#John Eskow

[80smovies]

[movie-titlecards]

Air America (1990)

My rating: 5/10

[curatorofthisdigitalmorass]

The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow Published on Oct 30, 2018

John Nichols: Give 'em Something to Vote For!

[takebackthedream]

The Kerner Report at 50: Still Separate, More Unequal by Richard Eskow

Every four years, we add an extra day to our calendars to make up for the fact that they don’t accurately reflect the movement of the planet. The Kerner Commission report was released on just such a day, fifty years ago.

Unfortunately, too little has changed since February 29, 1968. We’re still out of alignment with the reality all around us.

This report, officially called the “Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders,”  was commissioned by President Johnson to investigate the causes of the riots that rocked Detroit and other U.S. cities in the summer of 1967. The report identified the forces behind these riots with uncanny precision.

Racism, economic inequality, police violence, and media bias: these were the instrumentalities of oppression the commissioners found fifty years ago. They are still with us today.

The fact that the Kerner report still rings so true is its greatest accomplishment – and our greatest failure.

The President’s Call

President Lyndon Johnson was under pressure to do something after rioting broke out in inner cities across the United States. So, he did what politicians often do when they’re under pressure: He appointed a “bipartisan commission.”  That usually creates the illusion that something is being done, while ensuring that whatever the commission eventually recommends will be bland enough to provide cover for whatever the politician wanted to do in the first place.

This time, the commissioners took their work seriously. Former senator Fred Harris is the only surviving member of the original commission, which included Republicans and Democrats, a labor leader and a business executives… and only two black members.

Activists and radicals were not welcomed. As historian Stephen M. Gillon noted,

Johnson assumed that his mainstream commission would produce a mainstream report that would endorse the broad outlines of his existing domestic agenda and insulate him from attacks both from the right and from the left.

Separate and Unequal

The Kerner report instead drew bold conclusions and proposed equally bold solutions. One sentence from the report became famous:

“This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.”

The report then said: “To pursue our present course will involve the continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values.”

To create “common opportunities for all within a single society,” the report called for

a commitment to national action — compassionate, massive and sustained, backed by the resources of the most powerful and the richest nation on this earth. From every American it will require new attitudes, new understanding, and, above all, new will. (Emphasis ours.)

The report called for an end to “violence and destruction” – not only “in the streets of the ghetto,” but “in the lives of the people.” The term “structural violence” had not yet entered the American lexicon, but the report offered a litany of the harms it causes. It also emphasized the different realities experienced by white and black America, calling the ghetto “a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.”

It continued:

“What white Americans have never fully understood – but what the Negro can never forget – is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain, and white society condones it.”

White Men’s Eyes

That lack of a common understanding is an indictment of the media – then, and now.  The Kerner report wrote, “The press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men’s eyes and white perspective.”

The report adds: “(The media) have not communicated to the majority of their audience–which is white—a sense of the degradation, misery and hopelessness of life in the ghetto.”

As Ford Foundation president Darren Walker writes in the Columbia Journalism Review, the media problems outlined in the report are still problems today.

As the report put it back in 1968: “Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.”

The struggles of African Americans like Eric Garner, who died at the hands of New York City police in 2014, and the kinds of daily experiences they encounter, still lie beyond the sight of most white Americans: this is testament to the truth of that statement fifty years ago.

Levels of Intensity

The authors of the Kerner Report created a taxonomy of grievances confronting black urban Americans, laying them out by “levels of intensity.” The most “intense” grievances included “police practices, unemployment and under-employment, and inadequate housing.” Other problem areas included inadequate education and “discriminatory consumer and credit practices.”

Like the other problems cited in the report, these are still grievances for Black America.

Segregation and poverty? Senator Harris recently co-wrote a report with Alan Curtis, president of the Milton Eisenhower Foundation, on progress (or the lack of it) over the last fifty years. In it, Harris and Curtis conclude that “poverty has increased and so has the inequality gap between white America and Americans who are black, brown and Native American.”

In an op-ed for CNN, Harris and Curtis write:

As the nation has grown, our overall poverty rate has stubbornly remained virtually the same, while the total number of poor people has increased from 25.4 million to 40.6 million. The rate of child poverty is greater today than in 1968, and the percentage of Americans living in deep, or extreme poverty, has grown since 1975, and “welfare reform” has failed.

Inequality of income in our country has greatly worsened… Fifty-two percent of all new income in America goes to the top 1 percent. Rich people are healthier and live longer. They get a better education, and a better education produces greater inequality of income. Then, greater economic power translates into greater political power.

Still Segregated

What about the other “grievances”? Police brutality? The Black Lives Matter movement has awakened the nation to the unpunished killings of innocent black men, women, and children by police forces across the country. Those killings continue.

Unemployment? African-American unemployment is still twice what it is for whites.

Inadequate housing? As a “snapshot” from the Economic Policy Institute noted in 2013, “Residential segregation and ongoing poverty has left African Americans in some of the least desirable housing in some of the lowest-resourced communities in America.”

The proportion of the poor population living in high-poverty neighborhoods rose from 43 percent to 54 percent between 2000 and 2015, according to a report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and the number of high-poverty neighborhoods around the country rose from 13,4000 to more than 21,300.

Inadequate education? “Schools remain segregated today because neighborhoods in which they are located are segregated,” Richard Rothstein wrote in a 2013 report for the Economic Policy Institute. Rothstein adds that “raising (the educational) achievement of low-income black children requires residential integration, from which school integration can follow.”

Time for Action

The Kerner Commission proposed moving swiftly and decisively to address these problems. It proposed the creation of two million new jobs – one million in the public sector, and one million in the private sector. That kind of government expansion could lead to a massive expansion of public works and social services. It could also follow the model of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s WPA, and create jobs in the arts and humanities.

The commission also proposed creating six million housing units, to replace substandard homes and integrate urban and suburban parts of the country.

There were 198.7 million people living in the United States when this report was written. Today there are slightly more than 326 million. These recommendations, if adjusted for population growth, would come to just under 3.3 million new jobs and nearly ten million new housing units.

The Commission also proposed voluntary reforms in the U.S. media, changes in policing and urban governance, new housing policies, and a number of other reforms.

Misplaced Priorities

Gillon writes that “the cost of funding the report’s proposals was far more than President Lyndon Johnson could afford to spend while fighting a billion-dollar war in Vietnam.”

The Democrats, divided over that war, failed to rally behind a progressive agenda that included the report’s recommendations. Richard Nixon won the presidency by offering a diet of false promises and racial resentment to what he called the “silent majority” of white working-class Americans.

And so, the Kerner Commission’s recommendations were never adopted. The money was there, or could have been found; After all, the nation was experiencing its greatest period of economic growth, and within the year would fulfill John F. Kennedy’s dream of sending a manned mission to the moon.

But, as Alice George wrote recently for Smithsonian magazine:

“Ultimately, going to the moon was far easier than solving the nation’s racial issues. Politically, spending billions on space travel was more saleable than striving to correct racial inequality.”

Several short months after the report was published, many of the nation’s inner cities would erupt again when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

Fifty years later, the streets of our cities are quiet – for now.  But the injustices remain, and time is not on anyone’s side.

[democratsunited-blog]

Primaries Offer Hope and Challenges for Democrats

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=6578

Primaries Offer Hope and Challenges for Democrats

Reporters who cover primaries, especially in off-years like 2018, often find themselves in a quandary. They’re expected to find meaning in each election’s results. But not many people vote in these primaries, and local issues are often more important than national ones. The resulting journalistic pronouncements are often built on sand, vulnerable to being washed away by the next wave.

After the May 15 primaries in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Oregon, and Idaho, The Washington Post’s James Hohmann wrote that “Tuesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Democratic moderates.”

That was largely true. In a Nebraska congressional primary, left-wing candidate Kara Eastman won an upset victory over the establishment-backed Democrat, former Rep. Brad Ashford. Progressives also defeated establishment-backed candidates in Idaho and Oregon.

In Pennsylvania, leftist John Fetterman, with Bernie Sanders’s backing, defeated an establishment candidate in the contest for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor. And candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America scored impressive wins in three other Pennsylvania state races.

“The success of very liberal candidates in primaries across four states is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists in Washington,” Hohmann wrote, “who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority.”

The heartburn was undoubtedly real. But the worry Hohmann describes is based on the proposition that “party strategists in Washington” know what makes candidates electable, a notion that is not supported by the Democrats’ electoral performance over the last decade.

The Nation’s John Nichols took a considerably more celebratory approach to the May 15 results, reveling in the Democratic primary victories of Pennsylvania’s openly socialist candidates. Under the headline, “Socialism Is on a Winning Streak,” Nichols quotes one candidate as saying, “We’re turning the state the right shade of red tonight.”

Yet what a difference a week makes.

“It was a pretty good night for the Democratic establishment,” Politico wrote of the May 22 primaries in Texas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Arkansas. “In four of the most crucial Houses races with primaries on Tuesday,” wrote Slate’s Josh Voorhees, “Democratic voters selected the DCCC’s preferred candidates.”

