respect from the Republican candidate, John McCain, than a Democratic senator," said publisher Mark Segal. "With McCain, his top press representative called us back within three hours. It took seven weeks for Obama's representative to acknowledge."

And if you think there aren't enough gays in Pennsylvania to make a difference, think again. The publication says that a full 90% of its readers are registered to vote, and that the "gay vote" makes up to 3 percent of the Pennsylvania electorate, definitely enough to sway the state one way or another.

Ironically Obama (who like Clinton says gay marriage decisions should be left up to the states) said in a speech that marriage should be between a man and a woman. He went on to say that gay rights are often used as an attention-seeking ploy around elections. McCain similarly says that while he's in favor of gay people having some rights, they shouldn't be able to legally marry. Clinton stopped short of saying the same in her interview with the gay paper, but noted that if elected president, she will walk in gay pride parades "to the extent that security would permit."

Consequences for Yoo?

On Tuesday, the Pentagon released former Bush Administration Lawyer John Yoo's notorious March 2003 interrogation memorandum. Add this to the heap of evidence that Department of Justice lawyers helped legitimize questionable White House policies toward "enemy combatants." There may not be much new information to be gained from the declassified memo—with the exception of the disavowed footnote—but it did get me thinking about the consequences for lawyers who provide legal justification for illegal wartime actions.

Besides a good public shaming, there don't seem to be many consequences. After Yoo's stint at the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, he returned safely to his prior job as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. And with the signing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Yoo and his former colleagues seem untouchable.

However, there is one precedent that has gone largely overlooked, maybe to the future detriment of Yoo and Co. In 1947, the United States charged several high-ranking German lawyers in a U.S. Military Tribunal with conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Scott Horton, a prominent human rights attorney who lectures at Columbia Law School, suggests that Yoo may want to revisit the case. Under the ruling, writes Horton, "the conduct of [Yoo] is a criminal act not shielded by any notions of government immunity."

Horton also sites international lawyer and University College London professor Philippe Sands, who wrote a relevant Vanity Fair teaser for his upcoming book, The Torture Team. While conducting research, Sands met with European legal officials to discuss the doctrine of universal jurisdiction:

The judge and prosecutor were particularly struck by the immunity from prosecution provided by the Military Commissions Act. "That is very stupid," said the prosecutor, explaining that it would make it much easier for investigators outside the United States to argue that possible war crimes would never be addressed by the justice system in the home country—one of the trip wires enabling foreign courts to intervene. For some of those involved in the Guantánamo decisions, prudence may well dictate a more cautious approach to international travel. And for some the future may hold a tap on the shoulder.

"It's a matter of time," the judge observed. "These things take time." As I gathered my papers, he looked up and said, "And then something unexpected happens, when one of these lawyers travels to the wrong place."

Justice may be slow, and consequences may be scarce, but if Sands's judge is to be taken seriously, Yoo and his former colleagues at the DOJ may want to consider staying Stateside for a while.

—Jesse Finfrock

What Was Mark Penn Thinking?

The Austen Goolsbee affair, in which Barack Obama's top economics adviser told Canadian government officials (with a disputed degree of seriousness) that Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric isn't to be taken seriously, was used by the Clinton campaign every single day before the Ohio and Texas primaries — chief strategist Mark Penn and communications director Howard Wolfson told reporters on literally dozens of conference calls that the incident called into question Obama's credibility, honesty, and progressive bona fides on economic policy.

So one has to wonder what Mark Penn was thinking when one hears that Penn, the CEO of PR giant Burson-Marsteller Worldwide in addition to his job with the Clinton campaign, met with the Colombian ambassador to discuss how to secure congressional approval for a bi-lateral trade agreement that Columbia supports and Hillary Clinton vocally opposes. According to the Justice Department, the Columbian government has paid Penn's firm $300,000 to lobby for Columbia's point of view and to secure $5 billion for the war on drugs program known as Plan Colombia.

