I love it. Read this Al-Jazeera article re: the innane, puke-worthy debt-ceiling pissing match being waged between ruling class politicians over marginalia. The headline is great: "The nonsense battle over the debt ceiling". And the sub-headline hits the nail on the head: this "debate" presupposes a deep bi-partisan commitment to austerity. To be honest, I haven't been reading any of the articles about this whole mess. I glance at headlines, but that's it. I can't be bothered to wade that deeply into shit that isn't about me. Austerity, which both Obama and Boehner strongly support, does affect me. But this quibbling over marginalia, against a backdrop of massive consensus, has nothing to do with me. It is not a substantive disagreement, nor is it a serious clash between left and right. It is a game of chicken played between the rich and powerful; I, and the vast majority of Americans, stand to gain nothing no matter how the chips fall. It is a ruling class tiff over issues internal to right-wing politics (e.g. how much should we cut the living standards of average Americans? how badly should we destroy education and public transit infrastructure?). Neither of them will allow the US to default- that is the train approaching that will crush them both. The "debate" is over who will jump out of the way first. Frankly, I would rather boycott the whole rotten business than join in the media-manufactured chorus about how "we" all should just try to "get along" and "do the right thing for America." I'm more interested in grass-roots struggle than the life and times of the rich and powerful.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wisconsin, The Democrats, and Beyond
Let's be clear. The Democrats suffocated the struggle in Wisconsin and ultimately snuffed out opposition to Walker. They called for an end to the protests, an end to the occupations, and an end to the discussions about labor action. They told crowds of 100,000s to "lay down their placards" and to focus on electioneering efforts. The result of this strategy is on full display. Walker has got his way, and our side was defeated. The opposition has dwindled, and the energy of that uprising has dissipated. Had the movement maintained its independence from the Democrats and pushed on to ratchet up the pressure through job actions, things could very well have turned out differently.
But it's actually worse than just defeat in Wisconsin. Trade unionists are facing ruthless Wisconsin-like anti-union laws in several other states as well. And, though it has largely gone unnoticed by the moveon.org crowd, many of these states are run by Democratic governors. The crushing of unions is a bipartisan project.
The most obvious examples are New York, California and Illinois. These are well-known "blue" states, with solid "liberal credentials". That's supposed to be as good as it gets from an electioneering standpoint, right? From the moveon.org perspective, what could be better than a solidly Democratic state government, a Democratic governor, and two Democratic U.S. Senators?
In New York, Gov. Cuomo actually had the chutzpah to campaign on an anti-union, pro-austerity platform. He didn't even bother sugar-coating his conservative politics. And what did the liberals in New York do in the last election cycle? They gave Cuomo full support on the grounds that he was the "lesser evil". And hat about the public sector unions whom Cuomo promised he would face down and suppress in order to balance the budget? They gave him full support too. The utter bankruptcy of this political strategy is on full display for all to see.
Cuomo has allowed taxes on the richest New Yorkers to expire, while simultaneously pushing through punishing cuts to education and health care. Cuomo has also boldly placed public sector workers in the cross hairs. He wants more than $450 million in cuts to come from union workers. And he's promising to layoff more than 12,000 public workers at a time when jobs are scarce and public aid is being slashed. So much for the lesser evil as the only political option. If there was a large, highly organized and militant Left in New York, it would be possible to ratchet up pressure by way of protests and strikes. This is how such austerity measures have been defeated elsewhere in the world, and there is no reason why they couldn't be defeated here in a similar fashion. But to take this more oppositional perspective would require cutting the umbilical cord from the Democratic Party. It would mean being open to independent, grass-roots, social-movement-driven politics.
In Illinois things are similarly bleak. In the run-up to the 2010 elections, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted to endorse Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn for governor. Not everyone in the union thought this was a good idea. Reformers felt that the union should take a more independent, oppositional stance toward the Democratic governor given the attacks that were sure to come in the following year.
In IL, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly has just passed a Wisconsin-style bill (S.B. 7) that revokes the right of teachers to go on strike, undermines tenure, and works to generally silence the voice of teachers. This move by Illinois Democrats is right out of Scott Walker's playbook. Predictably, Quinn did not veto it. And even more predictably, Mayor-elect and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel strongly supported the measure. Say what you like about Rahm, at least he was frank enough to proclaim his hatred of teachers and his desire to revoke their union rights during his campaign for mayor. The same cannot be said for his former boss. And, as has been widely noted, it's important to point out that Rahm worked his connections to put tremendous amounts of pressure on the legislature to get the anti-union result he'd been hoping for. This bill has the grubby finger prints of the most powerful Illinois Democrats names all over it.
The bill itself is a real whopper. As a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teacher recently told me, the bill effectively guts teachers' vacation time and opens the doors for an unpaid increase in their workday. Emanuel has been pushing hard to increase the school day in Chicago without paying teachers for the extra hours they will now be asked to work. Of course, as teachers frequently point out, they already do a hefty amount of unpaid labor in the form of lesson-planning and grading (which they perform in the private sphere, which is a big reason why it often goes unnoticed or unappreciated). Rather than increasing their obligation to perform unpaid labor, they should be compensated for the unpaid labor they're already performing! But that is the exact opposite position of the one that the Democrats in Illinois are taking. For the Democrats, the answer is to squeeze more work out of the teachers for less money. And in order to to do that effectively, the organs of voice and workplace democracy (i.e. unions) must be weakened enough that teachers have no way to contest these changes. As the Democrats who run the state are well aware, when there is even a small measure of democracy in the workplace, it is far more difficult to push workers around and screw them over. From a P.R. perspective, the Democrat strategy is to scapegoat teachers as "lazy public employees" and further tout the toxic ideology of "education reform" (i.e. privatization, union bashing, corporate-run charters as the answer to structural problems, etc.).
This post is already getting too long, but readers will have no difficulty finding information on Democrat Jerry Brown's aggressively conservative, pro-business, pro-austerity budget in California.