That conclusion was largely based on the suburban Houston primary contest between Lizzie Fletcher and Laura Moser. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee intervened crudely against Moser in late February, publishing an opposition memo on its website. The move inadvertently raised Moser’s profile in a multicandidate field, galvanized progressive groups to support her, and likely helped vault her into the runoff. Fletcher, a corporate attorney, won resoundingly in the May 22 runoff, with 67.1 percent of the vote. That sounds impressive, but a total of only 17,023 votes were cast in the Fletcher–Moser race, and Fletcher won by a margin of fewer than 6,000 votes.

It takes a certain selectivity to broadly interpret the May 15 results as an unadulterated victory for the Democratic establishment. Amy McGrath, the relatively mainstream Democrat who won a Kentucky congressional primary, took down the party’s first choice in the race. Stacey Abrams, who won the Georgia gubernatorial race, ran as a progressive. Abrams also embraced the progressive notion that Democrats are more likely to win by turning out their base than they are by reaching “persuadable” Republicans.

The experts’ crystal balls were clouded even further by June 6’s primary results. The Washington Post post-primary roundup was headlined “The Democratic Establishment Strikes Back in California, New Jersey and Other Primaries,” while The Intercept went with “Progressive Candidates Had a Very Good Night Tuesday.”

Establishment-backed Democrats did well in New Jersey’s congressional primaries, fueling another round of “leftists on the run” commentary in the mainstream media. At the local level, progressive challengers lost in three California district attorney races.

But The Intercept may have been closer to the mark than other outlets. Progressive Katie Porter defeated establishment-backed Democrat Dave Min in a California congressional primary, with the help of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and left groups like Democracy for America and the Progressive Congressional Change Committee. (EMILY’S List, which supports both progressive and establishment-oriented pro-choice women, also backed Porter.)

Progressive Ammar Campa-Najjar won in California’s 5th District. Left candidate Deb Haaland defeated two less progressive Democrats in New Mexico, and is now poised to become the first Native American woman in Congress. In a New Mexico legislative race, left candidates defeated three establishment Democrats in the state legislature, with help from the Working Families Party.

Punditry aside, none of these primaries provide enough information for solid predictions. There are, however, lessons to be drawn from the not-inconsiderable left-wing victories of May and June. The first is this: the fact that any candidate associated with the word “socialist” can win a major party’s primary suggests that a significant shift may be underway in American politics.

Media narratives, the flow of campaign contributions, and the actions of party leaders have all reinforced the idea that genuinely left-wing candidates are unelectable and must be shunned—if not for ideological reasons, then for pragmatic ones. That has changed now, and the de facto taboo on Democratic leftists has been broken.

This is especially true in Pennsylvania, where Summer Lee, Sara Innamorato, and Elizabeth Fiedler won their May primaries for the State House with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America. Lee and Innamorato prevailed against the Costa cousins, two scions of a powerful Democratic family in Pittsburgh. Another DSA-backed candidate, Lee Carter, was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017.

What is Bernie Sanders’s role in this shift? “The revolution is real,” wrote The Washington Post’s David Weigel and Michael Scherer on May 16, “but it’s not clear Bernie is going to lead it.”

Weigel and Scherer noted that 10 of 21 candidates backed by Bernie Sanders have won during this election cycle, along with 46 of the 111 backed by the Sanders-affiliated group Our Revolution. What they don’t say is that this is an extraordinarily good run for candidates who are opposing a highly funded and well-organized political machine and whose political views were considered outside the mainstream as recently as two years ago.

Can left candidates keep winning Democratic primaries? If recent millennial polling is any indicator, the long-term outlook is promising. According to a recent survey by the University of Chicago’s GenForward project, 61 percent of millennial Democrats “express favorable views toward socialism.” Bernie Sanders carries significantly more influence than Nancy Pelosi with both Democratic and independent millennials.

These findings are consistent with a Harvard-Harris poll published earlier this year, which found that a majority of Democrats of all ages support “movements within the Democratic Party to take it even further to the left and oppose the current Democratic leaders.” This leftward tilt was especially pronounced among groups that are normally seen as base Democratic voters: African Americans, Hispanics, and women.

Since women won decisively in May’s Democratic races, and Democrats are clearly relying on voters of color to take them to victory, these poll numbers deserve attention.

Winning primaries is, of course, only the first step toward getting elected. The left scored some upset victories on May 15. How will these candidates fare in November? To a certain extent, that depends on whether the national party supports them. The DCCC, which had targeted Eastman’s district as a “Red-to-Blue” opportunity, immediately withdrew that designation after Eastman defeated Ashford.

Older voters, who are more likely to resist the “socialism” and “left” labels, typically vote in far greater numbers than other groups. For these voters, progressive Democrats would be well-advised to emphasize their support for expanding Medicare and Social Security. And in order to increase turnout among their base voters, Dems will need to pay more than lip service to social justice and bread-and-butter economic concerns, and to develop an anti-corruption agenda.

Change is a slow process. It will take several election cycles to know whether a new left movement will permanently change Democratic politics, but the progressives who won in May suggest that a meaningful political transformation may be underway.

Richard Eskow is a writer who primarily covers politics and economics. He is also host and managing editor of The Zero Hour With RJ Eskow, a syndicated radio and TV news and opinion program.

Read full story here

[laprogressive]

This Is What Makes John Bolton So Dangerous RJ Eskow: Bolton has poor judgement, a mean spirit, and an intellect that’s weaker than he thinks. He spreads ethnic hatred and argues for sending others to fight and die. https://t.co/AQY3BcUBb0 https://t.co/I3XXKFqEND

This Is What Makes John Bolton So Dangerous RJ Eskow: Bolton has poor judgement, a mean spirit, and an intellect that’s weaker than he thinks. He spreads ethnic hatred and argues for sending others to fight and die.https://t.co/AQY3BcUBb0 pic.twitter.com/I3XXKFqEND

— Sharon Kyle (@SharonKyle00) March 26, 2018

via Twitter https://twitter.com/SharonKyle00 March 26, 2018 at 12:19PM

[stopkingobama]

The Libertarian Hypocrisy Test

I’ve shared several quizzes that people can take to see whether they are libertarian, some of which are very simple and some of which

Image Credit: QuotesEverlasting CC by 2.0

are very nuanced and complex.

The Definitive Political Orientation test.

The Circle test.

The Libertarian Purity test.

The 8 Values test.

The world’s smallest political quiz.

I’ve also shared many examples of statist hypocrisy.

Six examples from 2014.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s giant carbon footprint.

John Kerry’s money in tax havens.

Rich leftists with kids in private school while fighting school choice for poor kids.

Celebratory leftists dodging their tax obligations.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see that someone on the left wants to play this game by combing the concept of quizzes and hypocrisy. I don’t know R.J. Eskow, but he has a quiz on a left-wing website that’s designed to ostensibly measure libertarian hypocrisy.

Though it’s hard to treat the exercise seriously since it is prefaced by some rather silly rhetoric.

Libertarian…political philosophy all but died out in the mid- to late-20th century, but was revived by billionaires and corporations that found them politically useful. …They call themselves “realists” but rely on fanciful theories… They claim that selfishness makes things better for everybody, when history shows exactly the opposite is true. …libertarianism, the political philosophy whose avatar is the late writer Ayn Rand. It was once thought that this extreme brand of libertarianism, one that celebrates greed and even brutality, had died in the early 1980s… There was a good reason for that. Randian libertarianism is an illogical, impractical, inhumane, unpopular set of Utopian ravings. …It’s only a dream. At no time or place in human history has there been a working libertarian society which provided its people with the kinds of outcomes libertarians claim it will provide.

I’m not an ideological enforcer of libertarianism, but I can say with great confidence that Randians are only a minor strain of the libertarian movement. Many of us (including me) enjoyed one or more of her books, and some of us even became libertarians as a result of reading tomes such as Atlas Shrugged, but that’s the extent of her influence.

I also find it odd that Eskow didn’t do his homework when conspiracy-mongering about the Kochs or mentioning Cato. We get almost no funds from corporations. Indeed, I’m willing to bet that major left-wing think tanks get a much higher share of their budget from businesses.

…political libertarianism suddenly had pretensions of legitimacy. This revival is Koch-fueled, not coke-fueled… Exxon Mobil and other corporate and billionaire interests are behind the Cato Institute, the other public face of libertarianism.

Though Eskow gives us a bit of credit.

…the unconventionality of their thought has led libertarians to be among this nation’s most forthright and outspoken advocates for civil liberties and against military interventions.

Gee, thanks. What a magnanimous concession!

But I’ve spent enough time on preliminaries. Let’s get to the test.

Though I have to warn you that it’s just a rhetorical test. You can’t click on answers. There’s not even an answer key where you can calculate any results.

For all intents and purposes, the test is just a series of “gotcha” questions. Eskow probably hopes that libertarians will get flustered when confronted by this collection of queries.

But I’m always up for a challenge. So I decided to give my two cents in response to each question.

Are unions, political parties, elections, and social movements like Occupy examples of “spontaneous order”—and if not, why not?

