Wouldn’t it be nice if all of our political stereotypes were affirmed with every individual? You know, for progressives it would be easy if every Republican was gun-toting, uneducated, war-mongering, angry and generally uncouth. Without naming names, there are plenty of such types to go around. And before we go any further, progressives must keep in mind that others have their own stereotypes of us: tree-hugging, always politically correct, disrespecting authority, and even bed-wetting. Because I largely travel in the company of progressives, I know that the stereotype of liberals may be accurate about two per-cent of the time.

I would argue that Republicans fit more into some semblance of the stereotypical cage that many progressives give them. And when progressive run into a Republican who does not fit the stereotypical image that we have of them, it can become challenging. But do not totally fear, progressives are much better at tolerating ambiguity than conservatives.

Wisconsin congressman and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan certainly presents challenges for progressives. He is somewhat of the anti-Trump, which appeals to many, but in reality he is but one among many Republicans who fit that moniker. It’s more than that. He seems like the kind of guy who you would trust to take your kid with his family on an “American vacation.” He’s most likely polite to people who wait on him. In his personal life he probably has equal respect for men and women and does not bear ill-feelings towards those whose sexual orientation is different from his own. But dammit, those ideas of his can be unnerving.

As reported in The Economist:

A dogmatic conservative, Mr. Ryan has often used the budget process to score ideological points. He puts too much faith in supply-side reform as a growth-boosting counterweight to austerity. He launched a hapless effort to defund the health-care reform that is President Barack Obama’s main domestic achievement.

He is a devotee of the author Ayn Rand and has said,

“What’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault.”

He has supported generous tax cuts for the wealthy and railed against expenditures to maintain a social safety net, even for children and the elderly. How could a nice guy have such seemingly nasty positions on the issues?

We could learn a thing or two from Reagan biographer Peggy Noonan who told the story that if Reagan was taking a stroll outside the White House and a beggar came up and asked him for a dime, the President without hesitation would reach into his pocket and give him one. But if the same beggar was to be the beneficiary of an economic program that would help him, it’s likely that Reagan would have opposed that program and left the beggar starving.

It is indeed somewhat of a conundrum for progressives when we encounter a Ronald Reagan or a Paul Ryan. How they can personally be so nice while supporting public policies that are Republican-mean is difficult to understand.  This is why it is helpful to study the Republican Brain to gain more insight. In the meantime, it makes sense to be cordial with the likes of Reagan and Ryan, but also to beware.

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Progressives are often considered professorial, which in many circles is tantamount to being called wordy. Contrary to that questionable conventional wisdom is a definition of a progressive that includes two short points.  A progressive:

1.  Is not afraid to talk about any subject, so long as the dialogue is civil.

2.Feels the pain of those who are suffering and is willing to for action to be taken through the public sector to help alleviate that pain.

Regrettably, most “progressives” run the gamut from the “liberal like Joe Biden” to the “moderate like Claire McCaskill.” They seem to consider certain issues to be off limits. They don’t want to violate principle number one, openness to discussing virtually any issue).

What are some of the topics that progressives in the 75% – 50% range (with 100% being a genuine progressive) are reluctant to discuss.

1. Gun control is like leprosy to moderate progressives. It hasn’t always been that way; during the riots of the 1960s most liberals supported banning most forms of firearms because they were the weapon of choice in both crime and mass uprisings. Concern about the dangers of guns extended into the 1990s when President Bill Clinton was able to get Congress to agree to banning eleven types of assault weapons. And if we rewind the clock, progressive strongly opposed the high-powered machine guns, rifles, and handguns used by organized crime during Prohibition and extending into the period of American Mafiosi supremacy (now the dubious distinction of primacy is the bailiwick of other countries).

In January, 2011, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was severely wounded; six others were killed and thirteen more wounded by Jared Loughner, an unstable individual who exacted his damage with a Glock 19 pistol.

In April, 2007, a student at Virginia Tech University, Seung-Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others on campus. He later committed suicide. His weapons of choice for the carnage he inflicted were an easy to get 2 mm semi-automatic handgun and a 22-caliber pistol.