When news of the meeting went public, Penn was immediate contrite, saying in a written statement, "The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated and I am sorry for it. The senator's well-known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed."

Burson-Marsteller is problematic, from a progressive point of view. It has lobbied for tobacco companies and helped corporate clients bust unions. Having the head of such a company run a Democratic campaign seemed odd to many; this last episode has pushed at least one member of the progressive community over the edge. The head of the labor coalition Change to Win has called for Penn's removal. "It's time for Senator Hillary Clinton to send her vaunted 'chief strategist' Mark Penn packing -- back to his job consulting for union busting corporations and anti-labor governments for good," said Greg Tarpinian in a statement released today. Change to Win has endorsed Obama.

The Clinton campaign knows this will likely create trouble for their candidate in trade-sensitive Pennsylvania. The well-connected Marc Ambinder went hunting for a comment and came away saying this:

I've asked several Clinton aides and advisers for their reaction. Some declined to comment. Others responded with pejoratives, but since I don't print anonymous pejoratives as a policy, I will refrain from sharing them....

One of the toughest tasks for a political journalist these days is to try and find someone in Clinton world who is willing to defend Mr. Penn or his sense of political optics.

This was, quite simply, a brain dead move by Penn. It will likely reanimate all of the arguments about whether or not Clinton is really a critic of NAFTA at heart, and if so, for how long.

But Penn has worked for the Clintons for over 10 years and ran Hillary Clinton's 2000 and 2006 senate campaigns. He may keep his job simply because Hillary's presidential campaign can't be run without him.

McCain's Tricky History With the MLK Holiday

John McCain is in Memphis today commemorating the death of Dr. King, but he can't run from his spotty history on the MLK holiday and civil rights. In 1983, McCain was one of 77 Republican Congressmen to vote against establishing a federal holiday in MLK's honor. McCain was in the minority even among his GOP colleagues: even Dick Cheney, who voted against the holiday in 1978, voted for it in '83. Later, McCain would explain his vote by saying he "thought that it was not necessary to have another federal holiday, that it cost too much money, that other presidents were not recognized."

In 1999 McCain admitted that he was wrong to vote the way he did. He told NBC's Tim Russert, "on the Martin Luther King issue, we all learn, OK? We all learn. I will admit to learning, and I hope that the people that I represent appreciate that, too. I voted in 1983 against the recognition of Martin Luther King… I regret that vote."

The 1983 vote, however, is the not the end of the issue. In 1987, Arizona's Republican Governor repealed the state's recognition of King; McCain supported the decision. He changed his mind in 1990, when a King holiday was put to a vote in the state.

But even by 1990, McCain hadn't come to appreciate what King stood for. The Civil Rights Act of 1990 sought to overturn "Supreme Court rulings that made it much more difficult for individual employees to prove discrimination." The legislation was fought by big business, because it imposed new penalties on employers convicted of job discrimination. McCain voted against the act four times.

And in his 2000 presidential campaign, McCain employed a man named Richard Quinn in his South Carolina organization. Quinn was a toxic figure, writing:

"King Day should have been rejected because its purpose is vitriolic and profane. By celebrating King as the incarnation of all they admire, they [black leaders] have chosen to glorify the histrionic rather than the heroic and by inference they spurned the brightest and the best among their own race. Ignoring the real heroes in our nation's life, the blacks have chosen a man who represents not their emancipation, not their sacrifices and bravery in service to their country; rather, they have chosen a man whose role in history was to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state..."

According to AlterNet, "Quinn has also advocated electing David Duke, and sold T-Shirts through his magazine celebrating Abraham Lincoln's assassination." McCain defended Quinn as a "respected" and "fine man." He refused to fire him from the campaign.