The term “spontaneous order” refers to the natural tendency of markets to produce efficient and peaceful outcomes without any sort of centralized design or command. I’m not sure how this is connected to government and politics, however. Perhaps Eskow is asking whether political pressure groups can arise without centralized design and command. If so, then I’ll say yes. But if the question is designed to imply that market forces are akin to government actions and/or political activity, I’ll say no.

Is a libertarian willing to admit that production is the result of many forces, each of which should be recognized and rewarded?

Admit it? That’s an inherent part of our approach to economics. The famous “I, Pencil” essay celebrates this principle, and this video is a modern version that captures many of the same concepts. For what it’s worth, I’m guessing Eskow thinks that the market allocation of recognition and reward is somehow deficient, so he’s making some sort of weird argument that intervention is needed.

Is our libertarian willing to acknowledge that workers who bargain for their services, individually and collectively, are also employing market forces?

Yes, we think workers should be able to use any non-coercive tactic to get the maximum pay, including joining unions. And we also recognize the right of employers to use non-coercive tactics to keep costs down. But note that I include “non-coercive” in my analysis. That’s because no employee should be forced to remain at a company that doesn’t pay enough, and no employer should be forced to hire any particular worker or deal with any particular union. Market forces should determine those choices.

Is our libertarian willing to admit that a “free market” needs regulation?

Admit it? We view the private economy in part as a giant network of mutually reinforcing regulation. But Eskow probably doesn’t understand how private regulation operates. And besides, I’m sure his question is about command-and-control government regulation. And if that’s the focus of the question, am I a hypocrite for saying yes in some circumstances, but accompanied by rigorous cost-benefit analysis?

Does our libertarian believe in democracy?

Most libertarians will avoid the hypocrite label on this question because we are not fans of “democracy.” At least, we don’t believe in democracy if that means untrammeled majoritarianism. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution was created in part to protect some minority rights from “tyranny of the majority.” The bottom line is that we believe in a democratic form of government, but one where the powers of government are tightly constrained.

Does our libertarian use wealth that wouldn’t exist without government in order to preach against the role of government?

This question is based on the novel left-wing theory that wealth belongs to government because the economy would collapse without “public goods.” This might be an effective argument against an anarcho-capitalist, but I don’t think it has any salience when dealing with ordinary libertarians who simply want the federal government to stay within the boundaries envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Small-government libertarians are willing to give government 5-10 percent on their income to finance these legitimate activities. But, yes, we will preach when the burden of government expands beyond that point.

Does our libertarian reject any and all government protection for his intellectual property?

I’ll admit this is a tough question. I’ve never written on this issue, but libertarians are split on whether governments should grant and enforce patents and copyrights. Though I suspect both camps are probably intellectually consistent, so I doubt hypocrisy is an issue.

Does our libertarian recognize that democracy is a form of marketplace?

The “public choice” school of economics was created to apply economic analysis to political action, and most libertarians would agree with that approach. So the obvious answer is that, yes, we recognize that democracy is a type of marketplace. Once again, though, I think Eskow has an ulterior agenda. He probably wants to imply that if we accept market outcomes as desirable, then we must also accept political decisions as desirable. Yet he should know, based on one of the questions above, that we’re not huge fans of majoritarianism. The key distinction, from our perspective, is that market choices don’t involve coercion.

Does our libertarian recognize that large corporations are a threat to our freedoms?

Since libertarians are first in line to object when big companies lobby for bailouts, subsidies, and protectionism, the answer is obviously yes. Libertarians opposed Dodd-Frank, unlike the big companies on Wall Street. Libertarians opposed Obamacare, unlike the big insurance companies and big pharmaceutical companies. Libertarians oppose the Export-Import Bank, unlike the cronyists at the Chamber of Commerce. We are very cognizant of the fact that businesses are sometimes the biggest enemies of the free market.

Does he think…that historical figures like King and Gandhi were “parasites”?

This question is a red herring, based on Ayn Rand’s hostility to selflessness. As I noted above, very few libertarians are hard-core Randians. We have no objection to people dedicating their lives to others. And if that means fighting for justice and against oppression, we move from “no objection” to “enthusiastic support.”

If you believe in the free market, why weren’t you willing to accept as final the judgment against libertarianism rendered decades ago in the free and unfettered marketplace of ideas?

Since we don’t have any pure laissez-faire societies, we libertarians have to admit that we still have a long way to go. But our views aren’t right or wrong based on whether they are accepted by a majority. Heck, I would argue for libertarianism in France, where I’d have several thousand opponents for every possible ally.

I’ll close today’s column by briefly expanding on this final question, especially since Eskow also made similar claims in some of the text I excerpted above.

If you look around the world, you won’t find a Libertopia or Galt’s Gulch (egads, a Rand reference!). That being said, there is a cornucopia of evidence that nations with comparatively small and non-intrusive governments are much more prosperous than countries with lots of taxes, spending, and intervention.

Yes, voters do have an unfortunate tendency to elect more bad politicians (in place likes France and Greece) than sensible politicians (in places such as Switzerland and New Zealand), but that’s not the real test. What ultimately matters is that there’s a very strong relationship between liberty and prosperity. Libertarians pass that test with flying colors.

This is a guest post by Dan Mitchell “a high priest of light tax small state libertarianism”

[americanlibertypac]

The Libertarian Hypocrisy Test

I’ve shared several quizzes that people can take to see whether they are libertarian, some of which are very simple and some of which

Image Credit: QuotesEverlasting CC by 2.0

are very nuanced and complex.

The Definitive Political Orientation test.

The Circle test.

The Libertarian Purity test.

The 8 Values test.

The world’s smallest political quiz.

I’ve also shared many examples of statist hypocrisy.

Six examples from 2014.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s giant carbon footprint.

John Kerry’s money in tax havens.

Rich leftists with kids in private school while fighting school choice for poor kids.

Celebratory leftists dodging their tax obligations.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see that someone on the left wants to play this game by combing the concept of quizzes and hypocrisy. I don’t know R.J. Eskow, but he has a quiz on a left-wing website that’s designed to ostensibly measure libertarian hypocrisy.

Though it’s hard to treat the exercise seriously since it is prefaced by some rather silly rhetoric.

Libertarian…political philosophy all but died out in the mid- to late-20th century, but was revived by billionaires and corporations that found them politically useful. …They call themselves “realists” but rely on fanciful theories… They claim that selfishness makes things better for everybody, when history shows exactly the opposite is true. …libertarianism, the political philosophy whose avatar is the late writer Ayn Rand. It was once thought that this extreme brand of libertarianism, one that celebrates greed and even brutality, had died in the early 1980s… There was a good reason for that. Randian libertarianism is an illogical, impractical, inhumane, unpopular set of Utopian ravings. …It’s only a dream. At no time or place in human history has there been a working libertarian society which provided its people with the kinds of outcomes libertarians claim it will provide.

I’m not an ideological enforcer of libertarianism, but I can say with great confidence that Randians are only a minor strain of the libertarian movement. Many of us (including me) enjoyed one or more of her books, and some of us even became libertarians as a result of reading tomes such as Atlas Shrugged, but that’s the extent of her influence.

I also find it odd that Eskow didn’t do his homework when conspiracy-mongering about the Kochs or mentioning Cato. We get almost no funds from corporations. Indeed, I’m willing to bet that major left-wing think tanks get a much higher share of their budget from businesses.

…political libertarianism suddenly had pretensions of legitimacy. This revival is Koch-fueled, not coke-fueled… Exxon Mobil and other corporate and billionaire interests are behind the Cato Institute, the other public face of libertarianism.

Though Eskow gives us a bit of credit.

…the unconventionality of their thought has led libertarians to be among this nation’s most forthright and outspoken advocates for civil liberties and against military interventions.

Gee, thanks. What a magnanimous concession!

But I’ve spent enough time on preliminaries. Let’s get to the test.

Though I have to warn you that it’s just a rhetorical test. You can’t click on answers. There’s not even an answer key where you can calculate any results.

For all intents and purposes, the test is just a series of “gotcha” questions. Eskow probably hopes that libertarians will get flustered when confronted by this collection of queries.

But I’m always up for a challenge. So I decided to give my two cents in response to each question.

Are unions, political parties, elections, and social movements like Occupy examples of “spontaneous order”—and if not, why not?

The term “spontaneous order” refers to the natural tendency of markets to produce efficient and peaceful outcomes without any sort of centralized design or command. I’m not sure how this is connected to government and politics, however. Perhaps Eskow is asking whether political pressure groups can arise without centralized design and command. If so, then I’ll say yes. But if the question is designed to imply that market forces are akin to government actions and/or political activity, I’ll say no.

Is a libertarian willing to admit that production is the result of many forces, each of which should be recognized and rewarded?

Admit it? That’s an inherent part of our approach to economics. The famous “I, Pencil” essay celebrates this principle, and this video is a modern version that captures many of the same concepts. For what it’s worth, I’m guessing Eskow thinks that the market allocation of recognition and reward is somehow deficient, so he’s making some sort of weird argument that intervention is needed.

Is our libertarian willing to acknowledge that workers who bargain for their services, individually and collectively, are also employing market forces?