This is tough news to stomach. But there's going to be a fightback. Teachers in IL understand that there must be a fightback -they've got no choice but to fight for their lives right now. And fighting back in this context means fighting against the regressive, corporate-friendly policies of the Democrats. It means using independent community organization and trade unions to leverage people power against the entrenched conservatism and inertia of the Democratic Party machine. It certainly doesn't mean rolling over and accepting the status quo as "the best we could possibly hope for" on the grounds that the Republicans would be worse. That cynical, do-nothing strategy has shown itself to be bankrupt time and time again. What we need is to build the independent Left, build the existing movements, and kickstart new ones.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
How to Fix the Deficit
Here. Of course, there are problems with the NYTimes options. The sorts of taxes they allow you to meddle with are excessively narrow and confined to those already in existence (what about an intangible property tax, for instance?) Moreover, they only let you raise taxes on the rich to "Clinton-era Levels" which were already indexed to the neoliberal era begun under Reagan. For instance, we must note that the top marginal rate of income taxation was low during the Clinton-era. It would do this country some good to let everyone use this gadget with the added option of raising the top marginal rate on income as high as they like.
Below is the history of the top marginal tax rate on income (i.e. the rate paid by the richest earners who constitute less than 1% of the population.... right now it means that the rich pays 35% on every dollar earned over $373,000):
What you should notice first is that it was raised significantly in the 1930s (from 26% to 60%, later from 60% to 80%). It remained above 60% from the 1930s until the 1980s when Reagan cut it back down to pre-Depression levels. That is, it remained significantly above 60% during the longest, most sustained period of economic growth in the history of the United States (the so-called "long boom" from WWII through the early 70s). When the NYTimes says "Clinton-era rates", they mean a meager 40% top rate, but there's no reason in principle why we shouldn't raise the top rate significantly higher than that right now. After all, in the 1950s it was even as high as 90% under Republican presidencies! So it's just false and disingenuous to claim, as Republicans (and many Democrats) do, that high top marginal rates mean anemic growth. In reality, the fight over taxing the rich has nothing to do with growth or efficiency, and everything to do with class power. That is, the profit-hungry ruling class doesn't want to pay for this crisis themselves: they want to force the working majority to clean up their mess. Their credo is: socialize the losses and risks, privatize the profits and earnings. And their sway in Congress is such that the lowly Democrats hardly even hesitated in pushing through an extension of the Bush Tax give-aways for earners over $250,000. Obama didn't even fight for his campaign promise to return taxes on the rich to pre-Bush levels, and I think that speaks volumes about what the Dems stand for. By further eroding the funding for the public goods that are now on the chopping block, they paved the way for the brutal cuts that are being proposed now. There is no reasonable way to interpret the "budget war" as a struggle between Right and Left. It is a struggle between hard-Right and soft-Right. It is a debate between two bullies about how many times to punch us in the stomach; it's not a debate about whether we deserve to be beat up at all.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
GOP Union-Busting and the Democrats
A disarming headline: "Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes." Read about it here.
By comparison, attacks like this make the Democrats look good. But let's not get carried away here. The Democrats, to be sure, are not the rabid union-busters that the Republicans are. But they are hardly a friend of labor either. They receive enough money and electioneering/get-out-the-vote support from labor that the Democrats are in no position to want to completely destroy organized labor. But there are a lot of possible positions between the poles of genuine working-class political organization, on the one hand, and union-busting corporate thuggery on the other. It's not clear that it is either prudent or plausible to identify the democrats with the former simply because they aren't full-fledged proponents of the latter.
We should be clear that the Democrats are not going to revoke collective bargaining rights as such. But they will (and, in fact, already are trying to) push through punishing wage cuts, salary freezes, layoffs, pension "reforms" (read: cuts), etc. for workers. They will (and have for generations) allow the labor movement to wither on the vine and ultimately decline into oblivion. They will (and already have) push through big tax breaks and subsidize huge gains for the ruling class at the same time that they're telling the rest of us that we need to "live within our means" and "tighten our belts". They will (and always have tended to) "play both sides of the fence" and try to make it publicly appear that they are not "biased" toward either labor or capital, but are merely neutral arbiters advocating cooperation between them (their rhetorical ploy for making this argument is to fawn over the mystical "middle class"). But close analysis of what the Democrats actually do (as opposed to what they merely say around election time) shows us that even this tepid "cooperative" maneuver is disingenuous- the party clearly favors the interests of capital over the interests of the working majority.
It should be no surprise that the Democrats are using the GOP union-busting crusade as leverage to re-establish credibility with labor. This is exactly what we should expect them to do. There is virtually no cost to doing so, since the GOP is taking such an extreme position (attacking bargaining rights as such, rather than simply forcing workers to accept austerity in bargaining situations). The Dems can join in the wide public condemnation of the attack on bargaining rights as such, while keeping in line with their national perspective regarding the need for austerity for working people. They don't have to do much in the way of passing any new legislation, they needn't even commit funds to assuaging the corrosive effects of the economic crisis on workers' living standards. All that's required of them is that they stand up and say a few fine words in defense of labor- and in return they are able to generate cheap political capital with labor and pump up a legion of willing foot-soldiers for the next election cycle. It's a great deal for the opportunistic Democrats, but its a short-sighted and ultimately futile one for labor.
Though we are under great pressure to forge the recent past in a business society whose media is dominated by the ephemeral swells of spectacle, we would do well to recall what the post-2008 election terrain looked like. Obama, a young, extremely popular, enthusiastically-supported, and allegedly progressive president had just taken office. The fact that he isn't white made his election all the more significant. The Democrats had won the largest majorities in the Senate (filibuster-proof, super-majorities) and House that we have seen in generations. They had massive public support, huge congressional majorities, and a clear mandate to put forward bold, progressive reforms of the sort exemplified in the more left-wing elements of the New Deal and Great Society. Obama, in particular, had talked tough in the campaign about the need to pass the much-needed Employee Free Choice Act. He had even said to roaring crowds of workers that he would fight, tooth-and-nail to ensure that it passed. Yet what happened?
The Democrats didn't even try to bring the bill to the floor. Obama was silent. They let it die in the early months of their rule, despite having the muscle to push it through relatively easily. Don't forget: they had the trifecta: big majorities in the House, super-majority in the Senate, and a popular young President. If you can't pass a bill designed to undo the most anti-labor laws (see Taft-Hartley) with majorities like that, when can you be expected to do it? Are we supposed to wait until the Democrats get even bigger majorities? What are we fighting for when we, as supporters of the working class, try to get Democrats elected?