In McCain's speech today he said all the right things:

Even in this most idealistic of nations, we do not always take kindly to being reminded of what more we can do, or how much better we can be, or who else can be included in the promise of America. We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I made myself long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King. I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona. We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans. But he knew as well that in the long term, confidence in the reasonability and good heart of America is always well placed. And always, that was his method in word and action -- to remind us of who we are and what we believe. His arguments were unanswerable and they were familiar, the case always resting on the writings of the Founders, the teachings of the prophets, and the Word of the Lord.

He's evolved on the issue: millions of Americans have. But when it counted, McCain got this issue wrong. And today, his positions on economic justice, housing, and the war show that while McCain may appreciate King's importance, he still doesn't understand the meaning of King's message.

80,000 Jobs Lost in March

The unemployment rate jumped from 4.8 percent to 5.1 percent in March, a total loss of 80,000 jobs. That marks the biggest decline in five years, and follows 76,000 jobs lost in both January and February. "There doesn't appear to be any silver lining," an interest rate strategist at Credit Suisse told Reuters. "It shows that we're right in the middle of a recession that will probably take a while."

20080404_POLL_GRAPHIC.190.gif Considering this news, it's not surprising that 81 percent of Americans say that "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track," according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. That figure is the highest ever recorded in the poll, which started in the early '90s. It's a bleak picture:

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

See the graph at right: one might observe that the Bush Administration's second term has been one long ever-worsening crisis of confidence.

The Death of MLK Jr.: RFK Said It Best

It's been four decades since Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed. On the occasion of this anniversary, there's much media coverage of his life and his death. In the all the years that have passed since that tragic moment, a flood of commentary has flowed. Yet it remains hard to improve upon what Bobby Kennedy said on the night of that assassination in Indianapolis, where he was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. He spoke extemporaneously and had the hard task of informing the crowd of King's violent death. Here is the audio of Kennedy's remarks accompanied by a photo montage:

As many commentators have noted, there were riots in cities across America when people learned of the news of King's murder, but there was calm in Indianapolis that horrible night.

Two months later, RFK would be shot and killed. If you want to see actual footage of Kennedy speaking to the crowd in Indianapolis (with Italian subtitles superimposed), you'll find it after the jump:

April 3, 2008

"A PhD in Strippernomics"

The always thought-provoking Gary Kamiya, at Salon, posted a column this week asking whether America's puritanism might just be waning in the wake of Spitzer, Paterson, men's room foot-tapping, mother-daughter pole dancing, and the like. He writes:

America seems to be slowly but surely weaning itself from its addiction to shrill moral judgments. Only 10 years ago, former President Bill Clinton was almost removed from office because he fooled around with a White House intern. Ten years before that, Douglas Ginsburg lost his shot at the Supreme Court because he admitted he had smoked marijuana. But when New York Gov. David Paterson recently copped to having had extramarital affairs and doing cocaine, the public reaction was a collective yawn. Admittedly, Paterson chose the best possible time to make his public confession: after the Eliot Spitzer train wreck, he probably could have revealed that he had dabbled in necrophilia while high on smack and gotten away with it. But still, Paterson's get-out-of-jail-free card would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.

I've been trying to convince my journalism students of this very point, and that the media deserves the lion's share of the credit for America's maturation on morals issues. Exhaustively covering these issues (Religious Right, anyone?) allows America to look itself in the mirror and ask questions like: Is it really my business if Paterson and his wife took a 'vacation' from their marriage? No. Mr. "Morals" Spitzer's 'hoing? Yes. But I'm swimming upstream trying to sell them on the notion that the media is our only way of figuring out which conversations we no longer need to have.

We needed to jawbone about slavery, female suffrage, and child labor, for hundreds of years—until we didn't need to anymore. In the process of incessantly fighting about it, we moved the conversation forward.