Yes, we think workers should be able to use any non-coercive tactic to get the maximum pay, including joining unions. And we also recognize the right of employers to use non-coercive tactics to keep costs down. But note that I include “non-coercive” in my analysis. That’s because no employee should be forced to remain at a company that doesn’t pay enough, and no employer should be forced to hire any particular worker or deal with any particular union. Market forces should determine those choices.

Is our libertarian willing to admit that a “free market” needs regulation?

Admit it? We view the private economy in part as a giant network of mutually reinforcing regulation. But Eskow probably doesn’t understand how private regulation operates. And besides, I’m sure his question is about command-and-control government regulation. And if that’s the focus of the question, am I a hypocrite for saying yes in some circumstances, but accompanied by rigorous cost-benefit analysis?

Does our libertarian believe in democracy?

Most libertarians will avoid the hypocrite label on this question because we are not fans of “democracy.” At least, we don’t believe in democracy if that means untrammeled majoritarianism. Indeed, the U.S. Constitution was created in part to protect some minority rights from “tyranny of the majority.” The bottom line is that we believe in a democratic form of government, but one where the powers of government are tightly constrained.

Does our libertarian use wealth that wouldn’t exist without government in order to preach against the role of government?

This question is based on the novel left-wing theory that wealth belongs to government because the economy would collapse without “public goods.” This might be an effective argument against an anarcho-capitalist, but I don’t think it has any salience when dealing with ordinary libertarians who simply want the federal government to stay within the boundaries envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Small-government libertarians are willing to give government 5-10 percent on their income to finance these legitimate activities. But, yes, we will preach when the burden of government expands beyond that point.

Does our libertarian reject any and all government protection for his intellectual property?

I’ll admit this is a tough question. I’ve never written on this issue, but libertarians are split on whether governments should grant and enforce patents and copyrights. Though I suspect both camps are probably intellectually consistent, so I doubt hypocrisy is an issue.

Does our libertarian recognize that democracy is a form of marketplace?

The “public choice” school of economics was created to apply economic analysis to political action, and most libertarians would agree with that approach. So the obvious answer is that, yes, we recognize that democracy is a type of marketplace. Once again, though, I think Eskow has an ulterior agenda. He probably wants to imply that if we accept market outcomes as desirable, then we must also accept political decisions as desirable. Yet he should know, based on one of the questions above, that we’re not huge fans of majoritarianism. The key distinction, from our perspective, is that market choices don’t involve coercion.

Does our libertarian recognize that large corporations are a threat to our freedoms?

Since libertarians are first in line to object when big companies lobby for bailouts, subsidies, and protectionism, the answer is obviously yes. Libertarians opposed Dodd-Frank, unlike the big companies on Wall Street. Libertarians opposed Obamacare, unlike the big insurance companies and big pharmaceutical companies. Libertarians oppose the Export-Import Bank, unlike the cronyists at the Chamber of Commerce. We are very cognizant of the fact that businesses are sometimes the biggest enemies of the free market.

Does he think…that historical figures like King and Gandhi were “parasites”?

This question is a red herring, based on Ayn Rand’s hostility to selflessness. As I noted above, very few libertarians are hard-core Randians. We have no objection to people dedicating their lives to others. And if that means fighting for justice and against oppression, we move from “no objection” to “enthusiastic support.”

If you believe in the free market, why weren’t you willing to accept as final the judgment against libertarianism rendered decades ago in the free and unfettered marketplace of ideas?

Since we don’t have any pure laissez-faire societies, we libertarians have to admit that we still have a long way to go. But our views aren’t right or wrong based on whether they are accepted by a majority. Heck, I would argue for libertarianism in France, where I’d have several thousand opponents for every possible ally.

I’ll close today’s column by briefly expanding on this final question, especially since Eskow also made similar claims in some of the text I excerpted above.

If you look around the world, you won’t find a Libertopia or Galt’s Gulch (egads, a Rand reference!). That being said, there is a cornucopia of evidence that nations with comparatively small and non-intrusive governments are much more prosperous than countries with lots of taxes, spending, and intervention.

Yes, voters do have an unfortunate tendency to elect more bad politicians (in place likes France and Greece) than sensible politicians (in places such as Switzerland and New Zealand), but that’s not the real test. What ultimately matters is that there’s a very strong relationship between liberty and prosperity. Libertarians pass that test with flying colors.

This is a guest post by Dan Mitchell “a high priest of light tax small state libertarianism”

[desainku-blog1]

EPA-Hating Scott Pruitt Confirmed Head Of EPA

EPA-Hating Scott Pruitt Confirmed Head Of EPA

Scott Pruitt is a longtime opponent of the EPA. Now he’ll be operating it. Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, Richard Eskow, and Michael Tracey, hosts of The Younger … Add By : The Younger Turks Watching from a Video Supply

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[raphi-anoesies]

Our “presidential election” is nothing more than a lover’s spat between plutocrats who attend each other’s weddings.

John Eskow

[harrypotterhousequotes]

[takebackthedream]

For Immigrant Children, Empathy Is Not Enough by Richard Eskow

There’s no “civil” way to say it: The Trump administration is torturing immigrant children. A liberal television personality wept openly for these children a few days ago, and I’m glad she did.

But it’s important to remember that these terrible events reflect more than the profoundly amoral nature of the Trump administration. The suffering of these children aren’t an isolated incident. Their fate is shaped by decades of precedents, through forces that were too often shaped by the same government that torments them today.

As I write these words, my family is welcoming its newest member into this world. The joy of a new child’s birth heightens our natural human instinct for empathy. It makes it even more shocking that we are now forced to stand up to the brutality of a government that takes children, some as young as eighteen months old, from their parents.

Compassion and empathy for the youngest migrants have been awakened in many people. Empathy is a beautiful thing, but empathy is not enough. it’s time to remember that we also bear moral responsibility for the plight of these children, so we can dedicate ourselves to stopping the violence against them is all its forms.

The Brutal Choir

It’s hard for some of us to imagine what it must be like to be someone who can promote and defend a policy like that of the Trump administration towards migrant children. It’s hard to imagine that such people are Christians, too, and not just because the Bible says we should welcome the stranger at our door. It also says that Jesus Christ was born a refugee child.

What brutal choir sings for this congregation?

When the policy of systematic child abuse proved untenable, the Trump administration turned its child victims into hostages. The White House says it ended this policy, but it’s lying. It’s apparently using these children as pawns, detaining them until it’s given the power to detain whole families indefinitely.

The White House has given conflicting explanations for its actions, but Chief of Staff John Kelly and Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions III both said explicitly that its goal is to deter other people from attempting to enter the United States.

There is a word for people who punish the innocent to change the behavior of others. The word is “terrorist.”

Empire of ICE

The best that can be hoped for in a situation like this is that it becomes a teaching moment. Hopefully, the outpouring of support and empathy these children are receiving lead to a deeper conversation and understanding of the forces that drive our immigration crisis.

It’s hard to imagine any horror greater than a child in a cage. The image fixes itself indelibly in the empathetic mind. But we should ask ourselves: how did the institutions that placed them there come into existence?

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency was created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. ICE’s reputation for abusive and cruel treatment did not begin when Sessions announced the child separation policy.

Under President Trump, ICE has expanded the reach and aggressiveness of its actions. It has been criticized for its treatment of Muslims since Trump took office. It has also taken more forceful action inside the United States, conducting raids on homes and workplaces. ICE has even set up roadblocks on public highways and demanded that travelers provide identification, a move that is being challenged in court.

But ICE was aggressive under President Obama, too. The Obama Administration deported 2.4 million people, a record-setting number that prompted one Latinx leader to describe President Obama as the “Deporter-in-Chief.” According to ICE data, more than 40 percent of those deported had never been convicted of a crime. Most of the others had been found guilty of only minor offenses, such as traffic violations.

Writing in The Nation, activists Marisa Franco and Carlos Garcia described a massive expansion of the immigrant policing apparatus under President Obama. “When he leaves office,” they wrote in 2016,” (Obama) will leave behind to his successor the most sophisticated and well-funded human-expulsion machine in the history of the country.”

No Shelter

The temporary shelters that house these children were also created before Trump. The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General found 1,224 reports of children being sexually abused between 2010 and 2017 while in immigration custody. Roughly half of the reported abusers were ICE employees. According to internal documents, however, ICE investigated less than 3 percent of the complaints received. Where were its leaders, of either party?

Reveal News reports that taxpayers have paid more than $1.5 billion over the last four years to house immigrant children with private companies that have been found to have committed “serious lapses in care, including neglect and sexual and physical abuse.”

In Texas, where most of the Trump administration’s child victims are first detained, state inspectors found more than 400 deficiencies among administrators. They include “staff members’ failure to seek medical attention for children” for injuries that include a burn, a broken wrist, and a sexually transmitted disease. As Reveal reports, “Inspectors also cited homes for ‘inappropriate contact’ between children and staff, including a case in which a staff member gave children a pornographic magazine.”

One of the worst of those vendors, Shiloh Treatment Center in Manvel, TX, was the primary subject of a Houston Chronicle exposé in 2014. Children there were under the jurisdiction of the Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services. The Chronicle report strongly questioned ORR’s oversight of these homes.

