Sunday Roundup December 28, 2014 - Closing Time

"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."

- A.J. Muste

This is the last post at The Left Bank Café.  For those of you who've stopped by over the years, thank you.

I started this blog in November 2010 - outraged at the distortions of truth and at the right-wing propaganda that led to the Republican victories that year. Since the blog's inception, I've tried to separate fiction from fact in the events of the day and, from time to time, to share my thoughts and passions on non-political topics.

Three hundred posts and four years later, it's now closing time at The Left Bank Café.  

Here are some thoughts, inspirations and sentiments that have informed this blog.

The universe is a wondrous, vast place.  The Earth is home to the only known intelligent life in that universe.  This is an awesome responsibility.  As the Native American proverb has it: "Treat the earth well.  It was not given to you by your parents.  It was loaned to you by your children."

The peoples of the world are our brothers and sisters.  The children of the world are our children.  Let's always remember that.  "I wonder how foreign policies would look if we thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children." - Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

Government has a responsibility to develop just policies and provide for the common good. Given the complexity and scale of today's issues, government plays a vital and necessary role. To say that the richest nation on Earth cannot afford the common good, that it cannot provide for the vulnerable in our society, is a lie.

Racism, militarism, and all forms of oppression must be protested and resisted at every turn. Pacifist and activist A.J. Muste spoke of a "revolutionary pacifism" that confronts the injustice that lays at the heart of wars: "We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life."  A pacifist, Muste was, of course, speaking figuratively.  Without justice, there is no true peace.  We must address, resist, and correct the causes of injustice built into the system.

Violence and force of arms are the easy but soul-damaging means to achieve certain ends. Diplomacy is more difficult but, in the end, produces more lasting and more satisfying results.

The distorted "exceptionalism" that places our nation above international law and in violation of our own democratic principles is a repudiation of our values. Our country, if it chooses, can play an "exceptional" role in making the world a better place. What nation is better equipped to address the poverty, disease, and hunger that plague so many?

The American experiment in democracy is in danger - not from any external threat or from foreign terrorists but from within. Racism, militarism, and a distorted concept of American exceptionalism pose, each in its own way, a threat to America's highest ideals. Political spending, given corporate "personhood" and an unlimited ability to influence elections by the Supreme Court, provides an amplifier for the voices of the powerful while muting the voices of the less advantaged. Special interest groups influence domestic laws as well as foreign policy. Legislation for the common good is blocked by right-wing extremists. Laws protecting the rights of all are dismantled by an ideological judiciary, and the essential right of democracy, the right to vote, has been subverted. Such is the state of affairs and such is the degree of disillusionment that, in our last elections, two out of three voters chose not to exercise their most basic democratic right.

Until money is removed from the political system, until the concept of the Other is banished, and until, in the words of President Kennedy, "the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today", inequality, injustice and war will be with us. That should not stop us from trying or caring or working for peace and justice. We need to take our victories when and where we can.

As the outlook for action at the national level becomes bleak, activism and initiatives at the state and community levels become necessary. Already we are seeing the effect of some of the successful state ballot initiatives from the November 4 elections.  For example, just two days after a successful California ballot initiative reclassified some non-violent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, people were being released from detention.

Where do we go from here?  There is now a website that contains references and resources for the topics covered in the blog - where to go for further information, if you want to become active in an area, etc. The website also has The Left Bank Café posts indexed by topic, which I hope will be helpful.  I'll periodically update the website as new information becomes available. The address of the website is https://sites.google.com/site/leftbankresources/ .

Peace.

(The most recent update of The Left Bank website was on January 19, 2018.For more recent news, comments, and articles please visit the What in the World? website.) 

The new "politics as usual"

As the Republican lawsuit against President Obama proceeds, I'm reminded of the last time the GOP couldn't prevent a two-term Democratic presidency and resorted to political maneuvering to attempt to thwart the will of the people.  Of course, I'm speaking of the totally baseless impeachment attempt against President Clinton.  His sexual peccadilloes somehow reached the height of "high crimes and misdemeanors" in the eyes of the partisan crowd that couldn't defeat him at the polls.  Republicans today know they would never win an impeachment vote in the Senate so they are taking the President to court for using his executive powers in ways that go against their right-wing ideology.  They know that an impeachment effort would risk increasing Obama's approval ratings just as happened with Clinton after their ham-handed impeachment proceedings back in the '90's..