This question is rarely asked. The true answer from those in the labor mieleu who soldier for the Democrats is thin gruel: we must fight for Democrats to get elected because the alternative is worse. We must invest millions of dollars (that could be spent elsewhere, say, invigorating the rank and file or on new organizing campaigns) getting tepid Democrats elected because they are not Scott Walker. These folks would have us believe that this is the best we can do- the political agency of labor is exhausted by what can be done to get Democrats elected to office. What do we do, then, when Democrats attack labor? What should labor do when the "progressive" President imposes wage freezes, attacks teachers, cuts budgets, and gives away large pieces of the social product to the rich? The rejoinder is even more cynical than the original argument: we just accept that this is basically the best we can do outside of trying to back more "progressive" candidates in the primaries.
Railroading the political visions of the working class in this way is a sure-fire way to demobilize, de-energize, and ultimately destroy the labor movement. Rather than accept this tactical/organizational straight-jacket, the labor movement needs to take a sober look at its own history: how was it built? how was the 8-hr workday won? how were collective-bargaining rights obtained? how was child-labor defeated? how did the UAW win recognition?
The answer to all of these questions is: militant direct-action by workers themselves, organized independently of the two-party duopoly. None of these gains were won by way of narrow-electioneering drives to get Dems elected. In fact, the Dems only came to sell themselves as the "party of working people" in the 1930s after a massive wave of radical militancy (general strikes in 1934 in San Francisco, Toledo, Minneapolis... factory occupations and sit-down strikes in large-scale industry, etc. ). It was only after labor established itself as a powerful force in its own right that the opportunistic politicians in the Democratic party took note and decided they could forge a formidable alliance out of it. By taming the movement, defanging it, co-opting it, and giving a few concessions to the rank-and-file FDR and the Democrats purchased a legion of enthusiastic political foot-soldiers for a generation. But this was only after the upsurge in militant working-class self-organization in the 30s. It's worth noting that the co-opting maneuver wasn't accepted blindly by the rank-and-file- in fact, the UAW had voted against alliance with the Democrats at first (favoring instead an independent farmer-labor party), but were ultimately pushed by the union leadership to join ranks with the Democrats.
This is all a way of saying that we shouldn't be hoodwinked into embracing the Democrats simply because the Neanderthals in the GOP are so intent on smashing labor to smithereens. We should instead ask: where is it that the labor movement is heading, what are its goals? And then we ask: is merely electing Democrats to office going to get us there? I think the answer is quite obviously no. If you want to vote Democrat, vote Democrat. But when it comes to big, collective questions about what kind of organizations and unions we need... I think there needs to be far more resources devoted to rank-and-file militancy and organization. Rather than funneling billions to the Democrats, labor would be much better off using that money to grow its own ranks and energize, educate and mobilize it's own membership. Moreover, the Left needs to reflect on how struggles in the past were won and what we can do to learn from those moving forward. What it is obvious is that we need powerful, well-organized and politically sharp social movements that can put us in a position to change the entire framework of debate, pressure elected officials into action, and bring new people around to the ideas and arguments germane to the Left. That is not a goal compatible with the narrow electioneering approach advocated by the likes of Moveon.org, PDA, DSA, HRC, etc. etc. It is antithetical to it- it brushes against the grain of the idea that there is something irrational, illicit, or brash about independence from the Democrats.
It's not for nothing that many on the Left call the Democratic Party the "graveyard of social movements". After being co-opted by opportunistic, top-down Democrats its not for nothing that social movements go into decline. The most recent example is Wisconsin. The struggle there continues, sure, but nobody would say that it is as vibrant, energized, or forward-looking as it was only 3 weeks ago. Why is that? The energy was extinguished, the struggles wound-down, the movement dispersed by the Democrats who co-opted it and transformed it into a re-election campaign. From the podium they told crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands to lay down their placards and pick up petitions for recall. They poo-pooed the idea of further mobilization or strike action. They took something organic, progressive, and bottom-up and defused it. Far less attention is being paid to Madison now because far less is going on. Much of the euphoria and enthusiasm and organizational energy has subsided, precisely because of the cooptation (favored by union leadership) by the opportunistic Democrats. People bought into the Democrat mantra because they believe that this is the best they can hope for. But that is false. A quick glance at history (not even- just look at Egpyt and Tunisia!) shows that we have the power to ask for a lot more when we're organized together. The defeatist, cynical soldiering for the Democrats has to stop. It is nothing but a recipe for the long-term decline if not eclipse of the Left.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
White House gives in on Bush Tax Cuts
Here. As others have pointed out- this is not surprising. But even this is a rather quick and premature surrender.
Liberals will console themselves by claiming that there is no other way- that this is inevitable. But such fatalist narratives evince serious desperation. And I think liberals are right to feel desperate right now. They, like millions of other Americans, wanted to see real, qualitative change in 2008. But they've seen more of the same. They've even seen a great deal of betrayal. They've even had the White House flip them a bird a couple of times for daring to speak up or criticize the record of the Administration.
When is enough enough?
Progressives want to see real health care reform (i.e. single-payer), they want us to end the occupations and wars, they want to see an attempt to rein in the power of corporate elites, they want to see much higher taxes on the rich to expand public services (not cut them), etc.
But how do we win these reforms? This is where I think most liberals have got to re-think their views. We won't win these reforms by working within the Democrat Party such as it is. In fact, previous gains (e.g. Social Security, The Wagner Act, Civil Rights Act, Women's Suffrage, Free Public Education, etc.) were not won by playing nice with the Democrats. They were won through independent struggle against both of the major pro-business parties. And that is what we need to focus on now- building the movements, building independent organizations, creating the activist infrastructure that we need to collectively demand things that our electoral system gives us no voice to demand.
If you want to tax the rich and end the wars, who should you vote for? How can you vote in such a way that that political goal is given voice? At present you cannot. At present the electoral mechanism doesn't register such voices. It only hears two words: "Democrat" or "Republican". To all other human concerns it is completely deaf. We can do much better- and we don't have to settle for this demoralizing, conservative process. When people join together from below to challenge those at the top, there is nothing that we can't do.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
"Vote or Die"
Turnout all over the country hovered somewhere near 40%. That means 60% of the country probably didn't feel that they had anything at stake in the elections. Given that our "representatives" in government are either rich business people themselves, or subservient to business interests, do you think they're upset by this low turnout figure? Hardly. They count on a large chunk of the population sitting out of the political process. They understand that doing things the way they get done in Washington requires the exclusion of 2/3 of the population given how antithetical public policy is to the interests of the many.