These children deserve our tears, too.

Made in the USA

One question remains: Why did these children’s families leave home in the first place? Again, the answers lie, in large part, with U.S. policy. The United States government has intervened in the internal politics of Central American countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador for more than a century. It has trained Latin American military officers in techniques that include illegal techniques of torture and interrogation, often at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas.

All across Latin America for decades, the U.S. backed right-wing politicians and governments who enforced austerity policies that harmed both the economies and the environments of these countries. This was not an anomaly: U.S. support for Central American dictators and strongmen was not limited to Republican administrations.

When a coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Honduras in 2009, the Obama administration did not demand that the elected president be reinstated.

That omission was duly noted by the military leaders of that country, which conducted its own, carefully managed election instead. Before her death, indigenous leader Berta Caceres singled out Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her role in legitimizing the coup.

Calculating the Cost

In Honduras, nearly one-fourth of children under the age of five suffer from stunted growth as the result of malnutrition.  2 percent die before reaching the age of five. 14 percent of children are engaged in forced labor. 74 percent live below the national poverty line.

Guatemala, whose U.S.-backed former dictator, Ríos Montt, was charged and found guilty of genocide for ordering the mass killings in indigenous Mayan communities, has the highest percentage of chronically malnourished children (44 percent) in Latin America. As of the year 200, 44 percent of children under the age of five were stunted.

In El Salvador, the United States was actively involved supporting right-wing forces during that country’s thirteen-year civil war, which spanned the Reagan and Bush years. 75,000 people died in that war. As Robert Bonner notes, a United Nations Truth Commission found that “more than 85 percent of the killings, kidnappings, and torture had been the work of government forces, which included paramilitaries, death squads, and army units trained by the United States.” The victims included the nation’s widely admired Catholic archbishop, Oscar Romero,

In an eerie foreshadowing of things to come, U.S.-backed fascist forces in El Salvador kidnapped hundreds of children from their parents. Most never came home.

El Salvador was wracked with poverty and crime in the wake of this war. Gangs formed, initially to protect neighborhoods from outside marauders. But the American policy of deporting its urban gang members in the 1990s brought U.S.-style gang culture to that nation, spawning the rise of MS-13 and other feared groups. It is now widely understood that the right-wing ARENA party’s repressive policies, later adopted by its opponents, made the problem even worse.

Many young Salvadorans are driven to this country, not by gang conspiracies, but by economic hardship. Other Salvadorans often come here to escape gang violence.

From Us, To Us

Today, many mothers and fathers in these countries are so desperate to escape this poverty and violence that they’re willing to subject their families to the hardships and dangesr of fleeing on foot to the United States. And these countries only represent a part of Central and South America. For decades, the heavy hand of American interference has left its mark across other countries, too, often leaving poverty and violence in its wake.

Many of today’s immigrants seeking refuge from poverty, persecution, and violence aren’t just fleeing to United States. In a real sense, they are also fleeing from it – or, more accurately, from the results of its actions in their home countries.

Compassion and empathy are beautiful things. As Americans, however, we don’t have the luxury of leaving it at that. We must also accept responsibility for their plight. Yes, we must end Trump’s brutal policy – truly end it, and without restoring other brutal policies like indefinite action.

But we must also accept the historical fact that many of these children are refugees because of us. As a nation, we should protect and care for them and their families – not just to do good, but to make amends.

Beyond Empathy

The roots of this crisis span both Republican and Democratic administrations. That doesn’t mean that both political parties are identical. The Carter administration made human rights a foreign-policy goal for the first time ended some of our worst Latin American abuses, for example, while the Reagan administration apparently never met a fascist dictator it didn’t love.

But Democrats need to understand that the responsibility is not one party’s alone. Democratic presidents from Kennedy to Obama have played their part in Latin America’s misery. Democrats are more likely to use the language of human rights than their Republican counterparts, but history will judge whether that reflects idealism or hypocrisy.

It’s time we used our compassion and empathy to look into the history of these countries, and our role in them. More importantly, it’s time to to look into ourselves, so we can change the policies that displaced these children and their families in the first place. That means ending our love affairs with dictators, abolishing ICE, and providing economic restitution to the countries – and to the people – we have hurt. It also means criticizing leaders from either political party when they support repressive regimes.

Our family’s new baby is healthy and safe. We want that for everyone’s children. I’m sure you do, too. But while we’re weeping for the children at the border, let’s weep for the ones at home, too – and for the ones who are no longer here to see our tears.

And when the tears are done, we must treat each immigrant as we would want to be treated ourselves. That means welcoming the strangers at the door — and rebuilding the homes, lives, economies, and nations we helped to destroy.

[takebackthedream]

50 Years After 1968, Can the Young Change Politics? A Striking New Poll Says Yes by Richard Eskow

Fifty years ago, in the dust and fire of the global youth activism of 1968, everything seemed possible. The political world was a cloud filled with chaos and opportunity, pain and promise. The young were a powerful force, even a world-changing one.

Could they become that force again?

As many Millennials vote for the first time today in state primaries from New Jersey to Iowa and California, a new poll of their views offers some intriguing glimpses into the future.

The survey finds that most Millennials want “a strong government” to manage the economy, and that most millennial Democrats have a favorable view of socialism.

What do this poll, and the past, say about our political future?

The Young Left

It’s more than a truism to say Millennials are this country’s political future.  As Pew’s Richard Fry has noted, “Baby Boomers and other older Americans are no longer the majority of voters in U.S. presidential elections.” Fry thinks millennial votes could well surpass those of Generation X in 2020. He adds: “Millennials are likely to be the only adult generation whose number of eligible voters will appreciably increase in the coming years.”

A new survey from the University of Chicago’s GenForward project suggests that these voters could pull the Democratic Party, and American politics, sharply to the left. The survey of 1,750 respondents found that “Majorities of Millennials across race and ethnicity believe a strong government rather than a free market approach is needed to address today’s complex economic problems.”

What is this growing group of voters likely to make of Democrats like the three senators – Heitkamp, Tester, and Donnelly – who recently cosponsored a bill to loosen the Volcker Rule’s safeguard provisions on almost all of America’s banks?

In the survey’s most striking finding, 61 percent of Millennial Democrats polled – nearly two-thirds – expressed favorable views of socialism. The report notes that 32 percent of independents and “only” 25 percent of Republicans say they are favorable toward socialism.

“Only?” t’s fascinating to ponder the prospect of a Republican Party that’s one-quarter socialist.

The study also shows that the “rising Democratic majority” of black and brown voters isn’t very fond of capitalism, for understandable reasons. Only 45 percent of Latinxs and 34 percent of African-Americans hold favorable views of capitalism.

These results suggest that Democratic leaders are ill-advised to insist, as Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton both did recently, that theirs is a strictly capitalistic party. Clinton’s dismissive tone toward socialist-leaning Democrats seemed especially counterproductive.

This young, black, and brown rejection of capitalism is consistent with a recent Harvard-Harris poll, which found that a majority of Democrats (again, of all ages) “support… movements within the Democratic Party to take it even further to the left and oppose the current Democratic leaders.”

Support for the left was greatest among female voters (55 percent), Hispanic voters (65 percent), and African-American voters (55 percent). The Harvard-Harris poll also found that 69 percent of young voters supported these left movements. How do these findings about today’s Young Left square with the experience of 1968?

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today

Polling data from 1968 on the young is hard to come by. But youth activists – roughly defined as those aged 30 or under – had an enormous global impact that year. In the United States and Europe, an ongoing wave of antiwar protests started in 1967 and carried over into the New Year.

In January of 1968, the election of reformer Alexander Dubcek to head the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia prompted hopes for peaceful decentralization and democratization in the Eastern Bloc, and the youth protests of the Prague Spring.

In March of 1968, antiwar presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy stunned the political world with his near-defeat of President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Youth volunteers, many of them veterans of the peace movement, received much of the credit for McCarthy’s results.

Robert F. Kennedy launched his campaign the following week. His move split the student left. Some saw Kennedy as a carpetbagger. Others were drawn to his anti-poverty and civil rights stands, which seemed to be backed by greater passion than McCarthy’s.

RFK’s charisma, and his long hair, didn’t hurt. “Get a haircut,” a rally goer shouted. “You sound like my mother,” Kennedy jokingly responded.

Other young people rejected the prevailing set of electoral choices altogether, pushing for more radical change through third parties or movement organizing. Protests at Columbia University began in early April and quickly became an occupation.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been preparing a multiracial and multi-cultural Poor People’s Campaign in Washington D.C., was gunned down on April 4. Riots quickly broke out in ghettoes across the country, as the pressurized forces of poverty, racism, and hopelessness were ignited by the murder of a black man who represented the finest in the human spirit.

Kennedy announced King’s death to a crowd in Indianapolis, saying, “Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort.”

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States,” Kennedy said, “it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.” Kennedy called on his audience to “dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”

On May 4, members of the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed and peaceful student demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine. On April 11, German student leader Rudi Dutschke was shot by a right-wing gunman after a concerted media campaign from the right-wing Axel Springer group. One headline in the Springer-owned Bild newspaper read, “Stop Dutschke now!”