With their voter repression laws in place and their coffers filled with "Citizens United" money, Republicans have very powerful new tools for retaining the House and quite possibly winning the Senate this year.  Even without taking over that legislative body, they can continue their obstructionist tactics to slow the appointment of federal judges.  Republican control of the Senate would, however, guarantee an end to any possibility that even moderate justices will be appointed to the 59 vacancies in the federal courts.  In recent years, these courts have become the venue for the reversals of progressive legislation - including local gun laws.  In a recent example, on July 26, a federal judge struck down D.C.'s ban on open or concealed "carry" as unconstitutional.

Jack Lienke, in a post on Mother Jones, points out what could be a new trend in right-wing lawsuits:  "If you can't beat 'em, point out their typos." As Lienke writes: "The D.C. Circuit Court's recent decision in Halbig v. Sebelius...could render millions of Americans ineligible for health insurance subsidies on the basis of some sloppy syntax in the Affordable Care Act.  After surviving more than 50 repeal votes in the House, a Supreme Court challenge to its constitutionality, and a famously rocky online rollout, health-care reform may end up hobbled by a mere drafting error."  The debate comes from whether Congress intended subsidies only for state run health care exchanges or for the federal health care exchange as well.  The D.C. court says that only state-run health care exchanges can provide subsidies.  The Fourth Circuit Court in Virginia came to the opposite conclusion and no one is about to lose his or her health care subsidy yet.  But unless the full D.C. Circuit Court reverses its three-judge-panel ruling, the ACA will be once again before the Supreme Court.   Frankly, I'm not willing to bet too much on John Roberts voting twice in a row to uphold the Affordable Care Act. The original ruling upholding the ACA already seriously weakened it by making the medicaid expansion portion of the law voluntary and leaving it up to the states. So a vote by SCUSA to further limit the ACA is not too far-fetched.

Now the President's "signature environmental achievement," the EPA rules on emissions from coal-burning power plants, is under attack:  "A new suit asks the D.C. Circuit to nix the president's biggest climate-change initiative—EPA's 'Clean Power Plan'—due to a 25-year-old mistake in the text of the Clean Air Act."  Basically, a Senate amendment to the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the right to control carbon dioxide emissions; a House amendment does not.  Lienke places his hopes for a positive decision on the 1984 Chevron doctrine: "if a statute does not 'speak clearly' with respect to a particular issue, courts will defer to any reasonable interpretation offered by the executive agency charged with implementing the law."  I hope he's right.

Partisanship has been at an all-time high since Obama's election - amusing in light of his policies which can best be described as those of an "Eisenhower Republican".  The Affordable Care Act was based on a conservative think tank's model for health care and previously implemented by a Republican governor.  It became law without gaining a single Republican vote.   The Republicans' unprecedented use of the filibuster has stymied legislation and, just as importantly, judicial and executive branch appointments.  The use of the filibuster to prevent these appointments is an attack on the legitimacy of the Presidency.  How can he do the job that he was elected to do if filibustering prevents him from making the appointments he wants?  In fact, it was Republicans' declared intention to filibuster all of Obama's nominees to the DC circuit court ---yes, that DC circuit court, whose three judge panel ruled against the Affordable Care Act  in Halbig vs. Sibelius--- simply because they didn't want a Democratic president to be able to fill any more vacancies that finally led the Democratic leadership to adopt the modest filibuster reform of November 2013.

So there you have it - the domestic politics of 21st century America: hyper-partisanship, unlimited money to influence elections, voter repression laws, attacks on the legitimacy of the presidency, corporations granted personhood, and unending lawsuits relying on conservative activist judges in the federal courts to overturn enacted legislation.  The Greeks invented democracy in the 6th century B.C.  Those ancients must be turning over in their graves looking at the form "rule by the people" takes 2,600 years later in the country that fancies itself the world's foremost democracy.