In neither of these massacres was the topic of gun control given serious consideration. The last time that the role of guns as a contributing factor to killing was truly discussed was the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981. It wasn’t Reagan who brought it up or the family of the three law enforcement agents who were seriously wounded. Rather it was Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady who was shot in the head and suffered permanent neurological damage. He and his wife, Sarah, were so appalled by the indifference to the use of a handgun that they started an organization called Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

2. There are certainly other topics that progressives used to discuss but seem to have lost from their vocabulary. It is somewhat interesting that two of them became a common part of our language within two years of one another. When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v Wade ruling on January 22, 1973, the word abortion could now be spoken rather than whispered. The word “choice” is also nearly expunged from our reproductive vocabulary.

 Roe v Wade was handed down exactly three years and three months (April 22, 1970) after the first Earth Day, in which progressives openly embraced environmental causes. Conservatives and some moderates now consider being pro-environment tantamount to being anti-energy; anti-economic growth; anti-job growth; and in some cases, even anti-American.

The silence of the progressives reminds me of an incident when I was in fourth grade. Someone at lunch uttered a word I had never heard before, shit. I thought that it was hilarious that there was a word that you couldn’t say if it didn’t insult anyone. Several times I marched around the cafeteria saying shit, shit, shit. A teacher heard me and immediately sent me to the principal’s office where I laughed, even when my parents were called. On a relative scale, they were pretty cool about it all.

I hope that I along with other progressives are now engaged in more important issues that striding around the cafeteria saying *hit. How about saying “gun control,” “abortion,” “choice,” and environmental protection.” There are many others as well, especially regarding labor and consumer rights.

It’s obviously absurd to wait for the John Boehners, Mitch McConnells, and Mitt Romneys to use progressive words in any fashion other than pejorative. Real progressives use them properly. Next are the Barack Obamas, Joe Bidens, Claire McCaskills, and other “in the middle.” Let’s do what we can to encourage them to do so. Step number one: walk around a school cafeteria repeatedly saying “gun control, gun control.”

The post If you won’t talk about guns, you’re not a progressive appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In a refreshing and somewhat unusual statement following President Obama’s State of the Union address, Missouri Congressman Lacy Clay said, “Tonight’s speech demonstrated President Obama’s positive vision, and reminded me of Presidents Bill Clinton and Franklin Roosevelt.” In recent years, Democrats have been hesitant to reference Franklin Roosevelt, the icon of the social and economic safety nets that are fundamental to protecting the needs of the least fortunate among us. Congressman Clay was willing to do it.

Perhaps more remarkable and encouraging was Clay’s citing of President Bill Clinton. Nearly twelve years removed from his last day in office, more and more people are becoming aware of the many accomplishments that he had during his eight years as president. It didn’t hurt that he was followed by George W. Bush who lowered the bar for all. Still, it takes quite a bit of commitment and courage to honor him. After all, he is the only president other than Andrew Johnson in 1867 who was impeached. In many ways his name has been associated with scandal rather than social and economic progress. But Congressman Clay and others have been able to see his many accomplishments and to give them their appropriate respect.

It has been easier for Republicans. They seem to have no trouble embellishing their so-called heroes with accolades, most particularly Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln. The big difference between what the Democrats and the Republicans do is that the Democrats actually believe much of what they say about their historic heroes. The Republicans tend to luxuriate in the names Lincoln and Reagan while in many regards, particularly with Lincoln, they distort the truth.

Abraham Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator. While there is indeed some question as to his timing with regard to liberating the slaves, he stood foursquare behind the idea of, first, ending the expansion of slavery and, second, negotiating a way for southerners to free their slaves. He was even willing to make a financial settlement with them (technically called compensated emancipation). Very few in the Confederacy had interest in negotiating with the Northerners who they saw as imperialistic and arrogant. They preferred to take out their rifles to fight a war that, while fruitless, was characterized by remarkable bravery on both sides, with each side having its fair share of victories.

The idea of today’s Republicans worshiping Lincoln is in many ways ludicrous. Think of what Lincoln favored that are presently  anathema to Republicans:

1. He believed in the supremacy of the federal government over the states. Had he not, he would not have reluctantly supported the War Between the States.