In May, an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist student uprising in France began with the occupation of university buildings. It quickly spread to other corners of society, as massive street demonstrations led to the occupation of factories and nationwide strikes. Between 10 and 11 million French workers – more than 20 percent of the population – went on strike. Many people believed the government of Charles de Gaulle might all.

On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles on the night of the California primary. On August 20, Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring, and one week later, Chicago police viciously attacked antiwar protestors outside the Democratic National Convention.

To many people, it began to feel like the surging wave of violence would never end.

Protests to Polling Booths

There are those who say that the promises of spring died quickly in 1968, and that the youth movement’s hope for change in that year was an illusion.

It certainly didn’t lead to electoral victories. After fleeing France in apparent confusion and fear, De Gaulle returned and won an overwhelming electoral victory. In the United States, the chaotic Democratic convention showcased the worst of the party’s internal corruption.

Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley oversaw the violent police attacks on demonstrators, which a commission later deemed a “police riot,” and Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the party’s nomination under a cloud of bitterness and recrimination.

Richard Nixon eked out a narrow victory over Humphrey that year, after claiming to speak for a “Silent Majority” of non-demonstrating Americans. Nixon won 43.42 percent of the vote, Humphrey won 42.42 percent, and the racist George Wallace won 13.53 percent as a third-party candidate.

The Outcomes Of 1968

These results have been used to argue that the protests of 1968 were a political failure. In one sense, that’s clearly true. Hamstrung by media coverage, the two-party system, internal conflict, and the transformative nature of its agenda, the left failed to build an electoral majority in 1968.

Its social and cultural impact was undeniable, however. The youth movement changed music, language, style, and the arts. Its embrace of what was then called “women’s liberation” helped give rise to feminism, one of the most transformative political and social movements of modern times. Its multiracial and multicultural orientation reinforced black and brown alliances with the economic left.

In April, a higher court upheld Muhammad Ali’s conviction for refusing induction into the military over the war in Vietnam. Controversial and banned from fighting, Ali traveled the country, developing what would become a long, ground-breaking, and distinguished career as an activist and advocate for social justice.

At the Summer Olympics in October 1968, winning athletes John Carlos and Tommy Smith gave the black power salute from the podium. As Carlos later explained, he had unzipped his Olympic jacket as a show of solidarity with “all the working-class people — black and white — in Harlem who had to struggle and work with their hands all day.” Carlos and Smith had one pair of black gloves between them, so Carlos raised his left fist and Smith raised his right.

These struggles live on today – in Black Lives Matter, in the NFL protests, and in the intersectional fight for class justice. But can left-leaning gestures and movements ever turn into an electoral force in this country, as they once promised to become?

The Future Primary

The political challenge is clear. More than one poll has affirmed that our country’s rising political demographic group wants to see more government intervention in the economy. Young Democrats lean socialist, and people of color are disillusioned with the capitalist system.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they will become activists. They may simply become alienated from the political process.   In fact, it’s already happening. “(L)ess than 26% of Millennials of any racial or ethnic background,” the study says, “have favorable views of the political parties or Congress.”’ Democrats are in danger of losing their core voters.

Still, there are hopeful signs. There is a rising wave of activism among Millennials. They are running for office, organizing political actions, and taking other steps to become involved in the political process. Members of the generation that follows them have organized against school shootings, and have done so in an intersectional way.

Activism, whatever its form, is a precursor to change. According to these polls, the “leftism” of today is poised to become the political center of tomorrow. And a new generation may be prepared to rediscover the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.”

            \

[takebackthedream]

Primary Day: Lessons for Democrats by Richard Eskow

Pundits should avoid, at all costs, the sin of “premature evaluation.” The May 7 primaries did not send a simple or unambiguous message. One thing remains clear, however: In November, the Democrats’ fate depends largely on turnout.

Dems have a good chance of retaking the House of Representatives this fall, but that’s by no means certain, and the Senate is more of a stretch. With Democratic support reportedly falling among millennials and turnout a lingering problem for voters of color, complacency may be the party’s biggest threat.

What other lessons can be drawn from May 7’s results?

Ohio

Richard Cordray, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, defeated Dennis Kucinich for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Was that a victory of the “establishment” over populism, as some pundits argued?

Not so fast. Kucinich’s positions on everything from economic justice to LGBTQ rights – positions that earned him the scorn of liberal lions at the time – have been vindicated by history. (A painful video of John Stewart mocking Kucinich on trans issues, uncovered by Adam Johnson, is Exhibit A.)  While many of his views have now become mainstream, Kucinich’s candidacy was always a long shot.

Cordray, for his part, is hardly a corporate Democrat. While he leans right on gun control, he ran with strong labor support and is a confirmed member of the Democratic Party’s Warren wing. “You demanded change,” Cordray told supporters, “and we heard you and we want the same.”

CNN’s Gregory Krieg was right when he wrote that Ohio progressives would be “waking on Wednesday as winners — yet again — no matter who celebrates on Tuesday night.” Cordray’s opponent is slightly favored to win in November, but the race is still very much in play.

Lesson: Cordray’s victory is a progressive win.

West Virginia

Democratic incumbent senator Joe Manchin won his primary race, as expected. But his left-progressive opponent, political novice Paula Jean Swearingen, had a strong showing. Swearingen won 30 percent of the primary vote, despite her lack of experience or name recognition and a near-blackout in media coverage.

Swearingen’s results should not be a surprise. Bernie Sanders decisively won the West Virginia primary in 2016, despite a strong environmental platform that targeted the coal industry.

Speaking of which: Republican voters rejected coal magnate and ex-convict Don Blankenship, who served time in prison for criminal negligence. That’s an unsurprising result; Blankenship’s greed, malfeasance, and fraud led to the deaths of 29 miners in the heart of coal country. Blankenship also used racist language during the campaign. His loss to Attorney General Patrick Morrissey deprived journalists of a juicy storyline – and Democrats of an easy win.

Republican turnout in West Virginia was up significantly from the party’s last off-year primary. That may be a sign of an increasingly energized Republican base, or may simply reflect the fact that this was a more hotly contested election.

Lesson: Progressives can win in red states, but they’ll need better exposure and a solid candidate to do it. It’s not clear what the rise in GOP turnout means, but Democrats should not assume they’ll have the edge on enthusiasm or voter participation in November.

Warning Signs, and Hopeful Ones

There’s a danger in reading too much into these primary results. Roughly 1.5 million people voted in the Ohio Democratic primary, while less than 300,000 people voted in West Virginia’s. By contrast, more than 83 million people voted in the 2014 election – and that was the lowest voter participation this country has seen since World War II.

Women continued to do especially well in Democratic primaries, which could help nudge Congress a little closer to gender parity (it’s a long way off). The presence of strong women candidates, including progressives like Indiana’s Liz Watson, could also help boost turnout.

What do other indicators say about Democrats’ chances in November? Democrats continue to outperform Republicans in generic congressional matchups, although recent polling suggests that their advantage has fallen sharply. While some analysts argue that this interpretation is inaccurate, one thing is certain: record sums of money will be spent between now and Election Day, in ways that could dramatically alter the political landscape.

Democrats should be concerned about the decline in voter participation among African Americans in 2016. The change was to be expected, given Obama’s absence from the 2016 ballot, but if that trend continues it could have devastating implications for the party. In another troubling sign, turnout remained low for Hispanic and Asian voters as well.

How can turnout be strengthened among voters of color? A recent Harvard-Harris poll showed that a majority of Democratic voters want the party to move left. Significantly, Hispanic and African-American voters were more likely to feel that way than white Democrats or Democrats as whole.

Dems should also be concerned about polls showing that millennials are drifting away from the party. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on April 30 shows millennial support for Democrats slipping 9 points over the last two years. They’re not moving to Republicans in large numbers, but many are drifting more toward either voting third party or not voting at all.

A Way Forward

One way to appeal to millennial voters would be to support tuition-free higher education and propose to cancel $1.5 trillion in student debt.

Student debt hurts African-American as well as white borrowers, along with their families and communities. A recent analysis published by the Levy Institute shows that student debt cancellation would also give the economy a major boost and create more than a million new jobs.

Democrats and their media allies should also focus much more of their attention on governors’ races than we’ve seen so far. 26 of the governors elected this year will have the power to accept or reject congressional district maps, which will be redrawn after the 2020 census. That could shape congressional power for the next ten years.

In a related development, Ohioans voted overwhelmingly on May 7 to end that state’s highly gerrymandered system and replace it with a bipartisan system. 75 percent of voters supported Issue 1, a ballot measure that will replace Ohio’s rigged district lines with a three-stage process designed to ensure that fairer voter representation in Ohio’s congressional delegation. As John Nichols writes in The Nation, “Ohioans have provided a model that grassroots activists and honest elected officials can advocate for at the state level.”

Three-quarters of Ohio’s swing-state voters supported a strong affirmation of democratic principle. Numbers like that suggest another promising road forward for Democrats. If they are willing to propose bold electoral reform, as well as new rules that “un-rig” the economy for middle-class voters, they’re more likely to turn opportunity into victory in November.