Related
"The District of Columbia asked a federal judge Monday [August 25] to reconsider his July ruling that overturned D.C.’s ban on possessing handguns in public. U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin Jr. “failed to conduct the analysis required by controlling law, and relied on flawed, non-controlling decisions from other jurisdictions” when he declared D.C.’s public handgun ban unconstitutional, according to the city’s lawyers."[Washington Free Beacon, Aug 26]

Sunday Round-Up - August 11, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at post-Constitutional America, the recently eviscerated Voting Rights Act, the "liberal media" and the surprising allies in the unfolding drama in Egypt.  Sources include TomDispatch.com, The Daily Kos, Mother Jones, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Quote of the Day

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far,

justice is always in jeopardy. 

- Walt Whitman

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Post-Constitutional America

In a TomDispatch post on August 4, former State Department whistle blower Peter van Buren paints a chilling picture of the America that we are now living in. Two hundred thirty five years to the day after the Continental Congress established the first whistle blower protection law (see below), Wiki-leaker Bradley Manning was convicted on 20 of 22 counts and now faces up to 136 years in prison. The government's actions have "ushered us, almost unnoticed, into post-Constitutional America." Van Buren notes that in recent years, "weapons, tactics, and techniques developed in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the war on terror have begun arriving in the homeland." His examples include up-armored police departments, drones, and "above all, suveillance technolgy." Also present in our post-Constitutional nation is a "new Guantanamo-ized definition of justice." And so to the arrest and detainment of Bradley Manning.   After his arrest, Manning was subjected to "three years of cruel detainment, where, as might well have happened at Gitmo, Manning, kept in isolation, was deprived of clothing, communications, legal advice, and sleep. The sleep deprivation regime imposed on him certainly met any standard, other than Washington’s and possibly Pyongyang’s, for torture." As for the trial itself, "rules of evidence reaching back to early English common law were turned upside down." So what are some aspects of post-Constitutional America as it is beginning to take shape? Just a few examples from Van Buren's post:

• "Post-9/11, torture famously stopped being torture if an American did it, and its users were not prosecutable by the Justice Department."
• "Full-spectrum spying is not considered to violate the Fourth Amendment and does not even require probable cause."
• "Government whistleblowers are commanded to return to face justice, while law-breakers in the service of the government are allowed to flee justice."
• "Secret laws and secret courts can create secret law you can’t know about for “crimes” you don’t even know exist. You can nonetheless be arrested for committing them."

 

The "Liberal Media"

The Daily Kos had a great post on August 7: "15 Things Everyone Would Know If There Were a Liberal Media".  From the impact of outsourcing on the US job market to the outrageous Republican gerrymandering of Congressional districts to US market-driven health care costs (highest per capita in the world) to the number of prisoners in US jails (we have 25% of the world's prisoners and rank #1 in this department), the post is well worth a read. Here's one of the neat graphics from the post.

 

1965 Voting Rights Act

On the 48th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act being signed into law by LBJ, Mother Jones had a post reminding us of how much the law has meant.   MJ presented "five recent and egregious examples of minority discrimination that were blocked by Section 5, the part of the law the Supreme Court eviscerated in June." Here are two of them:

• The all-white board of aldermen in the town of Kilmichael, Mississippi (pop. 830), canceled town elections after an unprecedented number of black candidates made it onto the ballot. The DOJ forced an election and the town elected its first black mayor and three black aldermen.
• After the 2010 census showed that blacks had become a majority in Georgia's Augusta-Richmond, the state Legislature passed a bill that "rescheduled voting from November, which had a traditionally high black voter turnout, to July, which had a low turnout overall, but especially for blacks. The change only affected Augusta-Richmond, and, not surprisingly, was rejected under Section 5."

 

The Egyptian Restoration

Sarah Chayes, in an August 1 article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "The Egyptian Restoration", tries to address recent developments in Egypt. "Much of the Egyptian population now embraces the very military it seemed bent on ejecting from power during the 2011 revolution. What's the reason for the about-face?", she asks. Chayes offers a reappraisal of the Egyptian Arab Spring based on interviews she conducted in 2011 and in July 2013:

1. The 2011 protesters were not revolting against the military. "The protests were enraged not at Mubarak’s army but at a tight network of high-rolling capitalists who were seen to have hijacked the Egyptian government (military included), rewriting the laws, awarding themselves privileged access to land and other public resources, and employing police repression, all for personal gain."