2. He favored a robust program of capital investment in the country’s infrastructure. He played a key role in planning and implementing the transcontinental railroad. Today’s Republicans support virtually no infrastructure development, unless it is a bridge to nowhere.

3. Lincoln initiated the program of Land Grant Colleges. He believed in broadening higher education opportunities to as many interested and deserving students as possible. He saw this as a government responsibility. In 1862, he signed a law offering federal lands to each state to help establish public colleges for working-class Americans. This stands in contrast to many of today’s Republicans who are quick to cut funding to higher education (as well as all other levels of schooling). Because part of today’s Republicans’ mantra is economic privatization, their priorities in education are private schools include so-called for-profit college, as well as vouchers to provide economic independence for many elementary and secondary schools.

Today’s Republicans also tend to think that Ronald Reagan walked on water. Yes, he talked a good game about opposing tax increases, but when federal deficits occurred or were on the horizon as has been the case over the past ten years, he was quick to support taxes (or revenue enhancers) in order prevent the deficit from getting out of hand.

And while Reagan was partisan; he was not acrimonious. He knew that real cooperation (a word that currently is held in favor with Republicans) meant compromise (a word held in disdain by Republicans). One reason why the federal government was productive at times during the Reagan Administration is because he developed a very affable working relationship with Tip O’Neill, the speaker of the House. They frequently disagreed during the day, but in the evenings they socialized and frequently worked out differences. Even though President Barack Obama tries to engage Republicans in collaboration, the GOP seems to offer only idle words with few actual deeds.

So along with Republic myths about topics such as job creation through reducing taxes for the wealthy, they re-write history with their favorite heroes. Democrats don’t always tell the truth, but they tend to not tell bald-faced lies. It would strengthen our two-party system if Republicans were a little more comfortable with the truth.

The post How Republicans mythologize their history appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Michael Moore says he’s often asked by younger people, “When did America’s downward slide begin?”  And he is able to give them an exact date: August 5, 1981. That’s exactly thirty years ago from August 5, 2011, the day Moore wrote a moving blog entry commemorating the day when President Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union who defied his order to return to work. He not only fired them (after being on strike a mere two days), he outlawed their union, PATCO. According to Michael Moore, this event marked the beginning of the dismantling of the middle class in America. He gives us the backstory to the event:

Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started—a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.

Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over.

Michael wants those of us who are older to remember how it was before the corporate/Wall Street takeover of America. And he wants younger people, born after 1981, to know that things don’t have to be how they are now. Even though I was an adult at the time, to me his description of life in America before August 5, 1981, reads like a utopian novel or a fairy tale. I had forgotten how painful and deep the losses have been, because, like others, I’ve just adapted to new realities and a more stress filled life. According to Michael, before the PATCO firings:

• Working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent’s income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free).

• Anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one.

• People only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer.

• Many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how “lowly” your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

Even though I’ve lived through this period, It’s difficult to read this list and to comprehend how different life has become in the United States for working people. And the attacks continue. Wall Street backed Democrats and Republicans are trying to cut away at the final legacy of the New Deal, the safety nets of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. My questions for them is: Just how much money is enough?  Michael reflects:

And we let it happen to us. Yes, they had the money, and the media and the cops. But we had 200 million of us. Ever wonder what it would look like if 200 million got truly upset and wanted their country, their life, their job, their weekend, their time with their kids back?

Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party—we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they’ve done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money—or step aside.

When is enough, enough? The middle class dream will not just magically reappear. Wall Street’s plan is clear: America is to be a nation of Haves and Have Nothings. Is that OK for you?

A good question. . .

Photo credit: StretchyBill @Flickr Creative Commons

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Famed progressive author, teacher and activist Howard Zinn died suddenly on January 27, 2010. To celebrate Zinn’s life and legacy, Boston University initiatied a new lecture series in his honor. On October 29, 2010, Bill Moyers gave the inaugural lecture of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series at Boston University. He spoke for 74 minutes and then took questions for almost another hour. This riveting “must view,” progressive lecture is available online, at Boston University’s website, and the full text can be read at Alternet.

Moyers warns that we are in denial about the loss of our democracy, which began with Ronald Reagan and was cemented with the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision. He calls for ordinary Americans to fight back against the collusion of government and corporations—which he defines as government by oligarchy—by getting involved with progressive political organizations.