On the other hand, abortion, stem cells, foreign intervention—those are debates that we'll be haranguing each other over for the foreseeable future. Bored to tears as my students are by the never ending debate over race, gender, and now sex scandals in this election, I'm doing my best to convince them that pummeling America with arcane dissections of these issues until we scream 'enough, already!' and achieve some sort of workable consensus is a vital media function. A conversation among 300 million people can only be dysfunctional. But train wreck that it is, you have to agree with Kamiya and me that, for better or worse, America's getting a little French about passing judgment on public figures—let alone the neighbor kid whose Facebook hijinks they happened upon.

The Kamiya piece struck a chord with me in part because one of my journalism students surprised me with an excellent essay, a la Spitzer, about having managed an adult video store with a "special" room in the back. Talking about governors, their well-paid aides, and $5000/hour call girls is one kind of conversation. Talking about the "live models" working in the back of adult video stores...well, that's quite another. And it's contributions like this, just when we think we can't stand another 1000 words on some millionaire's sex life, that rekindles the discussion.

Case in point: "Live Models Needed," by student TG Branfalt Jr.:

Let’s play a word game. When I say, “Two 18 year old art students, three mothers over 30, and a career stripper of Philippine descent,” you say…“Huh?”

On the surface it would seem that these women would have little in common, but when put inside a small adult video store in upstate NY, they become “live models,” “private dancers” and “outside contractors.” My experience in this area is not that I was one of these women nor was I a “client.” I was their boss.

This scheme is unknown to most people I explain my former job to. Most are familiar with “porn stores,” the seedy, inconspicuously named, oft times referred to as “book stores” spotted on main drags in a plethora of cities and neighborhoods. What most are not familiar with is what goes on behind the windows draped in black.

There are services offered called “private sessions.” A session is a private dance, in a private room by a female dancer. The session is offered at a fixed rate, or “rental fee” which was $40 for 15 minutes or $50 for a half an hour, a fee paid by the client. The girls never see this money; they’re free to charge their own, negotiable, fees. The most popular dancers were the 18 year old art students; they would usually charge $50-100 for a topless dance and fifty bucks more for fully nude. The “exotic lookin’ girl,” as she was referred to by repeat customers who wouldn’t bother to learn her name, would charge a bit less. The older women would charge less than that. There was a hierarchy. The girls that brought money were given the peak hours, between 5pm and 10pm. These were the art students. Their parents paid for all of their education expenses. The two girls lived together and loved to party.

“Mercedes” was a small, waif-girl that had a natural glow about her. She didn’t come from a broken home; she was never raped or molested. As a matter of fact she never hinted in any way that her life was anything but normal. Maybe a bit sheltered, but no major dysfunction. Her parents gave her a credit card to use while away at school. She didn’t have a drug problem, and her habit was minimal. She would sometimes come to work a little drunk on vodka, but she said it helped her get through the night. One of her clients, she told me, was a New York State Assemblyman.

I took a particular liking to Mercedes. I was only 20 or 21 at the time, single. She was talented, very bubbly, and once wrote the phrase “your words will be our anthem” in my journal that she had stolen, and returned, one night without my knowledge. One very slow Halloween night we blew a couple of lines of cocaine off of the glass store counter, locked the front door, and, her dressed as a very convincing Marilyn Monroe and I dressed as a Monroe-era gangster, went behind the building and had a quickie. We would see each other a couple of times outside of work, and I took the time to ask her why she was stripping.

Her reasons were something like; easy money, can get drunk beforehand, excitement. She could party all of the time and not have to worry about getting fired from her job. I wondered why she didn’t try and sell some of her art; it was good, after all. Like every artist I’ve ever met, she laughed off the suggestion. How much money was she making? “$600 on a slow night,” she’d say. I no longer felt bad about doing her drugs. She made more on a slow five hour shift then I made, as manager, with my sometimes fifty hour work week.