2. Democracy, per se, was not the aim of the 2011 revolution. "Protesters...were not demanding the vote for the sake of the vote. They were demanding the deliverables that are supposed to result from democracy...[They were demanding] that the perpetrators of the heist of public resources be subject to repercussions...the return of stolen or squandered public assets; an end to the pervasive corruption, which cascaded down from the top of the system to include daily shakedowns by auxiliary police, institutionalized graft in public tenders at all levels of government, and ad hoc fees demanded even by teachers and doctors."

3. The Morsi government was seen to be merely substituting Muslim Brotherhood networks for those of Mubarak. Many Egyptians became convinced "that the Muslim Brotherhood had no intention of enacting the type of systemic corrections the revolutionaries had demanded."

4. The Egyptian military is neither as powerful nor as competent as it is cracked up to be.

5. Some in both the Brotherhood and the military have an interest in continuing the violence. "The goal (achieved masterfully by the Algerian government in the 1990s) would be to present the people—and the international community—with a stark choice between authoritarianism and terrorism."

6. "Egyptians, for now, seem to have convinced themselves that this is indeed the choice they are facing. And they have chosen the former. They have opted for Restoration."

Other Stuff

Comics

Link to Comic Strip "The NSA Comes Clean" by Tom Tomorrow from Comics/DailyKos.  Hilarious.

Continental Congress' "Whistle Blower" Protection Law (July 30, 1778)

"...it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states.”

Who Is "Mother Jones"?

Mother Jones is a courageous source of investigative journalism. But who, if anyone, is the publication's namesake? Well, according to Wikipedia: "Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (July 1837– 30 November 1930) was an Irish-American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent labor and community organizer. She then helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World."



Democracy: The What's Left of It Edition (Part 1)

Democracy - a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections. - Merriam Webster Dictionary

Think you live in a democracy? Think again. Yes, the most egregious offense against democracy - slavery - was officially ended long ago. All citizens, including women, over the age 18 now have the right to vote thanks to some Constitutional amendments.   On paper, the United States appears to qualify as a democracy.  In reality, American democracy is now under assault. Attacks against the "supreme power.. vested in the people" and against "periodically held free elections" have been ongoing for a long time. But recent Supreme Court decisions, legislative actions at the State level, the unchecked influence of special interest money, the rampant disregard for the truth, the abuse of the filibuster, and the continuing excesses of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act have made a mockery of the concept.

Over the next two posts, I'll present my personal top 10 list for the assault on democracy in America. Feel free to add your own or reorder as you see fit.

Numbers 10 through 6 in the assault on democracy:

#10 - Disparity in the distribution of wealth

In this country, elections are almost always determined by the amount of money spent during a campaign. In 2008 elections. for example, "in 93 percent of House of Representatives races and 94 percent of Senate races that had been decided by mid-day Nov. 5, the candidate who spent the most money ended up winning, according to a post-election analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics." The interests of the ruling and contributing classes are well represented; those of the not-so-well-off, less so. How else can you explain the opposition to tax increases on the wealthiest in society and the demand that benefits be taken from the less well off so that we can balance the budget?

#9 - Misinformed citizenry

An informed citizenry is critical to the functioning of a democracy. Corporate media misrepresentations of the facts (think Fox News viewers who thought that Saddam Hussein was connected to the 9/11 attacks) and government secrecy and distortions (think pre-Iraq invasion intelligence reports and non-existent WMD) are the primary bad actors. Antidotes to this toxic misinformation: teach critical thinking in the schools, support organizations like FactCheck.org.

#8 - Government Spying

Government spying on its own citizens - either warrantless or by using overly broad warrants - has no place in a democracy. It is part and parcel of totalitarian regimes. Germany's current president Joachim Gauck, who helped expose the workings of East Germany's secret police, said whistleblowers like U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden deserved respect for defending freedom. Gauck knows of what he speaks. He lived in communist East Germany before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Instead of "respect for defending our freedom", our government prosecutes and punishes those who, like Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden, shine a light on these undemocratic goings-on. Where will it end? Who knows? Just today a powerful NSA tool has been unveiled. As reported in The Guardian on July 31: "A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden." See the Guardian article for more details on this latest revelation ("XKeyscore").