An extended quote from his speech:

The Gilded Age returned with a vengeance in our time. It slipped in quietly at first, back in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan began a “massive decades-long transfer of national wealth to the rich.” As Roger Hodge makes clear, under Bill Clinton the transfer was even more dramatic, as the top 10 percent captured an ever-growing share of national income. The trend continued under George W. Bush – those huge tax cuts for the rich, remember, which are now about to be extended because both parties have been bought off by the wealthy – and by 2007 the wealthiest 10% of Americans were taking in 50% of the national income. Today, a fraction of people at the top today earn more than the bottom 120 million Americans.

You will hear it said, “Come on, this is the way the world works.” No, it’s the way the world is made to work. This vast inequality is not the result of Adam Smith’s invisible hand; it did not just happen; it was no accident. As Hodge drives home, it is the result of a long series of policy decisions “about industry and trade, taxation and military spending, by flesh-and-blood humans sitting in concrete-and-steel buildings.” And those policy decisions were paid for by the less than one percent who participate in our capitalist democracy political contributions. Over the past 30 years, with the complicity of Republicans and Democrats alike, the plutocrats, or plutonomists (choose your own poison) have used their vastly increased wealth to assure that government does their bidding. Remember that grateful Citigroup reference to “market-friendly governments” on the side of plutonomy? We had a story down in Texas for that sort of thing; the dealer in a poker game says to the dealer, Now play the cards fairly, Reuben; I know what I dealt you.” (To see just how our system was rigged by the financial, political, and university elites, run, don’t walk, to the theatre nearest you showing Charles Ferguson’s new film, “Inside Job.” Take a handkerchief because you’ll weep for the republic.)

Looking back, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. One of the few journalists who did see it coming – Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post – reported that “business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperative action in the legislative arena.” Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. They funded think tanks that churned out study after study with results skewed to their ideology and interests. And their political allies in the conservative movement cleverly built alliances with the religious right – Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition – who zealously waged a cultural holy war that camouflaged the economic assault on working people and the middle class.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan also tried to warn us. He said President Reagan’s real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Senator Moynihan was gone before the financial catastrophe on George W. Bush’s watch that could paradoxically yet fulfill Reagan’s dream. The plutocrats who soaked up all the money now say the deficits require putting Social Security and other public services on the chopping block. You might think that Mr. Bush today would regret having invaded Iraq on false pretences at a cost of more than a trillion dollars and counting, but no, just last week he said that his biggest regret was his failure to privatize Social Security. With over l00 Republicans of the House having signed a pledge to do just that when the new Congress convenes, Mr. Bush’s vision may yet be realized.

Daniel Altman also saw what was coming. In his book Neoconomy he described a place without taxes or a social safety net, where rich and poor live in different financial worlds. “It’s coming to America,” he wrote. Most likely he would not have been surprised recently when firefighters in rural Tennessee would let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn’t paid a $75 fee. 
That’s what is coming to America.

***

Here we are now, on the verge of the biggest commercial transaction in the history of American elections. Once again the plutocracy is buying off the system. Nearly $4 billion is being spent on the congressional races that will be decided next week, including multi millions coming from independent tax-exempt organizations that can collect unlimited amounts without revealing the sources. The organization Public Citizen reports that just 10 groups are responsible for the bulk of the spending by independent groups: “A tiny number of organizations, relying on a tiny number of corporate and fat cat contributors, are spending most of the money on the vicious attack ads dominating the airwaves” – those are the words of Public Citizen’s president, Robert Wiessman. The Federal Election Commission says that two years ago 97% of groups paying for election ads disclosed the names of their donors. This year it’s only 32%.

Socrates again: To remember a thing, you must first name it. We’re talking about slush funds. Donors are laundering their cash through front groups with high-falutin’ names like American Crossroads. That’s one of the two slush funds controlled by Karl Rove in his ambition to revive the era of the robber barons. Promise me you won’t laugh when I tell you that although Rove and the powerful Washington lobbyist who is his accomplice described the first organization as “grassroots”, 97% of its initial contributions came from four billionaires. Yes: The grass grows mighty high when the roots are fertilized with gold.