[takebackthedream]

7 Questions About the Syria Airstrikes That Aren’t Being Asked by Richard Eskow

“Mission accomplished,” says the President. What, exactly, was the mission? And what exactly was accomplished?

Donald Trump is being mocked for using this phrase in a tweet to praise what he claims was a “perfectly executed” airstrike against chemical weapons facilities in Syria. This recalls George W. Bush’s egregious evocation of the phrase in 2003 to claim an early end to the U.S. entanglement in Iraq, which is still ongoing fifteen years later.

History made a fool of Bush for that proclamation, which was printed on a banner behind the President as he delivered his speech proclaiming an end to the Iraqi conflict on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

But Bush’s foolish and lethal incursion to Iraq had the backing of virtually the entire national-security establishment. So did Donald Trump’s bombing attack on Syria, as did the bombing attack he ordered last year.

The Costs of Intervention

U.S. media, for the most part, reinforce the idea that intervention by our military is the preferred solution to global conflicts. Some of the same reporters who now mock Trump for saying “Mission Accomplished” cheered on Bush’s invasion of Iraq. They remember Bush’s errors, but not their own.

The media’s job, we are told, is to ask skeptical questions about the people in power. That didn’t happen much in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, and it’s not happening now. Here are the questions that should be asked – not just on the eve of a bombing attack, but every day we continue our disastrous and drifting military intervention in the Middle East.

Why couldn’t the military wait for inspectors to do their jobs?

Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international non-proliferation organization, were scheduled to arrive in Douma, Syria on Saturday, April 15 to begin investigating the reported chemical attack on civilians there. The airstrikes took place on Friday, April 14.

This is a disturbing echo of the 2003 Iraq invasion. There, too, the United States was unwilling to wait for international inspectors to discover the facts before beginning the attack. Fifteen years on, we know that didn’t work out very well. Why couldn’t the bombing of Syria wait for inspectors to do their work?

How do we know we’re being told the truth?

“We are confident that we have crippled Syria’s chemical weapons program,” said U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. That statement was echoed by military leaders. But a report from Agence France Presse suggests that one destroyed building, described by attacking forces as a chemical-weapons facility, was actually a pharmaceutical and research facility specializing in food testing and antivenoms for scorpion and snake bites.

“If there were chemical weapons, we would not be able to stand here,” said someone who identified himself as an engineer who worked at the facility.

Given our country’s long history of public deception from military and civilian officials, why aren’t we demanding independent confirmation of the airstrikes’ effectiveness?

Have strikes like these ever really “punished” a country’s leader – or “sent them a message,” for that matter?

We keep hearing the cliché that airstrikes like these are meant to “punish” leaders like Assad. This time was no different. And yet, it’s unlikely that Assad personally suffered as a result of this attack.

So who, really, are we punishing?

Then there’s this comment, from Defense Secretary James Mattis: “Together we have sent a clear message to Assad and his murderous lieutenants that they should not perpetrate another chemical weapons attack.”

That was also the presumed purpose of Trump’s last missile attack on Syria, less than a year ago. Trump supporters claimed that attack sent a forceful “message,” too – to Assad, to Putin, the Chinese, and others. “With just one strike that message was sent to all these people,” claimed former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka.

The situation in Syria did not perceptibly change after that attack. And the day after this latest airstrike, Assad launched a new round of airstrikes of his own.

These airstrikes seem more performative than tactical – warfare as theater, but with real lives at stake. There must be better ways to send a message.

Why isn’t the full range of U.S. activity in Syria getting more coverage?

Thanks to widespread under-reporting of U.S. involvement in Syria, commentators can complain about “years of unmasterly inactivity by the democracies” with a straight face, wrongly blaming that nation’s disasters on a failure to intervene.

In a paragraph that was subsequently deleted from its website, the Washington Post wrote that the latest airstrikes “capped nearly a week of debate in which Pentagon leaders voiced concerns that an attack could pull the United States into Syria’s civil war.” As of this writing, that language can still be found in syndicated versions of the article.

We were pulled into that civil war a long time ago.  The United States has more than 2,000 troops in Syria, a fact that was not immediately revealed to the American people. That figure is understated, although the Pentagon will not say by how much, since it excludes troops on classified missions and some Special Forces personnel.

Before Trump raised the troop count, the CIA was spending $1 billion per year supporting anti-government militias under President Obama.  That hasn’t prevented a rash of commentary complaining about U.S. “inaction” in Syria before Trump took office. It didn’t prevent additional chaos and death, either – and probably made the situation worse.

Where are the advocates for a smarter national security policy?

There’s been very little real debate inside the national security establishment about the wisdom of these strikes, and what debate there has been has focused on the margins. Anne-Marie Slaughter, a senior State Department official under Secretary Hillary Clinton in the Obama administration, tweeted:

I believe that the U.S., U.K, & France did the right thing by striking Syria over chemical weapons. It will not stop the war nor save the Syrian people from many other horrors. It is illegal under international law. But it at least draws a line somewhere & says enough.

In other words: This attack will not achieve any tactical goals or save any lives. And it is illegal – just as chemical weapons attacks are illegal – under international law. It’s illegal under U.S. law, too, which is the primary focus of Democratic criticism.

But, says Slaughter, the amorphous goals of “drawing a line” and “saying enough” make it worthwhile, for reasons that are never articulated.

Michèle Flournoy, who served as Under Secretary of Defense under President Obama and was considered a leading Defense Secretary prospect in a Hillary Clinton Administration, said:

What Trump got right: upheld the international norm against [chemical weapon] use, built international support for and participation in the strikes, sought to minimize collateral damage — Syrian, Russian, Iranian.

What Trump got wrong: continuing to use taunting, name-calling tweets as his primary form of (un)presidential communication; failing to seriously consult Congress before deciding to launch the strikes; after more than a year in office, still no coherent Syria strategy.

How can a country uphold international norms by violating international law?

If Trump lacks a coherent Syria policy, he has company. Obama’s policy toward Syria shifted and drifted. Hillary Clinton backed Trump’s last round of airstrikes and proposed a “no-fly” policy for Syria that could have quickly escalated into open confrontation with Russia.

The country deserves a rational alternative to Trump’s impulsivity and John Bolton’s extreme bellicosity and bigotry. When it comes to foreign policy, we need a real opposition party. What will it take to develop one?

“Take On” Russia? Really?

Commentators have been pushing Trump to take aggressive military action in Syria, despite the potential for military conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. MSNBC’s Dana Bash accused Trump of “an inexplicable lack of resolve regarding Russia” – leaving the audience to make its own inferences – adding, “We have not been willing to take them on.”

In the same segment, reported by FAIR’s Adam Johnson, Bash complained that “the U.S. hasn’t done “a very good job pushing Russia out of the way,” adding that “we’ve let Russia have too free a hand, in my view, in the skies over Syria.”  Her colleague Andrea Mitchell responded that “the criticism is that the president is reluctant to go after Russia.”

The Drum Beats On

“Mission accomplished.”

This drumbeat of political pressure has forced Trump’s hand. He has now directed missiles against Syria, twice. Both attacks carried the risk of military confrontation with the world’s other nuclear superpower.

That risk is greater than most people realize, as historian and military strategist Maj. Danny Sjursen explained in our recent conversation.

Trump has now adopted a more aggressive military posture against Russia than Barack Obama. Whatever his personal involvement with the Russian government turns out to have been, it is in nobody’s best interests to heighten tensions between two nuclear superpowers.

The national security establishment has been promoting a confrontational approach, but they’ve been unable to explain how that would lead to a better outcome for the US or the world – just as they’ve been unable to explain how unilateral military intervention can lead to a good outcome in Syria.

Did the airstrikes make Trump “presidential”?

“Amid distraction and dysfunction,” wrote Mike Allen and Jonathan Swan for Axios, “Trump looked and acted like a traditional commander-in-chief last night.”

The constitutional phrase, “Commander in Chief,” was originally understood to underscore the fact that the military is under civilian control. It has devolved into a title that confers a quasi-military rank on the president.  That’s getting it backwards. The fetishization of all things military is one of the reasons we can’t have a balanced debate about military intervention.

Besides, saying that an act of war makes Trump “presidential” – that’s so 2017!

Here’s a suggestion: In 1963, John F. Kennedy rejected his generals’ advice to strike Soviet installations during the Cuban missile crisis.

Rejecting reckless calls to military action: Now that’s a “presidential” act worth bringing back.

[takebackthedream]

As the World Watches Syria, Don’t Forget About Yemen by Richard Eskow

In the time it takes to read these words, a child under the age of five will probably die in Yemen.

And, as this is being written, the U.N. Security Council is meeting to discuss a gas attack in Syria. President Trump, with newly-appointed National Security Advisor John Bolton at his side, says he will decide on his course of action within 24 to 48 hours.

The Syrian people’s tragedy is enormous. So is the possibility for military confrontation between two nuclear powers.