To moralistically bash people with stupid slogans like "vote or die", or "don't be apathetic" is to add insult to injury. Many people, indeed super-majorities (!) of Americans, grasp that the present electoral mechanism gives them no real choice- and to demand that they accept this lack of choice with a smile and go through the motions is absurd and politically reactionary.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Laid off? It's OK, Obama's working on a narrative
More PR-obsessed "politics" in the Guardian:
"The absence of an effective narrative on the Democratic side has allowed Republicans to fill the vacuum."Right. Narratives, narratives, it's all narratives. Makes me feel great, I have to tell you. I guess nothing matters outside of how effectively Democrats and Republicans "spin" their "message". That's probably what the millions of unemployed people in the US are wondering right now: "where's that good narrative anyway?". Yes, that's what we all need- that's what will pay my bills and assuage the social misery being visited upon millions: a good narrative.
I'm pleased to know it's that easy. That's funny because I would have thought things like this mattered. I was under the impression that it might do well to consider addressing our woefully unmaintained infrastructure, ending the costly imperial ventures abroad, taxing the rich to stop our schools from collapsing, fighting to expand public transportation at a time when cities across the country are cutting jobs and service, addressing the still unsolved health care crisis, etc. etc.
Evidently those things are beside the point: what we need now is an effective "message", a good narrative. But is that what we need? Or is that simply what a self-serving set of enablers for the existing order, i.e. the Democrats, need in order to maintain their place in the system?
Here it's necessary to quote Peter Camejo: "every major gain in our history, even pre-Civil War struggles such as the battles for the Bill of Rights, to end slavery, and to establish free public education -as well as those after the Civil War, have been the product of direct action by movements independent of the two major parties and in opposition to them".
Obama: The Rabble is Irrational, New PR Tactics Needed
From the NYTimes, here's Obama:
“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” he told a roomful of doctors who chipped in at least $15,200 each to Democratic coffers. “And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be.”This article exemplifies the warped conception of "politics" I described in a recent post. The idea motivating this article, and Obama's remarks, is essentially this: people are basically irrational, blown to and fro by fancy-sounding words and images... and when they aren't blown in your direction, it must be because their raw emotional energies aren't been successfully manipulated by effective PR tactics.
It can't be that people are, in fact, rational and, additionally, that they just aren't stupid enough to buy into the claim that the Democrats are a force for progressive change these days. It can't be that real people in the US are sick layoffs and austerity while the rich are showered with billions of funds and the prospects of permanent give-aways in the form of tax cuts. It can't be that those people who wanted change are frustrated that costly wars and occupations continue, that Guantanamo wasn't closed, etc. etc. No, no... they're just irrational and aren't in a position to grasp the deep "truth" that the Obama and the Democrats are the cosmic force for the betterment of human kind.
Polls, to the extent that they're useful at all, still show that the Democrats enjoy a lead in overall popularity over the Republicans. But the popularity of both parties, taken together, is extremely low. The big lie is that disillusionment with the Democrats means direct support for the Republicans. But this is obviously false; this is merely clever propaganda to "scare out the vote" on the part of the Dems. People who were (understandably) excited to vote Obama in 2008 because of the prospects of some kind of qualitative change are (understandably) disappointed because no qualitative change occurred whatsoever. These folks aren't interested in the Republicans, but neither are they thrilled about the Democrats. They shouldn't be ridiculed for feeling this way. But that they are, by the mainstream press and the Democrats, is not surprising. Complaints against the system as such simply don't register as complaints: if you gripe about the Dems, it is immediately interpreted as a point in favor of the Republicans and vice versa. But that is no stain on people's legitimate disillusionment; that is a stain on the restrictive assumptions motivating mainstream discussion of "politics" conceived in the way I described in a recent post.
But the situation facing Obama and the Dems right now is not complex. It's obvious why they are floundering in elections. They campaigned by leading people to believe that they would really be a part of instigating some kind of qualitative change. They haven't; in fact, they've done more damage than good in the last 2 years. Hence disillusionment and frustration among previous supporters.
So to think that all that needs changing are the images and tunes coming from the White House and the DNC is to deeply misunderstand the situation. Thinking that this "PR fix" is plausible requires that we pretend that the last 2 years never happened. And though public memory is truncated and distorted by our corporate media institutions... I don't think it's distorted enough for people to forget that they've been deeply betrayed by the second most enthusiastic capitalist party in the US.
Friday, October 15, 2010
NYTimes to teachers: subordinate yourselves to the "Historic Wave of Change"
I quote:
She has acted out of a fear that teachers’ unions could end up on the wrong side of a historic and inevitable wave of change.Here's more:
“She has shrewdly recognized that teachers’ unions need to be part of the reform,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, an education research group.So here's the argument of this atrocious article:
Christopher Cerf, a former deputy schools chancellor in New York City who has sparred with Ms. Weingarten, offered a similar, if more skeptical interpretation.
“The earth moved in a really dramatic way,” he said, “to the point that a very successful strategist like Randi has to know that teacher unionism itself is in jeopardy, perhaps even in mortal jeopardy.”
- The only way to change or reform schools is to privatize them, bust unions and blame teachers for the social ills of our society.
- Since teachers' unions disagree, with 1. they must be mercilessly crushed as "opponents of change".
- While you might have thought that the leader of the country's largest teachers' union would disagree with 1. and 2. , in fact she is a "reformer" and appears to be at least minimally rational and "shrewd" enough to recognize that she must keep in step with the blinding light emitted by the "historic waves of change" being pushed through by the likes of "CEO" Arne Duncan.
As with everything we read in the NYTimes, we need to place all of this bullshit in context. There is a broad attack on public sector employees across the board right now. The attack proceeds by blaming them and making them pay for a crisis that was caused by Corporate America (who, we must recognize, are precisely the folks that are so thrilled about the idea of charter schools, privatized education, "market based" education policy, etc.). The attack on teachers, and thus on one of the most visible and organized public-sector unions, is part of a broader attempt to force austerity on working people in order to make them pay for the crisis. This is just one of the contextual factors left out.
Another is that we've had a neoliberal, market-based education policy has been in place for some time now. As many have pointed out, the Obama administration's education policies have been not only continuous with Bush's NCLB, but, in fact, more stridently Right-wing and anti-union (precisely because the Obama administration has more leeway since progressive groups (wrongly) assume that this administration is less likely to the same things as the Bush administration).