It was my job to look at this as a business, to take my own morals out of it. It was my job to interview and hire them. It was my duty to go over all of the dirty details of not only the job, but of their lives. I got to know all of the girls. Some better than others. Some I would do drugs with, others I’d sleep with, or fool around with, and some I wouldn’t even grant an interview. You could sometimes see the desperation on a woman’s face when she walked through the door. It was agonizing. Some girls would see the ad in the paper, with the misleading description of “live models needed." These girls would come bouncing in, and their smiles would melt into terror when they saw the 4ft. dual-headed rubber penis hanging from the ceiling over the cash register. They would meekly inquire about the position, and upon hearing the “job description” they would politely whisper “no, thank you.” Aside from the stiletto race in Amsterdam, I have never seen a woman move so fast in heels.

The interview process would double as a therapy session. The candidates would sometimes offer me their life stories; for many this was a lifetime career. Their high school diploma doubled as a PhD in strippernomics and their adolescence was marred with the textbook definitions of abuse. I learned very early on the job that there are two major things it is absolutely imperative to understand about the sex business.

1. There is a huge gap between stripper and prostitute.
2. A person’s life experience can narrow and close that gap.

Personally, I never encountered this problem. Of course I had no idea what went on behind the door of the “VIP room,” there were no cameras and, barring a great disturbance, I was not allowed in that room when the door was closed. Technically for the pre-paid and pre-determined amount of time the client rented that room. It was essentially a sublet and therefore his property (there was never a female client.)

It was easy to tell which girls would drop to their knees for an extra hundred bucks and which girls wouldn’t do it for a thousand, just by talking to them. Some would itch and seem nervous for the wrong reasons. Others would have tears in their eyes because their long hard road has led them to this brink. Their eyes scream, “the fuck else am I going to do!?” And some would laugh and joke, their reasons were simple and innocent. They would say they feel empowered that they can make a living being beautiful but would prefer to be seen in front of one set of eyes as opposed to a few dozen.

And some just liked the money.

FAA Inspectors Overstretched, Inspections Overseas, Oversight Overlooked this Long?

Recent revelations about the FAA and Southwest Airlines (you may be free to move about the country, but at your own risk), and further inspection shenanigans highlight what we already knew but were too focused on getting through security without contracting athletes' foot to notice: The FAA as a regulatory agency is about as reliable as the old man in the exit row.

And it's not just inspectors cozy with airline execs; the regulatory system was outsourced years ago, to the aviation industry, leading to a dangerous lack of oversight and conflicts of interest, in short, trouble waiting to happen.

(NTSB warning that inspections are "on a slippery slope" after the jump.)

Two years ago, in a Mother Jones investigative report, Frank Koughan and Jim Morris detailed the systematic gutting of air safety inspections by the FAA. They reported how, back in 2005,

Cash-short airlines increased their outsourcing of maintenance, creating an extra layer for overworked inspectors to penetrate. At the same time, the FAA’s Office of Aviation Safety, facing a $30 million shortfall, shed more than 250 inspectors and is itself outsourcing safety functions long performed by the government. The agency transferred operation of 58 flight service stations—which relay weather and navigational information to small-aircraft pilots—to Lockheed Martin. Thirty-eight of the stations are to be closed and the FAA decreed that manufacturers like Boeing soon would be able to approve their own designs and modifications, a concession the industry had been seeking for years. Self-policing “puts us on a slippery slope,” warned Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). “The primary reason we’ve been able to build such a safe system is the structure we’ve had in place for years. The ultimate responsible party for safety is the government, and this new FAA policy essentially is trying to transfer that responsibility. It may work in the short term, but in the long term the public will see that what we have is a less safe system.”

And here we are years later. Less safe, indeed.

Of note, after the original story broke, the FAA threatened to fire the safety inspector who spoke with Mother Jones and he was put on administrative leave. (He was reinstated after 10 months.) You can read more about the FAA's crackdown on this whistleblower, and listen to his interview with Frank Koughan at Phoenix' TIMCO repair station, here.