But while the headlines focus on Syria, and as a multitude of voices call for increased military involvement there, don’t forget the tragedy in Yemen. We can save lives much more easily there. We don’t have to send troops or launch missiles.

All we have to do is leave.

Empathy and Intervention

Political scientists at the University of Toronto have linked empathy to left-leaning political views. Linguist George Lakoff associates the liberal personality with the “nurturant parent” model of the family. And the stereotypical American self-image, across the political spectrum, is that of someone who is willing to help others.

Interestingly, most Americans see other Americans as “selfish,” according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey.

Perhaps that’s why presidential candidate Bill Clinton used empathic language when he argued for US military action in Bosnia and Herzegovina – “because,” said candidate Clinton, “I’m horrified by what I’ve seen.”

That language reinforced what the New York Times called Clinton’s “aggressive tack” on the region.

Under President Clinton, NATO conducted years of bombing in the region and sent 60,000 troops to enforce the Dayton Accords. Clinton faced resistance from left and right. That conflict was, in the words of the New York Times Editorial Board, “not America’s war.” But Clinton and his team invoked the image of the US as the world’s leader – and the suffering of children – to make the case for intervention.

More Than Just a Place

In a 1995 speech announcing his decision to send peacekeeping troops, Clinton shrewdly leavened his liberal empathy (“In fulfilling this mission, we will have the chance to help stop the killing of innocent civilians, especially children”) with self-interest (“and at the same time, to bring stability to central Europe, a region of the world that is vital to our national interests.”)

Clinton then pivoted to the time-tested theme of the US as a uniquely generous and selfless military force. “America has always been more than just a place,” he said, adding:

America has embodied an idea that has become the ideal for billions of people throughout the world… America is about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness … America has done more than simply stand for these ideals. We have acted on them and sacrificed for them. Our people fought two world wars so that freedom could triumph over tyranny.

This is how liberal interventionism has always been packaged in American politics: with the notion that our highest ideals are best expressed, not through diplomacy, but through the projection of military force outside our borders. In this telling, history has ended. We are the indispensable nation. We alone must balance the war-torn world on our khaki-clad shoulders.

A “Humanitarian War”

Perhaps that’s why, as the Bosnian conflict escalated, the Clinton Administration and other world governments ignored the nonviolent independence movement taking place in nearby Kosovo. It was only after that conflict turned violent, with the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army, that the Administration responded.

When Clinton addressed the nation on Kosovo, he didn’t rely on empathy for other people’s children. He called intervention the best course for American children and their future – saying it, not once, but three times.

Liberals and leftists were divided on this intervention, as they had been with Bosnia and Herzegovina. But Susan Sontag made the case for military action in the New York Times Magazine. In the American Prospect, Paul Starr called the Kosovo intervention a “humanitarian war” and thought a land invasion would be more effective than airstrikes, but concluded:

“Those of us who believe that the United States ought to use its power to prevent genocide and other high crimes against human decency are going to have to work a lot harder to convince our neighbors.”

Notice the phrasing: “the United States ought to use its power …”

What happens when the best way to prevent a genocide is by ending the use of American power? That seems to be a harder case to make in American political culture.

The Forgotten Catastrophe

Yemen, a nation long renowned for its beauty, has become a place of almost unimaginable horror. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently declared it ‘the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” and cited statistics that, once heard, should never be forgotten.

Here’s one such statistic: Every ten minutes, a child under five dies of preventable causes. (Based on the average reading speed, it should take ten minutes to read these words. That means a child is statistically likely to die while it is being read.)

Here are some more:

18 million people are food insecure, and 8.4 million Yemenis don’t know how they will obtain their next meal.

3 million acutely malnourished Yemenis are either children under 5, pregnant women, or nursing mothers.

Nearly half of all children aged between six months and 5 years old are chronically malnourished and stunted, conditions that will affect them for the rest of their lives.

Children are being forced to fight, or to work at very young ages. Many young girls are being forced into marriage before they are 18, or even 15, as a response to family debt and poverty.

Women and girls are at heightened risk of sexual and gender-based violence.

Millions have no access to safe drinking water.

1 million people suffered from watery diarrhea and cholera last year. There is a high risk of another cholera epidemic.

More than ten thousand civilians – perhaps many more – have been killed in the fighting.

Our Complicity

The problem isn’t that the US is standing by and doing nothing while this horror unfolds. It’s much worse than that. The US is actively working to cause these atrocities, by helping the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia in its relentless attack on Yemen.

Marjorie Ransom, a former diplomat in Yemen, writes of “direct U.S. military complicity in this long and pointless campaign,” adding:

“In addition to selling a vast arsenal of weapons to Saudi Arabia, our government’s military gave logistical guidance in the Saudi military headquarters in Riyadh and continues to provide intelligence to Saudi defense officials and aerial refueling during bombing runs.”

She concludes, “The Saudi-led coalition could not have conducted the two and a half years of bombing without the support of our military.”

How to Use Intelligence

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont joined with one of the Senate’s most conservative members, Mike Lee of Utah, as well as Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, to sponsor a resolution calling for an end to US involvement in Yemen.

44 senators voted for it, but 55 senators – including ten Democrats – voted against it. Some antiwar groups called it a step forward – but the war will not end.

Why haven’t progressives doing more to help the people of Yemen? Maybe it’s a problem of leadership. Nobody in a position of Democratic power is using their influence to end America’s involvement there. When the Clinton Administration was trying to build support for intervention in Yemen, it declassified intelligence photographs of the victims there and showed them to reluctant diplomats.

“It was an amazing example of how you can use intelligence,” Albright later reflected.

Why America Slept

Who in Washington’s national security establishment is handing out pictures of dying Yemenis? Nobody. It’s government policy under President Trump, just as it was under President Obama. In the last year of Obama’s presidency, in fact, the US government dropped more than 20,000 bombs on seven countries. (There’s a map.)

There’s a lot of money to be made in arms sales. President Trump has approved massive US arms sales to Saudi Arabia (Estimates of the deal’s value vary widely.) We’re told that there are no contracts in place, which places even more pressure on the American government to comply with the wishes of Mohammad bin Salman, or “MBS,” Saudi Arabia’s new dictator.

Not that this government needs any convincing. Trump’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries deserve much deeper scrutiny. So do those of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

But it is our country’s defense-industry ties have been driving that “special relationship” for decades, through Republican and Democratic governments alike.  Those ties also serve to promote military policies that involve the use of expensive weaponry all around the world.

As the New Yorker’s Nicholas Niarchos reports, one such weapon – a US-made bomb carrying 500 pounds of explosive – killed more than 140 mourners and injured 500 more during a Yemeni funeral in 2015. Among them was the mayor of Sana’a, who had been negotiating with several factions in an attempt to end the war

The bomb was manufactured by Raytheon.

Prince Not-So-Charming

But defense contractors aren’t the only powerful interest keeping us in Yemen. American oil corporations have benefited from the US-Saudi relationship for many decades.

Politicians have flattered and cajoled the country’s leadership all that time. So has the American media. With Mohammad bin Salman’s recent rise to power as “crown prince,” the self-interested servility of these elites is once again on display.

They call him “MBS,” as flattering pieces from the likes of Thomas Friedman affirm. Machiavelli wrote of princes like this a long time ago, saying “he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”

MBS appears to be a nasty piece of work, even by Saudi standards, given his youthful threats – reportedly including, according to one story, a bullet in an envelope – toward anyone who stood in the way of his advancement. Then there’s the matter of his recent detention and torture of anyone who poses a political or financial threat to his power.

To cover up his brutality and flatter the thuggish potentate, the mainstream media dwells on MBS’ mild social liberalizations, like letting women drive and easing up on rules regarding live entertainment.

Wilkinson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, says MBS’ social liberalizations were “designed to shift attention from this disastrous war.”

If so, it’s going well. While his opponents were undergoing incarceration and torture without warrant last November, albeit in a luxury hotel, Friedman wrote gushingly: “Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style.”

MBS may be a dictator, but in some people’s hearts he’s Number One – with a bullet.

Resistance Wanted

As MBS was dazzling Friedman, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna was working both sides of the aisle to end our involvement in Yemen. The Republican-led House “overwhelmingly” passed a resolution calling US involvement in that country “unauthorized.”

This year, 44 senators voted against continued this country’s support for Saudi attacks on Yemen. Two antiwar groups, Win Without War and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, celebrated them who voted against it. Those groups are right: the tide is turning.

But in the meantime, the war goes on, ten minutes at a time.

And as we listen to the debates in the UN, while we wait for more information out of Douma, as the generals appear on television to discuss military options, these Yemeni children are deliberately being starved by the Saudi military – every day, all day long.

Look at them. The morality of empathy demands that we care about these children as much as we care about children anywhere – including our own, here at home.

Where are the marchers, the silent vigils, the mass actions for them?

Syria is a terrible tragedy, too – a tragedy caused by American intervention. Now we’re being told that more intervention is the cure.

Liberal interventionism is seductive. It’s hard to resist the messianic voices that tell us we’re the indispensable heroes of our time, the saviors of the world and its children.

But it’s time to ask: In countries like Yemen, who will save the world from us?