The ideas were cooked up by people who know nothing about education. And the ideas emerge in the context of a global doctrine and political practice, neoliberalism, which holds that we must extend the logic of financial markets to all facets of life. The privatization of education, or more precisely, the corporatization of education, by means of charters is thus part of a larger trend that includes deregulation, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, union-busting, privatization, destruction of the welfare state, etc. In other words this is all part of the infamous package known as "structural adjustment". As David Harvey has pointed out, that is more or less what the US is undergoing right now (minus the IMF).
What is called "reform" these days in education discourse is, in fact, anything but. It is reactionary. It is part of the destruction of the institution of public education. And if we were taught history in this country at all, we'd know that free public education was something for which we had to fight tooth and nail to win. The powers that be didn't grant it willingly. And when they're holding all of the cards, as they appear to be right now, we shouldn't expect that they'd do anything other than attack it.
Against Budget-Cut Fatalism
One of the most damaging and conservative ideologies in circulation right now is what we might call "budget-cut fatalism". The basic (overlapping) propositions that constitute this ideology are as follows:
- We are in a severe recession right now and sacrifices must be made.
- Either we cut services or the government goes further into the red.
- Although we'd like expanded services (who wouldn't?), it's unrealistic to hope for any expansion in social spending right now.
- Since the deficit is a major problem, perhaps the most pressing problem (for reasons connected to nationalist anxieties about losing super-power status), we should focus all our energies in reducing the deficit and getting the government out of the red.
- We must cut social services, the only question is which ones and how deep the cuts should be.
- Since the government is in the red, the only feasible fix is to cut social spending.
- Tax increases (on the rich) simply aren't an option.
- The only budget-related variables we have the ability to change include things like public worker's wages and pensions, funding for schools and infrastructure, etc. Military spending, the amount of wealth appropriated by the rich, etc. all remain fixed variables in our calculations. The only "moving parts" on the table here are worker's living standards, social services, etc. The rest is fixed.
This is where the ideology begins to court incoherence. Let us leave aside for the moment the patent absurdity of exempting military spending, corporate welfare, etc. from the picture. It assumed above that expanded social spending (e.g. constructing new rail systems, renovating public transit infrastructure, expanding education spending, building new hospitals, etc.) would, other things being equal, be a good thing. But yet it is concluded that our only course of action is to make cuts, the only questions being where and how deep (hence the fatalism).
This conclusion is hardly forced. It only appears natural when we accept the set of tacit premises I note above.
Here's an alternative way of thinking about the present situation that makes clear just how tendentious and conservative the ideology under examination here really is. And before discuss alternatives, let me note in passing that this budget-cut ideology is by no means confined to the followers of the Republican Party. As I've noted on this blog many times, it is every bit as much a part of the ruling doctrines in the Democratic Party as it is in the GOP. The most insidious part about this ideology is that it convinces even those progressive-minded people committed to expanded social spending that such demands are impossible right now. That is, it convinces people who want change that they are wrong to ask for it, and that they should gladly accept the austerity measures being forced upon them.
Here's the alternative story, and I'll try to keep it as accessible and succinct as possible:
Our society produces far more than it needs to reproduce every individual over time. That is, our society produces a great deal more goods, services, etc. than it needs to be maintained at subsistence. Call that the social surplus.
Now the social surplus, in order to be produced, requires the involvement of the great majority of persons in our society. Without a massive, coordinated system of labor, this surplus would not be generated. Though the rich like to pretend they're responsible for all the wealth in this society, they know as well as anyone else that if every working person simply sat down and stopped working this entire system would grind to a halt.
Yet, though the surplus is socially produced, ownership and control of the surplus is private and anti-social. A small class is in a position to appropriate the lion's share of the surplus, whereas most are not in a position to do so.
Now, a modest portion of the surplus is taxed and this is what enables the government to spend. But note that this modest chunk still leaves most of the surplus produced in our society in the hands of a rather small class of persons. We're talking about massive sums of money here. In the UK, the top 10% own nearly half the national private wealth - that's four thousand billion dollars. It's even more concentrated at the top in the US. The Bush tax-cuts have cost $2.74 Trillion dollars over 8 years. That means if tax rates for the rich had remained at the level they'd been during the Clinton years, the Federal Government would have nearly $3 Trillion more than it has at present.
So how is it that budget cuts are inevitable? Why is it that the only things up for negotiation are worker's pensions, wages, and jobs? Why do we have to cut anything at all?
The answer is that we don't. So why are discussions about the crisis dominated by budget cut fatalism? Why are ordinary people being forced to shoulder the entire crisis? Because ordinary people have no voice in our political system. The needs, wants, and desires of the vast majority simply do not register.
To be sure, we have the freedom to choose between two factions of one pro-business party, but if neither of those organizations represents our needs, what can we do? In the electoral arena there isn't much we can do at all. But that doesn't mean we can't fight back. On the contrary, fighting back only has any real content today if it means extra-electoral struggle and organization.
Both of the major parties represent the interests of the most powerful class in our society. Corporate donors flood both parties with funds every election cycle; they've been hedging their bets for a long time, this isn't new. They're trying to make us pay dearly for a crisis we weren't even allowed to have the opportunity to cause. We're barred from having a say in how the commanding heights of the economy are run, and we're frequently told that ordinary people are just too stupid to be able to run society themselves. But though the "best and the brightest" brought the entire world economy to its knees in their chaotic pursuit of short-term profits, we are being saddled with the entire cost of the crisis.
They make the mess, and we are told we have to clean it up.
And to add insult to injury, these fabulously intelligent and motivated individuals, these "fountainheads" of entrepreneurial greatness and ingenuity, are only still around because they received trillions of dollars in bailouts. In fact, the bailouts are best thought of as a transfer of toxic assets and debt from the private financial sector to the state. And as picking up the tab for global crisis, unending war and occupation, and ongoing tax-breaks for the rich weren't enough, the vast majority is asked to suffer in order to pay for the financial sector's massive credit card bill (i.e. TARP).
This is a clear case of us against them. Either we are going to be forced into austerity, living standard cuts, school closings, bridge collapses, etc. Or the rich are going to pay for the mess they created. We know whose side the entire political system is on. The only question is what ordinary people are going to to do fight it.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
SB1070: The Cutting Edge of Racism in the US
And it's a law that must certainly be broken until it is repealed. Stay tuned- there will be a movement to send people to Arizona to intentionally stand in non-compliance with the racist statute until the bigots are forced to give in.