The Right's Quest to Marginalize Obama Supporters

This essay from conservative Michael Barone about how Obama supporters are "academics and public employees" while Clinton/McCain supporters are Jacksonians (aka red-blooded Americans) is popping up around the web. Aside from being an overly simplistic reading of America's culture wars, parts of it are downright loony ("Warriors are competitors for the honor that academics and public employees think rightfully belongs to them," writes Barone. "Jacksonians, in contrast, place a high value on the virtues of the warrior").

Jonathan Chait, who efficiently shreds Barone's argument, calls this what it is, "a conservative anti-intellectual slur." I think a better way to understand what Barone is getting at is something I linked to in my "dating map" blog post yesterday — Obama takes his support from young voters, African-Americans, and what Richard Florida calls "the creative class." The creative class is composed of "inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, musicians, designers and professionals in idea-driven industries." By Florida's calculations, the creative class makes up about 35 percent of the working population, while the "working class" as traditionally understood makes up just 23 percent. To prove his theory, Florida did some fancy polling with John Zogby that you can check out here. It's pretty persuasive, though we don't know their methodology.

The Grandma Behind Obama

The Boston Globe has a lovely piece this week about Michelle Obama's mother—the Grandma who's making Obama's historic race possible.

A steely 70-year-old matriarch with a raspy voice and seen-it-all laugh, Robinson manages the family while Obama and his wife, Michelle, venture to the far reaches of the campaign trail. Amid the daily chaos of the marathon primary campaign, it often falls to Michelle's mother to keep the Obamas' two daughters—Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6—grounded, not to mention fed, bathed, and in bed by 8:30 p.m.

"The whole time I'm raising [son] Craig and Michelle, I am telling them that, 'Look, you see, I am raising my kids, so don't you all have any kids that you expect me to help you raise,' " Robinson said with a laugh last week, in her first extended interview of the campaign. "And look at what I'm doing!"

Grandma Robinson comes off as the delectable, quintessential matriarch, blithely criticizing her daughter in the media and chuckling about ignoring all her jack-booted instructions.

Limited TV watching (An hour? "That's just not enough time"), rigid bed times (8:30? "That's ridiculous!"), and organo-eating ("...fried chicken, for instance. Her secrets: using crumbled Ritz crackers in the batter...adding salt liberally, and using "lots of oil." "If you're going to have fried chicken," she said, "have fried chicken.")

Granny is a hoot! I want to reach through the pixels and hug her. Reminds me of the Bill Cosby routine about how his own iron-pantied Mother became a hippie with her grandkids. "That's not the same woman who raised me," he noted, bewildered. Ditto my own belt-wielding Mom. With her grandkids—Captain Kangeroo. With her own six? Hitler. If we dared to act up in school, she'd show up with that belt and use it front of the whole class. She is single handedly responsible for the invention of Child Protective Services. But there's a serious point here.

Note the comment Grammy made about warning her kids not to expect her to help raise her grandkids. I doubt this is a warning affluent parents lay on their kids, though it's one heard in the 'hood (where Michelle grew up) everyday. There is a sad and all-too-invisible sword of Damacles hanging over the heads of inner city grandmas. Basically, far too many live lives of drudgery and toil only to reach old age incapable of retiring because they're stuck with their grandkids. Absent fathers, the early deaths of black granddads, and epidemic levels of black marriage failure all combine to leave black grandmas sick, tired, old, impoverished and stuck with a house full of troubled adolescents. The most unlucky also end up with drug-addled kids showing up to leech off them and steal from them whilst ignoring their progeny. It's a horror of which few are aware. That's where urban sociologists like Harvard's Katherine Newman come in.

A few years back, she published one of the saddest books, A Different Shade of Gray, I've ever read; it's about the lives of inner city Hispanic and black women, how they're abandoned alone with their grandkids and few social services or health care, to work themselves into the grave. I couldn't help thinking about that as I read of Mrs. Robinson. Her words operate on two levels for me; in an alternate reality, she'd be raising her grandkids in a tenement while her daughter languished in jail or on street corners. Weird that she'll end up doing it in a mansion:

Even the prospect of a family move to the White House has forced Marian Robinson, a Chicagoan through and through, to ponder the bittersweet thought of relocating to Washington.