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Walter Mondale. Are you excited yet? Many Americans will not recognize his name. He served as Jimmy Carter’s Vice-President from 1977-1981 and was the Democratic nominee for president in in 1984.

You might say that he is charisma challenged. But as best we can tell, there’s no correlation between charisma and intelligence. Walter Mondale had, and still has, some excellent ideas.

George Lakoff has warned progressives and others to not assume that just because something makes sense, then it will be accepted by the American people. What Walter Mondale did in the 1984 campaign is good evidence for Lakoff’s thesis.

On Tax Day, 2011, Mondale penned an op-ed in the Washington Post advancing the reasonable argument that the United States government cannot address its budgetary problems without raising taxes. It included a reflection on personal experience:

I told the truth in 1984. “The American people will have to pay Mr. Reagan’s bills,” I said in my acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. “The budget will be squeezed. Taxes will go up. . . . It must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

There’s something called a Venn diagram in which two circles intersect. There’s rarely a great deal of overlay between the Republican Party and the truth. So, Ronald Reagan and his cohorts had no difficulty skewering Mondale for respecting and telling the truth.

Republicans said that Mondale was just another big-spending Democrat whose views were antithetical to Reagan’s mantra. In his first inaugural address on January 20, 1981, Reagan said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” (audio clip)

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The words could just as well have come from Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, or even the Donald. Reaganomics didn’t work in the 1980s; so much so that Reagan somewhat surreptitiously ate his own words and supported the raising of certain taxes in his second term.

Through the lens of 2011, even Reagan’s whiz kid budget director, David Stockman, has fallen off the Reaganomics wagon. In a New York Times op-ed last July 31, Stockman wrote:

If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.

Walter Mondale offers words that are both wise and consistent with American thinking (two variables that don’t always overlap):

Taxes reveal who we are as a people and what we value. Polls consistently show that majorities of Americans are willing to pay taxes and even have them increased when the revenues are devoted to their priorities, such as education, health care and deficit reduction. The public’s support is greatest for raising taxes on the affluent, but it extends to hikes tied to popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

President Obama’s speech on April 13 on deficit reduction seemed to put would-be progressives back on track with the wisdom of Mondale’s words. First he explains why we need government, and hence taxes:

But there’s always been another thread running through our history -– a belief that we’re all connected, and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation. We believe, in the words of our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.

Then he addresses a question that seems to have puzzled many Republicans, why taxes should be borne by the wealthy as well as, or more than, people of low or middle incomes.

Now, for much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford these investments and priorities with the taxes paid by its citizens. As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally borne a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate. Everybody pays, but the wealthier have borne a little more. This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well -– we rightly celebrate their success. Instead, it’s a basic reflection of our belief that those who’ve benefited most from our way of life can afford to give back a little bit more. Moreover, this belief hasn’t hindered the success of those at the top of the income scale. They continue to do better and better with each passing year.

Back in 1984, Mondale had the temerity to tell the truth and state that the American economy was in need of revenue enhancements; i.e. tax increases. His reasoning did not prevail in part because most people can readily understand the need for a reduction of taxes, but their critical thinking skills tend to diminish when there is a need for an increase in taxes. It’s called self-interest, and that wasn’t working in Mondale’s favor.

Additionally Mondale was on the short end of a “charisma gap” with Reagan. The former actor and governor of California may have naturally been affable, but his handlers ensured that virtually everything he did was rehearsed. Mondale might have been able to take on “Reagan untethered,” but not “Reagan packaged.”

For all the recent but decreasing criticism of Barack Obama, no one has said that he has not maintained his charisma and charm. No one has said that he is lacking in reasoning. It appears that he is taking steps towards emulating Mondale’s courage and honesty. He will undoubtedly face a Republican opponent in 2012 who is less skilled and less polished than he. Unfortunately, all too often, the American people prefer the ‘C’ student with no vision to the ‘A’ student who combines intelligence with empathy [e.g. the elections of 2000 and 2004].

Let’s hope that President Obama soaks in the positive response to his April 13 speech. Many of us have simply been asking for clarity with compassion. He hit that note on the 13th. Mr. President, please keep it up, and in the process, you may school the American people a little more in recognizing and accepting honesty.

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