This is bigger than SB1070, however. Steps have been taken, as many will have heard by now, to whitewash the curriculum in schools and to prevent teachers with "accents" from teaching English in the schools. I've even heard of a school in AZ that repainted murals on the school premises to lighten the skin tones of the persons depicted. That is what the racists in AZ and the Tea-baggers want: to expel and "purify" the state of non-white peoples. This shit is completely out of control, and it needs to be aggressively fought head-on.
Of course, people in AZ are already leaving their homes to try to flee the effects of this draconian, racist law. But this isn't just an assault on people of color in AZ. This is a threat to justice all over the entire country. Many states (nearly 20 by the last count) have passed bills commending and celebrating the law in AZ. Again, as I've argued many times on this blog, this is not a moment in which left-minded people can simply sit back and wait for ostensibly "progressive" democratic Congress members to do the right thing. This bill must be fought directly, head-on, and aggressively by ordinary people. It needs to be fought no matter who is sitting in office, no matter what they profess to think about justice. ¡Alto Arizona! ¡Nadie es ilegal!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Authorized Media: "Banks Dodged Bullet"
Read the BusinessWeek article here. Here's an excerpt:
"A deal reached by members of a House and Senate conference early this morning diluted provisions from the tougher Senate bill, limiting rather than prohibiting the ability of federally insured banks to trade derivatives and invest in hedge funds or private equity funds.Before we know it, election season will be upon us and we will be aswim in calls to support Democrat incumbents. Presumably, the Dems won't try to sell their (basically conservative) politics as "change" this time around. They'll sell their ticket as a bulwark against Tea-bagger reactionaries.Banks “dodged a bullet,” said Raj Date, executive director for Cambridge Winter Inc.’s center for financial institutions policy and a former Deutsche Bank AG executive. “This has to be a net positive.”
But what happened during the two years of massive Democrat House majorities, a supermajority in the Senate, and an initially popular young president who was talking about fundamental change?
We saw the reactivation of the US's Latin American military strong arm in 2008, escalation in Afghanistan, complete continuity with the Bush years in terms of treasury policy, quick surrender on the already compromised "public option", failure to repeal anti-union laws that prevent organization of workplaces, increased drone attacks on Pakistan, severe cuts to public services, spending freezes for everything except the defense budget, refusal to enact progressive reform on the GLBT-rights front, a U-turn on off-shore drilling and an embrace by Obama of "drill baby drill", deference to a for-profit oil company that has devastated the Gulf of Mexico, etc. Now we have, basically, a failure to even secure adequate window-dressing to cover the fact that serious regulatory reform will not be passed.
It is more clear to me than ever that all progressive and left-minded people in the US need to organize independently of the Democratic machine, build existing social movements, and start new ones. We need to follow the example of the Black freedom movement of the 1950s and 60s- and, as Sherry Wolf has recently put it, "make them do the right thing". Of course, the ultimate aim must be to eliminate a social system in which there is a "them" who need to be made to do what's in the interest of the vast majority of people.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
When Wall Street loves reform
Read SW editorial on the health bill here. Here's an excerpt:
Indeed, for many people who are sick and tired of conservatives getting their way, the bill's passage signaled a potential shift in the political winds in Washington. So after months when it appeared that the right was making a big comeback, the health care reform could translate into a growing confidence that working people can make real progress today after all.
The question is, how are such gains to be made? If matters are left to the Democrats, we'll see a repeat of the health care reform debacle, in which widespread demand for fundamental change is diverted into weak legislation that leaves powerful economic interests unchallenged.
Drill, baby, drill!
Read about it here. Maybe Obama's "green jobs czar" can give the new oil rigs some tax breaks in order to stimulate the creation of more "green jobs" extracting petroleum.
Meanwhile... all of the public transit systems in the US are in disrepair, imposing service cuts, and hiking fares. And all of this is allowed to come to pass at the same time that Obama escalates foreign wars and proposes spending freezes on everything except the Pentagon budget.
It's not the Republicans who have forced Obama down this road. This is the road that he and the Democrats in Congress have pursued all on their own. To be sure, the Republicans would have been glad to go this route (cutting social spending, eviscerating public transit, escalating wars abroad, tipping their hat to off-shore drilling, etc.) if they were in power.
But wasn't the point of voting Democrat supposed to have been that they wouldn't simply pursue the same course as the Republicans?
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Political Questions We Cannot Raise
I just ran across this excellent video of Chomsky on the political system in the United States.
One moment of his talk that I found particularly striking was his claim that "most of the issues that the public cares about...weren't even allowed to come up (in discussion surrounding elections" (5:01).
As Chomsky puts it, "many major issues that the public cares about... are big economic issues...issues on which the public has extremely strong opinions...but none of it could be brought up in the election" (5:38).
This is a key point in making sense of politics in contemporary societies. It's not just that we are encouraged to internalize the wrong answers to political questions (e.g. we shouldn't want single-payer health insurance because that means "big government"). The most damaging problem is that we aren't even able to raise the most important political questions at all.
Some social scientists have called this phenomenon "nondecision-making":
Nondecision-making is a means by which demands for change in the existing allocation of benefits and privileges in the community can be suffocated before they are ever voiced; or kept covert; or killed before they gain access to the relevant decision-making arena; or, failing all these things, maimed or destroyed in the decision-implementing stage of the policy process". (see Bachrach and Baratz (1970: p.44))But this analysis of politics is not one we obtain by default. If one were to simply internalize what's said about politics in, say, the New York Times, they would have an entirely different analysis of politics from the one above. The default understanding of power that we are spoon-fed in Civics textbooks and mainstream news media is as follows. The boundaries of what is to count as a political issue are set by the established political system. Politics is simply the narrow agenda discussed among elites in existing political institutions.
Now, take note of what this excludes. Among other things, this entire approach to politics completely ignores potential issues that the established political system prevents from becoming actual. As Bachrach and Baratz point out, this approach to politics totally ignores many key issues, especially issues that "...involve a genuine challenge to the resources of power or authority of those who currently dominate the process by which policy outputs in the system are determined". Merely raising certain question that pose a threat to existing relations of power is proscribed from the agenda.
This method of exclusion is precisely how our electoral system functions. We have two more-or-less pro-Business parties with minor differences (there are, of course, differences, but they are minor all things considered), and political questions are restricted to rather small set of relatively uncontroversial matters. We are asked to focus in on disputes over minutiae, whereas the big questions about which the public has strong views are frozen out of the discussion. For example, polls have shown for many years now that the idea of single-payer (or Medicare for all) is popular with the public (something like 60% support it, which is more support than Obama got in the 2008 election).