#7 - Special interest money

When 80-90% of the public favors a piece of legislation and it is not passed, you know something is wrong in the democracy. In one of the most egregious examples of this, the NRA's political money was enough to kill universal background checks for gun purchases in the Senate. If the filibuster had been broken in the Senate, what do you think the chances for passage would have been in the House where Republicans hold a 34 vote majority? In a political system where money wins elections, where politicians must raise inordinate amounts to compete, where special interest groups are free to lie and distort at will, we should not be surprised at such outcomes. 

 

#6 - Third-party political attack ads

Considering the role of political advertising in the outcome of elections, you would think that there would be some control over lying in attack ads. Unfortunately there is none. An interest group can pretty much make up anything they want without ever being held accountable. Combine this "license to lie" with the shielding of the names of supporters of these shadow organizations and you've got a powerful tool for the hate and fear mongers to use.

Saturday Round Up - July 6, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at Wednesday's ouster of Egypt's President Morsi by the Egyptian military.  Sources include The Guardian, BBC News, Al Jazeera and Haaretz; and US mainstream media NY Times and The Atlantic.

On Wednesday evening, the Egyptian military deposed democratically elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi after millions of Egyptians demonstrated for his removal, "claiming he had arrogated power, neglected the economy, and worsened divisions in society." [NYTimes]  While anti-Morsi demonstrators rejoiced in the streets, reaction from world leaders was mixed and uneasy.  BBC News reported  British foreign secretary William Hague as saying the UK "will work with the people in authority in Egypt" but condemned the ousting of its president as "a dangerous thing" and US President Barack Obama saying he was "deeply concerned" by the latest turn of events and called for a swift return to civilian rule.[BBC News] [Photo: Dallas Morning News]


 Al Jazeera summarized the reactions of other world leaders in a post on Thursday: the EU called for a "rapid return to democracy"; German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said the military intervention was "a major setback for democracy in Egypt" and called for "dialogue and political compromise"; Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Syria supported the new government - with Syria's President Assad stating that the military intervention means the end of "political Islam" and that this is the "fate of anyone in the world who tries to use religion for political or factional interests."; Iran, Tunisia, and Turkey spoke in support of ousted President Morsi and expressed disappointment at the intervention.

The Guardian reported on Thursday that supporters of the ousted president would take "to the streets after Friday prayers following a series of raids and arrests that decimated the Muslim Brotherhood's senior ranks and consolidated the miltary's hold on the country." The widespread crackdown was launched by Egypt's interim president Adly Mansour even as he reached out to the Brotherhood, calling them "part of the fabric of Egyptian society." On Friday Al Jazeera reported that "at least three supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi were killed by gunfire as a crowd of several hundred tried to march towards the military barracks in Cairo where he is believed to be held." Al Jazeera also reported in the same post that Egyptian state television said that Mansour had dissolved parliament by decree. On Friday Haaretz covered a Reuters and DPA report : "Egypt has indefinitely closed the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip following attacks on security forces in northern Sinai, a security official said Friday...The crossing was opened in 2011 following the ouster of Egyptian president Hosny Mubarak, whose administration opposed the Hamas rulers in Gaza, and helped Israel to enforce a blockade on the enclave."

Saturday morning Al Jazeera reported on the aftermath of widespread clashes in Egypt as supporters of the deposed president demonstrated in the streets Friday night: "A tense calm has descended on Egypt following a night of fierce clashes between supporters and opponents of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi.  At least 30 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded in the violence that erupted on Friday and continued through the night.  A coalition of conservative groups led by Muslim Brotherhood has vowed further demonstrations on Saturday, raising fears of renewed violence."

New elections have been pledged by the military and Western leaders are hoping that this occurs as quickly as possible. However, as of this writing, no specific date has been set for these elections.  This is a test for democracy in the Middle East.  Can a government move from authoritarian rule to democracy seamlessly in one election? Is the Egyptian experience unique - in that Morsi, in the words of US Senator Patrick Leahy, had "squandered an historic opportunity, preferring to govern by fiat rather than work with other political parties." [reported in The Atlantic website] - or is it indicative of things to come in other Arab Spring countries?