"I will do whatever she needs me to do," she said of her daughter. "I'll be mad, but I'll do it."

This grandma seems tickled pink by the strange turns her life has taken. But let's spend a moment thinking about all the nameless ones too sick to keep pushing those brooms but who have to with a house full of needy kids who should be caring for her.

If Obama ever had a ready made issue, if ever a politician was perfect for a minority problem, this is it. Obviously, they rolled Granny out as a counterpoint to Wright. OK. Now close the loop. Help all the grannies of color who weren't able to guide their kids out of the hood.

John McCain's New Ad: War War War Glory Country War

John McCain's new web video entitled "Sacrifice" is 2:45 of non-stop war-fetishizing. His campaign might as well have played a loop of an American flag waving with fighter jets screeching past. Or heck, even 2:45 of Gladiator starring Russell Crowe.

Here's a word count:

"War": 7 mentions
"Duty": 2
"Honor": 2
"Valor": 2
"Country"/"nation": 5
"Loyalty": 3
"Glory": 5
"God": 1 (just for good measure)

The grave voice-over in the ad says that soldiers' claim on a nation's success in war is "shorn of all romance, all nostalgia." Funny, considering the whole ad is romance and nostalgia for war.

John McCain and "war" is the new Rudy Giuliani and "9/11."

Update: Video of the ad is after the jump.

Report: Jack Bauer "Gave People Lots of Ideas" at Gitmo

Great reporting from Vanity Fair on how administration officials were involved in developing the interrogation techniques to be used at Gitmo. This tidbit is particularly disturbing:

The first year of Fox TV’s dramatic series 24 came to a conclusion in spring 2002, and the second year of the series began that fall. An inescapable message of the program is that torture works. "We saw it on cable," Beaver recalled. "People had already seen the first series. It was hugely popular." Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo, Beaver added. "He gave people lots of ideas."

I don't know what's more disturbing: the fact that torture had become so acceptable that folks within the military were taking ideas from TV shows, or the fact that there were so few instructions on how to torture that folks within the military were taking ideas from TV shows.

Immorality plus incompetence. And there's your Bush Administration in a nutshell.

Please Please Go Away, Joe Lieberman

If you thought Joe Lieberman would campaign for his traveling buddy John McCain without taking nasty shots at the other candidates in the race... well, think again.

As for Lieberman's argument that McCain "misspoke," consider the fact that McCain made the Iran/al Qaeda gaffe over and over. That's a lot of "misspeaking."

(H/T Jane.)

April 2, 2008

Congress Grants Too Much Authority, Then Tries to Take it Back... Again

Earlier today, I wrote about the Department of Homeland Security's intention to ignore three dozen U.S. laws in order to complete 670 miles of border fence by the end of the year. In yesterday's official statement, Secretary Michael Chertoff cited the total authority Congress granted him to make such decisions. Today, Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson (D), head of the House Homeland Security Committee, tried to deny the veracity of Chertoff's defense, arguing that Congress never meant to grant such broad discretion. "Today's waiver represents an extreme abuse of authority," he told the Washington Post. "It was meant to be an exception, not the rule."

Unfortunately, the legislation that authorized the waivers says otherwise. The original law on which Secretary Chertoff is basing his authority is the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which allowed the Attorney General to waive portions of the Endangered Species act and the National Environmental Policy Act as he saw fit. In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act, which transferred decision-making power to the head of Homeland Security and greatly expanded his discretion:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary's sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.

Denying the power granted by that provision is a little like arguing that voting to authorize military force didn't mean agreeing to let Bush go to Iraq. If Congress doesn't like it when the government uses its authority, maybe it should stop granting it.

—Casey Miner