Of course, the public is never asked to vote on whether we should have a for-profit, market-based healthcare system or a public, single-payer system. What they are asked to do is to choose between a Democrat or a Republican every election cycle, neither of whom desire to challenge the powerful position of the private health insurance industry (which is what it would take to get single-payer passed). Thus there is a large gap between what the public wants and what they are able to ask for via the electoral system.
What can we do about this gap?
I'll weigh in on what I think about what we can do in a moment. But if you ask certain Democrat-friendly liberals, they'll tell you that we just need to elect a couple more "progressive" Democrats to office in a handful of states. Perhaps we could exchange a Joe Liberman for a Ned Lamont, they'll argue, and that would more or less solve the problem.
This is preposterous. Notwithstanding the utter powerlessness of the existing bloc of "progressives" in the House and Senate, the problem isn't the lack of a couple of "more progressive" individuals in the Democratic Party. The problem is a systemic one, that has more to do with institutions and practices than the preferences of any one individual in the Party. You can waste valuable resources and time trying to elect a person that starts off supporting single-payer. But in order to function within Washington and the Democratic Party apparatus that person will have to conform to protocol and the requirements of operating within this instutional backdrop.
What, then, should we do about this massive gap between public preferences and a political process dominated by elites?
I find myself returning again and again to two important examples. I'll restrict myself to the first, which is the Civil Rights Movement (or, what, at the time (according to Angela Davis) was simply called the "freedom movement"). (The other example I find particularly interesting is the massive wave of labor militancy in 1934 that led to the passage of the most progressive elements of the New Deal).
First of all, consider where the politics of race stood in the 1940s-50s in the United States. The "major political issues" defined by the agenda set by the established political process and mainstream press did not include the problem of racism as a major concern. The interests of the masses of ordinary black people were simply not on the radar of the established political system. Despite a couple of landmark events and Supreme Court decisions, the issue was by and large pushed aside by the political system.
But by 1964, there was enough pressure on the entire political system to force the passage of major civil rights legislation, against the default prerogatives of the ruling party (i.e. the Democrats).
How was this massive gap closed?
First, consider how it wasn't closed. The political movement for racial justice that began to pick up steam in the early 60s did not directly focus on electoral politics at all. They did not focus on creating PAC's to funnel funds to the Democrats, they did not focus primarily on lobbying elected officials, and they did not emphasize playing within the conventional political rules. They did not simply ask nicely and sit back and hope that elected officials would "do the right thing".
They formed organizations and social movements independently of the political system and by means of direct actions, marches, agitation, consciousness-raising, organizing, propagandizing, and so on they put the problem of racism on the table in a way that the political system could not ignore.
Visionaries like MLK and Malcolm X did not go on TV and talk in the narrow terms of electioneering and Congressional maneuvering. They did not accept the constraints of what was then considered "politically realistic" or prudent. They challenged those very constraints and in-so-doing altered the horizons of what was politically possible.
Malcolm X did not attenuate his own criticisms of the existing order so as to avoid pissing off elites. He didn't think of those determined to maintain racial hierarchies as potential "stakeholders" in a public discussion about policy: he publicly challenged the very legitimacy of their authority.
Yet this entire political orientation, which could instructively be applied to many other political situations, is foreign to the default conception of politics pedaled by politicans, pundits and the mainstream news media. The default conception teaches us to think of ourselves as isolated consumers, not as potential participants in a collective project. We are told to think highly of such vacuous notions as "centrism", "moderation", and "bipartisanship". Oppositional politics are shunned as "divisive" or "polarizing". The result is that any serious criticism of the status quo is frozen out of the discussion: you simply cannot raise such objections at all, no matter how much public support they may have.
Ask yourself this: If we had a vote tomorrow, a national referendum, on whether or not we should have stay in Iraq indefinitely or get out immediately, what would the outcome be? If polls and the discussions during the 2008 election are any indication, an overwhelming majority of Americans would not vote in support of Obama's extension of Bush's foreign policy in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Or, take Obama's proposed spending freeze. Obama has suggested that we totally freeze all social spending, except for defense spending (which should be allowed to continue to increase). Now, if there was a national referendum asking people whether or not the United States should spend the billions slated for the Pentagon on (A) funding uncessary foreign wars and occupations or (B) on schools, public transit and public services... which do you think people would choose?
But neither of these are questions that can be raised within our political system. These questions do not map onto the disagreement between Republicans and Democrats since both of them more or less agree that we should buck the public will on both counts. That's part of what it is to have two different factions (with a small set of distinguishing features) of what is in effect one pro-Business party.
Although there were massive shifts in electoral balances of power (think of the makeup of the Senate in 2004 vs. 2008), there have not been corresponding shifts in policy. Despite the fact that the country completely repudiated the GOP at the ballot box two election cycles in a row, the Democrats have basically kept the agenda set by Bush intact. The Paulson Plan for bailing out Wallstreet was continued, EFCA was suffocated and set aside, Immigrant Rights were ignored, foreign wars and occupations were escalated, drone bombings increased, freezes on social spending were proposed, etc.
If the Democrats cannot deliever when they have control of every major branch of government, with super-majorities in the Senate, when can they deliver? What do we have to look forward to? Should we hold our breath until they finally get back to the point when they obtain a super-majority again? Isn't this supposed to be the end of the rainbow in terms of electoral power?
I think it's time to divest from the Democrats and start exploring oppositional, independent political organizations that empower ordinary people and enable democracy from below.
IL Democrats wage "all out offensive" on teachers pensions
(via Progress Illinois)
Democratic leadership, including Gov. Pat Quinn, is firmly in support of the bill. Republicans approved it without issuing major complaints. It pleased business groups like the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, as well.
Organized labor, on the other hand, is furious over the legislation -- and with good reason. Illinois' current level of benefits are modest and in line with other states in the region. The primary reason the state’s pension system is so out of whack is that state lawmakers -- instead of reforming the tax system to raise revenue sustainable and fairly -- have skimped on payments for decades, using money designated for the pension system to cover core services. In short, lawmakers misrepresented the problem instead of owning up to their own failures. And in devising a political solution, they threw their key allies under the bus. "This bill is nothing more than lawmakers shifting the burden of the state’s past mistakes onto future teachers and public employees," Ed Geppert, president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, told the Sun-Times. "The problem of our pensions," echoed AFSCME Council 31 president Henry Bayer, "is not a problem of rich benefits."
My, my the Democrats are really keen on punching public school teachers in the stomach these days. The news above is another fine example of how the Democratic Party functions. You can bet, however, that if organized labor were more powerful and militant, those Democrat jerks in Springfield would have had to think twice about throwing teachers and public employees under the bus.
But instead the Democrats do what they always do: in times of crisis they shift burdens onto relatively powerless people who don't, at present, have the ability to fight back. And they use the fact that teachers and public employees have no other electoral option as leverage. As long as organized labor wants to be involved in the two-party system (although its not clear that they should want to), they have nowhere to go but the Democrats, and the Democrats know this.
The result is that Left activists, supporters and constituents stuck inside of the Democratic Party are almost in all cases a marginal appendage who merely bring votes but get nothing in return. In contrast, their right-wing "Blue Dog" counterparts have the ears of Democratic leadership whenever they voice a concern.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Consumers, Commodities and "Reform"
A month ago, I responded to a NYTimes article by criticizing the tendency in their "analysis" to presuppose that we should think of ourselves as consumers in the context of health care "reform":
The entire way that this "issue" is thought about and discussed in mainstream outlets reeks of deeply-seated ideological distortions. The most obvious example of this distortion lies in the fact that we are continually prodded to think of ourselves primarily as consumers. In the health care "debate", we are asked to assume the role of consumer, and then to think about what creative institutional reforms we could implement that might help make our object of consumption, health care, less expensive. In this way, the entire debate is reduced to technocratic price tinkering.Now, check this out. Before, I responded to what I took to be an implicit injunction to think in consumer-product terms... now the NYTimes has switched to an explicit deployment of that ideological set of concepts.
We are continually encouraged to focus our attention solely on consumption; but we never reflect back on the conditions of production. Thus, the realm of circulation rather than the control of the means of production are the subject of scrutiny. The result is the sterile debate about how to remedy "soaring health care prices", where the real underlying economic issues are not even considered. The basic configuration of power in our current system remains uncriticized.
If you yell "consumer" at people enough, and they learn to respond in kind, you've already accomplished a good deal, ideologically speaking. In the health care context, in effect, you rule out institutional reforms like single-payer, where all residents of the US (i.e. not just the right consumers) would be unconditionally covered. In the case of single-payer, the consumer-product relation drops out completely, because we would no longer be purchasing a commodity for a market price at all under such a system.
Under single-payer, the service would be distributed according to human need and the price would be determined by one's ability to pay (i.e. via a graduated income tax), which is precisely not the way that market prices function: in a "free" market your access is strictly limited according to how much money you have, and the flat-rate, one-size-fits-all prices are set by the demands of profitability for owners of the insurance companies. And they can yank them up any time they please, in order to ensure profitability is sufficiently cushy.
Anything worthy of being called health care reform, would have to challenge the idea that private, for-profit companies are to provide "consumers" with a "commodity" (in principle exchangeable with any other) that is sold on a market of some kind. At least the public option, however tepid and problematic it was, purported to challenge this state of affairs in some way (although it left much intact). But the present bill actually takes all of this for granted. It cements and further funds and institutionalizes the for-profit, market-based consumer mentality.
And what's worse, Obama and Co. conceded even the ability to regulate these fuckers at the Federal level. So, we're being forced, on pain of legal penalty, to purchase the products of a for-profit industry... and our "progressive", "visionary" leaders in Congress couldn't even bother to push for the ability to regulate this industry who've now got a captive market of consumers.
Monday, March 22, 2010
National Network Of Abortion Funds Slams Obama
(Via TPM)
Stephanie Poggi, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, released the following statement on President Obama's executive order on abortion funding.
"At this very moment, a woman is rationing the food left in her pantry, further delaying her electricity bill, and facing heavy penalties on her late mortgage payment -- all because she cannot pay for an abortion she needs. This is the cruel legacy of the Hyde Amendment, a legacy that President Obama renewed yesterday by signing an executive order to appease a handful of legislators who represented no one's interests but their own. As a nation, we demanded that health care reform address the inherent inequality and unfairness in our existing system. But with the stroke of his pen, President Obama expanded the Hyde Amendment's guarantee of inequality and unfairness. Because of the Hyde Amendment, every year nearly 200,000 women who cannot afford abortion care must make extreme sacrifices in order to pay for a basic health care procedure. By singling out abortion care, Congress and our President have betrayed their obligation to protect the interests of all people living in this country, not only those who already have every advantage. Our nation deserves much better.
The National Network of Abortion Funds has been leading efforts to dismantle the Hyde Amendment and ensure that every single woman in the United States has the ability to make important life decisions for the health and wellbeing of herself and her family. We are absolutely committed to educating Congress, the Administration, and the public about the devastating impact of the Hyde Amendment and yesterday's executive order and continuing the work to restore fairness.
Every week, our local abortion Funds help at least 400 women obtain abortion care they could not otherwise pay for. While we cannot meet the need created by our discriminatory health care system, we will continue to provide this essential service until every woman is treated with respect and dignity by her government."
Healthcare "reform" passes: Roundup
It has passed. Well, something has passed, at least. It isn't single-payer, it doesn't even contain a public option, and it doesn't even pretend to insure everyone. Here's a look at today's opining (sans the expected Republican hysterics which will only get your blood boiling):
Timothy Noah at Slate gets hopeful about the future of healthcare, based on the student loan reforms in the bill, which cut out private banking middlemen.
Jon Walker at FDL details the six greatest flaws of the bill.
Jos at feministing breaks down the good (more people will have insurance) and the bad (anti-woman, anti-immigrant).
Ezra Klein is doing some hard work over at his WaPo blog, trying to explain the ins and outs of the bill and when they go into effect. Particularly interesting is his effort to put the size of what is being called the biggest social policy bill ever into some real perspective.
Dana Goldstein at The Daily Beast on what a betrayal Obama's last-minute executive order is for reproductive rights.
HuffPo lays out ten immediate benefits you might get from the bill.
And Dr. Margaret Flowers at Monthly Review calls this "a step backwards"
And former Bush speechwriter David Frum says healthcare reform will be Republicans' Waterloo, lamenting:
No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
